Guest editorial: A big-government conservative

Preliminary congressional figures show that discretionary spending -- spending that must be approved by Congress -- was up 12.5 percent in the fiscal year just ended and up 27 percent for the last two years. That compares to 2.4 percent a year during the '90s when a presumably more profligate Democrat was in the White House.

True, military spending, which accounts for just under half of discretionary spending, was a big culprit, up 17 percent from last year to $407.3 billion -- but everything else went up 8.7 percent, to $418.6 billion.

So much for the White House goal of holding annual spending increases to 4 percent. The president has seemed content to let Congress spend what it wants as long as he gets to spend what he wants. The bill tends to add up.

Congress has the power of the purse, and left to its own devices will spend -- but the president is hardly an idle bystander. His own annual budget requests provide a framework for Congress; he has the bully pulpit of the White House and presumably the political allegiance of his fellow Republicans; and he has the veto. Bush has yet to use the veto, and there are ominous signs that congressional Republicans don't think he will.

Congress still has not finished work on eight spending bills whose deadline was Sept. 30. Now the GOP leadership is planning to wrap all or most of those eight bills -- singular in their bloated size and the load of pork projects they contain -- into a single omnibus appropriations bill.

One unrelated measure would roll back an FCC ruling on media ownership. Bush favors the ruling; Congress does not. The White House has threatened a veto if it stays, but this week Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, publicly warned the president not to use it.

Here's a chance for Bush to send a message: If he'll get tough on this, maybe he'll get tough on spending.