Four years, no vetoes.

Byline: The Register-Guard

During the second presidential debate, one questioner began with an observation: "Mr. President, you have enjoyed a Republican majority in the House and Senate for most of your presidency. In that time, you've not vetoed a single spending bill." If the question had ended there, viewers might have gained an insight into a little-noticed aspect of ther Bush presidency. The executive and legislative branches are cooperating to an unprecedented degree.

Instead, the questioner asked President Bush to compare his spending priorities to Sen. John Kerry's. That allowed Bush to address matters other than the fact that no president since John Quincy Adams, who left office in 1829, has gone an entire term without using his constitutional veto power.

The complete absence of presidential vetoes is remarkable, given the volume of legislation that flows from Congress. The fact that Congress and the White House are under the control of the same party, as the debate questioner pointed out, provides only a partial explanation. Other presidents who enjoyed same-party majorities in the House and Senate found bills worth rejecting, according to Peter Levy, a professor of history at York College in York, Pa. Lyndon Johnson vetoed 30 bills passed by Democratic congresses, and John F. Kennedy vetoed 20. Calvin Coolidge vetoed 50 pieces of legislation passed by a Republican House and Senate.

There certainly have been bills worth killing. The most recent example is the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004. It began as a modest proposal to address the effects of trade agreements on American industries, and emerged from Congress as a $140 billion corporate Christmas tree. It includes such ornaments as a tax break for a manufacturer of fishing tackle boxes in House Speaker Dennis Hastert's district. Any president dedicated to fiscal restraint, and free to place national interests above parochial concerns, would veto this bill. But Bush will sign it.

The difference between this administration and others of both parties that preceded it is that congressional leaders and the White House regard themselves as being members of the same team. In the past, members of the congressional majority were divided, at least on some issues, and presidents could not always rely upon their own parties for support. But since the Republicans gained control of the House in 1994, and won back control of the Senate in 2002, the majority has been highly disciplined. Defections are rare, and party-line votes have become commonplace.

Because House and Senate leaders can count on their troops to obey orders, they seldom need to court Democratic votes. Increasingly, legislation is shaped in House-Senate conference committees that exclude Democrats altogether. According to Citizens Against Government Waste, a watchdog group that is generally more friendly to Republicans than to Democrats, 3,407 projects were added to bills in conference committees this year. Ten years ago, the number was 47.

President Bush doesn't veto these bills because the White House is privy to the negotiations that produce them. What's more, in exchange for accepting the products of the legislative process, Bush gets what he wants from Congress - whether it's an open-ended $87 billion package for Iraq and Afghanistan, a Medicare drug benefit with undisclosed costs or a series of tax cuts yielding record deficits. The president doesn't act as a check, and Congress doesn't serve as a balance - and as a result, federal spending and borrowing are subject to an unprecedented lack of discipline.

Examining this record, Americans should add some questions to the one posed at the debate: Is Congress passing better legislation than at any time since the younger Adams' administration? Does the government have so much money that the president never has to say no? Is it good for the country to have executive and legislative branches of government that never disagree? What's the reason for having separate branches of government?