Clone Daniels
President’s budget director makes all the right enemies.

By NR Editors
From “The Week,” December 17, 2001, issue, of National Review

y trying to impose spending restraint, Mitch Daniels, the president's budget director, is making all the right enemies. The Republican chairman of the House appropriations committee reportedly refuses to return his phone calls, and Sen. Ted Stevens ($, Alaska) says Daniels should "go back to Indiana." Daniels's efforts are, after all, testimony to their own profligacy. The White House originally planned to hold discretionary spending next year to $661 billion. After September 11, it agreed with appropriators to go up to $686 billion. Since then, an additional "emergency" $40 billion has been committed. Appropriators now want about $30 billion on top of that. Sadly, it is not only the professional spenders in the Congress who have lost all restraint. Some of Daniels's colleagues, finding themselves in charge of government agencies, have quickly gone native. Now would be a good time for the president to send Mitch Daniels some reinforcements.