Democrats Press Obama on Fiscal Discipline

March 4, 2009— -- President Obama's ambitious budget reforms are running into stiff resistance from members of his own party on Capitol Hill, testing his relationship with key centrists and members of the congressional leadership whose support will be critical to the advancement of the Obama agenda.

Despite his campaign promise to root out wasteful spending, the president is accepting, for the time being, lawmakers' "earmarked" special projects.

But by trying to skirt that political battle, Obama is creating another one: His commitment to signing into law an earmark-filled, $410 billion spending plan for the current fiscal year is raising questions among Democrats about his commitment to fiscal discipline.

Sen. Evan Bayh, a centrist Democrat from Indiana, today wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal challenging Obama to change course and veto the bill as now written.

"The Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009 is a sprawling, $410 billion compilation of nine spending measures that lacks the slightest hint of austerity from the federal government or the recipients of its largess," Bayh wrote. "The Senate should reject this bill. If we do not, President Barack Obama should veto it."

Bayh is part of a group of about 15 moderate Democrats who are brainstorming ways to exert more influence on the budget process.

A liberal Democrat from Wisconsin, Sen. Russ Feingold, also today joined Bayh in saying he would oppose the measure, which contains about 8,500 earmarks.

"I'm going to vote against it," Feingold said, holding up the 1,000-page bill at a news conference on Capitol Hill. "The president should veto it."

While Obama has vowed to whittle down the number of earmarks, he opted to start that push with next year's spending measures, not this year's.

His administration argues that the spending bill should have been finished during the Bush administration, and therefore the earmarks in it are not entirely his responsibility.

"We want to just move on. Let's get this bill done, get it into law and move forward," Peter Orszag, the Obama administration's director of the Office of Management and Budget, told ABC's George Stephanopoulos on "This Week" Sunday. "This is last year's business. We just need to move on."