by Matthew Hay Brown

Congressional Democrats are hoping to make their first veto override the start of a trend.

With the Senate vote today to defy President Bush on the Water Resources Development Act – the House passed it earlier this week – the new majority scored a rare legislative victory over a White House that has slapped away its efforts on embryonic stem cell research, children’s health insurance and the war in Iraq.

As Bush prepares to veto several of the spending bills now in Congress, Sen. Benjamin Cardin, Democrat of Maryland, sees a blueprint for future success.

“I think the lesson here is that when you work a bill on a very bipartisan basis from the beginning, sensitive to the fact that you try to get the president’s support, you don’t try to just run over the president, you try to work with his concerns, given him opportunities, give the minority as much opportunities as possible, that you have a good chance to get that policy passed, even if the president objects,” Cardin said.

“I think many of the appropriation bills fall into that category,” he continued. “The votes don’t look like they’re there yet. But I think [the override] does give a little bit more momentum to the congressional position versus the president to try to work out these differences.”

Thirty-four Senate Republicans – including Sen. Trent Lott, the party whip – joined Democrats in the 79-14 vote to override President Bush’s veto of WRDA, which authorizes $23 billion in federal funding for hurricane defense, flood mitigation and wetland restoration projects in states and congressional districts across the country. In the House on Tuesday, 138 Republicans joined Democrats in a 361-54 vote.

White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said Bush was “standing up for taxpayers.”

“No one is surprised that this veto is overridden," she told the Associated Press. "We understand that members of Congress are going to support the projects in their districts. Budgeting is about making choices and defining priorities – it doesn’t mean you can have everything. This bill doesn’t make the difficult choices; it says we can fund every idea out there. That's not a responsible way to budget.”

It was only the 107th successful override in U.S. history, and the first since Bush took office. Of course, he enjoyed a Republican majority in the House for the first six years of his administration; he didn’t issue his first veto until last year, when he rejected a bill to expand federal support of embryonic stem cell research. Congress was unable to muster the votes to override.

“What the last 6 years was, was a Congress that, frankly, was controlled by the administration to the extent that they did not want to send the administration any legislation that the administration would feel constrained to veto,” House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer said this week. “So, if the administration said to the Congress, ‘I don’t like this,’ we gave up, in effect, our role as an independent, separate branch of government.”

Congressional Republicans have maintained a largely united front against Democratic efforts to force redployment from Iraq by attaching conditions to war funding, and many cite personal convictions in their positions on stem-cell research. But there may be room for compromise on some appropriations bills and children’s health insurance, even where Bush is opposed.
Democrats hope the override today has helped Republicans get comfortable with the idea of defying him.

“I would hope that this is a message to the president that he can’t just take his Republican colleagues for granted,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said.