Below The Beltway

Only one President has gone an entire eight years without exercising his veto power even once. His name was Thomas Jefferson, and the reason he didn’t veto anything was because he was fortunate enough to have a friendly Congress during his entire time as President. Though he has gone 5 1/2 years without vetoing a single bill sent to him, George W. Bush won’t tie Mr. Jefferson’s record because today he will veto a bill providing funding for stem cell research.

The Senate voted to lift restrictions on federally funded human embryonic stem cell research yesterday, setting the table for President Bush’s first veto and producing an emotional campaign issue that Democrats believe will help them this fall.

Senators voted 63 to 37 to approve a House-passed bill that would pour millions of dollars into a field of medical research that is promising — but also controversial because it requires destroying human embryos to extract the cells. Bush announced in his first nationally televised address, on Aug. 9, 2001, that he would ban government funding for research using embryonic stem cell colonies created after that date, and he has vowed to cast his first presidential veto to block the legislation rescinding his executive order.

White House press secretary Tony Snow said Bush’s veto “will be pretty swift” once he receives the bill, possibly as soon as today.

The House, which passed the measure last year, appears well short of the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto. If the House override attempt, which is expected within hours of Bush’s veto, is unsuccessful, it would kill the issue for the 109th Congress but would probably propel it toward the front ranks of the November congressional election, lawmakers and political strategists said.

The veto, of course, is tied up in abortion politics and is clearly meant to placate religious conservatives as the 2006 elections approach. Personally, I’d like to see the law vetoed as well, but for different reasons. As I read it, the Congress does not have the authority under the Constitution to fund medical research of any kind. But, I find Bush’s exercise of his veto this time, for this reason, disturbing.

As I said, Bush has gone his entire Presidency to date without vetoing a single bill. There have been plenty of opportunties for him to veto bad laws, whether it be a bloated Federal Budget or the McCain-Feingold law, but he has passed on each of them. Some would argue that by not being more forthright in vetoing bad laws, he has abandoned his obligation to act as a Constitution check on Congressional authority. What is clear, though, is that he has so weakened his position in this regard that this stem cell bill is the only thing he can safely veto at this point.

Barry Campbell puts his own thoughts on this in the form of an open letter to Presdident Bush