President Bush rejected a plea this past weekend to open a dialogue with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to resolve the impasse over federal spending.

Pelosi and Reid, who had hoped to send Bush a $65 billion veterans and military construction spending bill, pleaded in a letter sent to the president on Saturday that he show “some willingness to find common ground.”

The White House declined their offer and demanded that Congress send Bush the appropriations bills “one at a time — as they promised the American people — and within the reasonable spending limits recommended by the president,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said in a statement Saturday.

Bush and congressional Democrats are at odds over the 12 spending bills needed to keep the government running. Bush’s budget request included $933 billion for discretionary and defense spending programs, while Democrats want to spend $22 billion more. Even though the fiscal year began Oct. 1, Congress approved the first two of 12 appropriations conference reports only last week.

House Democrats had wanted to send Bush a combined veterans’ spending bill and the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education bill to force his hand. But the strategy failed in the Senate, where the GOP forced Democrats to split the spending bills. Democrats ended up sending Bush the Labor-HHS bill, which Bush has threatened to veto, and a defense-spending bill, which includes a continuing resolution to keep the government operating at last year’s spending levels.

In their letter, Pelosi and Reid blamed Republicans for “stall[ing] our efforts to send” Bush the combined veterans’ and social spending bill.

They also wrote that House and Senate appropriations Chairmen David Obey (D-Wis.) and Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) should remain the chief negotiators for Democrats. That came in response to a comment by Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Jim Nussle, who had said he did not know who his negotiators were.

The Saturday exchange marks the second time in as many weeks that Bush has rebuffed a Democratic leader’s request for a meeting. Earlier this month, Pelosi asked Bush to meet to discuss legislation expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. There has been no resolution to that stalemate, and Bush, who objects to the increase in the tobacco tax to finance the bill, has said he will veto it. The bill’s supporters in the Senate and a group of House Republicans are trying to figure out how to win support from enough Republicans to override an expected veto.

Even though Bush’s popularity is waning, he has still managed to flummox Democratic efforts to change policy in Iraq and force Bush’s hand on domestic policy issues.

“He is the president, after all, and he has veto power and just needs one-third of the Congress plus one to sustain a veto,” a Democratic aide said. “We want to work with him on spending, as our letter says, but he must engage in actual negotiations, not just inflammatory rhetoric.”

Yet Bush and his aides appear comfortable with their with-us-or-against us approach to governing.

“Rather than sending legislation to the president to fund our nation’s veterans before Veterans Day, [Pelosi and Reid] instead sent a letter to explain their failure to meet this goal,” Perino said in her Saturday statement. “Always deciding to spend more and raising taxes isn’t a difficult choice, and isn’t responsible.”

If Bush is unwilling to compromise, there is little Congress can do to force his hand, say analysts.

“He’s trying to build a historical record as a president who [was] not a total softie on spending,” Cal Mackenzie, a political scientist at Colby College, said. “So all [Congress] can do is talk and write letters and hope that [Bush] is willing to listen.”