President Bush appears to have House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in a "full nelson" and "crying uncle" in the debate over the fiscal year 2008 budget, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

After a failure to override a presidential veto of a $606 billion FY 2008 Labor-HHS-Education (HR 3043) appropriations bill earlier this month, Bush last week rejected a proposal from Democrats that would have reduced the amount of spending they have sought for the FY 2008 budget (Lochhead, San Francisco Chronicle, 11/26). The proposal would have combined the 11 unapproved FY 2008 appropriations bills into a $484.2 billion omnibus package that would have divided the $22 billion difference between the amount of spending sought by Democrats and requested by Bush (Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, 11/19).

According to the Chronicle, Democrats "face an almost-impossible task trying to muster the two-thirds majorities needed to override Bush vetoes" of appropriations bills and might "find themselves with little choice but to cave in to Bush's demands" (San Francisco Chronicle, 11/26).

Pelosi said, "It's important for the American people to know that the (president's opposition)" to the Labor-HHS-Education bill "means a million-and-a-half poor families in America and seniors in our country will not be getting the low-income energy assistance that our bill calls for" (Lightman, McClatchy/Raleigh News & Observer, 11/21). However, she said that Democrats would not seek a shutdown of the federal government in response to opposition from Bush to their spending requests (San Francisco Chronicle, 11/26).

Entitlement Reform
"Two rays of bipartisan sunlight" -- bills (HR 3654 and S 2063) that would "establish bipartisan commissions to examine long-term options to address the nation's relentlessly evolving entitlement crisis" -- "appear to be trying to shine through the clouds casting dark shadows on the nation's long-term fiscal horizon," but "there is no doubt that partisan budget battles will intensify throughout the 2008 congressional and presidential election campaigns," a Washington Times editorial states.

According to the editorial, a discussion of the problems with the long-term financial stability of Medicare and other entitlement programs "would be a worthwhile exercise," as the programs face $40 trillion in unfunded liabilities over the next 75 years. However, "after the election results are final, regardless of which party prevails, it will be necessary for both Republicans and Democrats to address the fiscal future in a responsible manner -- if the financial problems bearing down on us are to be avoided," the editorial states (Washington Times, 11/25).