politics

NEW ALBANY, IND. -- President Bush vetoed a $606 billion spending bill Tuesday that would have funded education, health and labor programs for the current fiscal year, complaining that congressional Democrats are spending money like "a teenager with a new credit card" and funding the spree with tax increases in every bill.

Bush vetoed the bill before leaving the White House to travel to Indiana for a speech on budget and energy issues, said spokeswoman Dana Perino aboard Air Force One. At the same time, the president signed a $471 billion Defense Department spending bill that funds regular Pentagon operations other than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

By signing a military spending bill with a sizable increase while rejecting a domestic spending bill with a smaller one, Bush set the stage for a battle with Congress. Democrats immediately attacked him for spending money on the military while resisting "needed investments" at home. Bush called it a matter of setting priorities in a time of war.

"The majority was elected on a pledge of fiscal responsibility, but so far it's acting like a teenager with a new credit card," Bush said in his speech here. "This year alone, the leadership in Congress has proposed to spend $22 billion more than my budget provides. Now, some of them claim that's not really much of a difference. The scary part is they seem to mean it."

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., said, "This is a bipartisan bill supported by over 50 Republicans. There has been virtually no criticism of its contents. It is clear the only reason the president vetoed this bill is pure politics."

Bush's advisers have been eager for a veto fight over spending with Congress, seeing it as a way of recasting the president as a responsible steward of the nation's finances who is fending off reckless tax-and-spend legislators. He has already vetoed a $35 billion, five-year expansion of a children's health insurance program and a $23 billion water projects authorization. Congress overrode him on the water bill.

Tuesday's veto was his fifth since Democrats took control of Capitol Hill in January but the first of any of the 12 annual spending bills that keep the government in operation. The Democratic Congress failed to deliver any of those bills to the White House in time for the beginning of the fiscal year Oct. 1, leaving the government to operate on stopgap funding.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.