Factchecking the State of the Union

At the time, White House Homeland Security Adviser Fran Townsend gave credit to the British, saying in an Aug. 14, 2006, interview that "this really was a British investigation for the longest time." Townsend added: "We didn't see an American threat. It was only recently we developed the American angle working with our British colleagues, but this was really a British threat, and the British did an extraordinary, extraordinary job in investigating it." And a year later, in August 2007, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said that "our British counterparts uncovered" the plot.

To be sure, at other times Chertoff and others have said there was some involvement by the U.S., though they have yet to say what that role was. We find no public claim that the special wiretap program secretly authorized by President Bush after the 2001 terrorist attacks had anything to do with foiling the plot.

An Empty Threat on Earmarks
Bush talked tough about Congressional "earmarks," but don't expect his actions to have any immediate effect on federal spending:

Bush: [I]f you send me an appropriations bill that does not cut the number and cost of earmarks in half, I'll send it back to you with my veto. And tomorrow I will issue an executive order that directs federal agencies to ignore any future earmark that is not voted on by Congress.

By earmarks that are "not voted on by Congress," Bush means provisions that are specified in committee reports but are never part of the text of a bill. According to Steve Ellis, vice president of the spending watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense, the "vast, vast majority" of earmarks are of this type, so Bush is threatening to ignore or veto a fairly significant percentage of potential earmarks. But he's not going to do it until fiscal year 2009. Taxpayers for Common Sense complains that Bush is "passing the buck" by vowing to get tough on next year's bills. "[B]y not including the 2008 spending bills, the Executive Order gives Congress months to finagle their way around these changes," writes the president of the organization, Ryan Alexander.

Even if Bush started his anti-earmark crusade immediately, the actual budget effect would be small. TCS estimates that there are $15.3 billion in earmarks for fiscal year 2008. That amounts to a scant 0.6 percent of federal outlays as projected by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Whatever the merits or demerits of congressional earmarks – and they certainly have their critics – getting rid of them altogether would barely slow down the growth of federal spending, which is projected to jump more than $100 billion this year, not counting additional war costs or the proposed "stimulus" package now working its way through Congress.