Reacting in part to scientific advances in South Korea, President George W. Bush last week issued the first-ever veto threat of his presidency. If a bipartisan bill aimed at making available federal funding for stem-cell research -- and co-sponsored by Representatives Mike Castle (R-DE) and Diana DeGette (D-CO) -- passes Congress, Bush will refuse to sign.
Veto threats have not, historically, been an unusual occurrence in American politics. But Bush has been reluctant to make them. Year after year, the White House has sent budget proposals to the Hill suggesting that tax cuts be paid for with dramatic curbs on spending. Year after year, lawmakers have defied the president's wishes. Bush has never vetoed such appropriations bills, nor has he threatened to do so in hopes of forestalling their passage. Principles of macroeconomic management, it seems, aren't all that important to this president.
On Social Security, Bush has refused to put a real plan on the table, while simultaneously insisting that something must be done. He's made it plain that if Congress passes something -- anything -- that guts the program's core social-insurance function, he'll sign it, irrespective of the details. Some people think that questions like "How many trillions of dollars will we need to borrow to pay for this thing?" or "How much risk will workers be exposed to?" or "What will happen to disabled people and orphaned children?" are topics worth caring about. Bush has vaguely defined views on these questions but doesn't feel strongly enough about them to veto a bill that goes the wrong way.
Most astoundingly, the White House struggled mightily to kill the McCain-Feingold bill in Congress. They did so not only because the president thought the bill was bad policy but also because he believed it to be unconstitutional. But it passed; it was popular; and he signed it.
Biggest federal program? Constitutional principles? Fiscal discipline? Small matters, not worth a veto. Stem-cell policy? A big deal. Time to break out the pen.
One is tempted to say that this goes to show how under the control of burgeoning theocrats the White House is. In reality, it's very hard to see what sort of principle is in play here at all.
The benefits of stem-cell research, while uncertain, are potentially large: cures and treatments for many illnesses, including degenerative diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Making progress on these fronts should be a high priority for an aging society -- a higher priority, I dare say, than wrecking its retirement security programs. But many Americans believe that "life begins at conception," which is to say that embryos, even tiny ones with only a few undifferentiated cells, have the same moral standing as human beings with functioning brains and so forth. From such a point of view, embryonic stem-cell research, no matter how promising, is wrong. It's no more acceptable to destroy embryos for scientific purposes than it would be to raid homeless shelters and vivisect their residents in the name of research.
But here's the thing: If I wanted to go around chopping up homeless people and performing medical experiments on them, that would be illegal whether or not my research was federally funded. Murder, you see, is murder. People have rights. Who pays for the killing isn't relevant.
But Bush doesn't want a ban on embryo destruction. Nor does he want to ban the fertility clinics whose habit of creating excess embryos (which must, one way or another, inevitably be destroyed) creates opportunities for research. He just wants to ban the federal government from providing the cash. Well, say some, a total ban just wouldn't be politically feasible. And, indeed, it wouldn't. But the fact that something won't pass Congress has rarely prevented a president from proposing it or, at least, mentioning that he favors the idea and that he's accepting something lesser because half a loaf is better than no loaf. Instead, the White House has always insisted that the "destroy embryos: yes; do it with taxpayer money: no" position represents a profound political compromise. The president, you'll recall, spent much of summer 2001 putting on a show of moral deliberation before devising a position that is a nonsensical piece of political opportunism.
Now with the veto threat, it appears that the White House has started to believe its own propaganda. They think they have drawn an ethical line in the sand and must maintain it no matter what the consequences for sick people and their families. Bush ought to get off his high horse and admit what everyone knows: His position was a mere tactical dodge designed to defuse a political controversy. It didn't work. If the bill passes, he ought to admit to himself that he doesn't have any real principles in this area and sign this thing. He is willing to sign bills he thinks are unconstitutional. To go to the mat for a failed piece of political posturing would be pathetic.
Matthew Yglesias is a Prospect staff writer.
