[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 9 (Tuesday, January 17, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H277-H278]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        LINE-ITEM-VETO AUTHORITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Barrett of Nebraska). Under a previous 
order of the House, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon] is 
recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I took out this special 
order 
[[Page H278]] today after sitting in my office and listening to one of 
the speakers on the House floor during 1-minute speeches, my good 
friend and colleague, the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Hoyer], discuss 
with you and our colleagues in this body today the reasons why he felt 
that spending increased so dramatically during the Reagan and Bush 
years, and he emphasized the point that Ronald Reagan and George Bush 
could have used their veto pen to stop the excessive spending during 
that time period.
  Mr. Speaker, we have to look at the facts, and the facts are quite 
different than the way my friend and colleague presented them to the 
American people.
  First of all, as all of us in this body--my good friend and colleague 
is here. Thank goodness. We can have a little dialog here. As my good 
friend and colleague knows and as all of us in this body know, the 
President does not spend one dime of money unless it has been first of 
all appropriated by the Congress, and the House and the Senate meet in 
their 13 various appropriation bill processes to decide how much money 
we are going to spend in each of 13 different categories of the Federal 
budget, and our good friend is a member of that Committee on 
Appropriations. The process is set up in such a way that the President 
is given 13 opportunities to veto the amount of spending set by the 
Congress.
  But guess what happened, Mr. Speaker, during the 12 years of Mr. Bush 
and Mr. Reagan? This body did not pass the 13 appropriation bills, 
except in one instance, and that happened to be in 1988. In fact, the 
other side of the aisle, which controlled the Congress, perfected the 
art of the continuing resolution; in other words, backing the President 
into a situation where not giving him the chance to veto the spending 
bills, allowing all spending authority to expire in the fall, and then 
having us pass a continuing resolution.
  My first year in this body, Mr. Speaker, it was 2:30 in the morning, 
2 days before Christmas, that we were given a massive document that 
none of us had seen, and we were told this was going to be the
 spending blueprint for the country the following year. The document 
was brought to the House floor. We were given one chance to pass it, 
which we did, and then the President was given 1 chance, not 13 
chances, 1 chance, to veto the spending levels set by this Congress. 
So, he was backed into a corner, and what did he do?

  Like the previous 7 years, or 6 years, Mr. Speaker, he signed that 
continuing resolution setting the spending authorities and 
appropriation levels that this body in fact agreed to.
  More important than that, not only was the President not given the 
ability to veto individual spending bills, but the President was not 
given the line-item-veto authority.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, the current President of the United States, Bill 
Clinton, campaigned on the need to have a legislative line-item veto. 
In fact, he said during the campaign that, like the other 43 Governors 
in America who have line-item-veto authority, he wanted to have that as 
the President. But guess what, Mr. Speaker? The leadership of his party 
in the Congress would not give him line-item-veto authority 
legislatively so he could go through the individual spending bills and 
redline the pork and the garbage.
  We are going to give Bill Clinton legislative line-item-veto 
authority to do what we would like to have had Ronald Reagan and George 
Bush do during the 12 years that they were in office.
  Mr. Speaker, it is unfair to say that the President of the United 
States controlled how much money we spend. In fact, we say, well, that 
is a budget, and the budget is what we agree to. During my first 6 
years in office almost every spending bill that we passed, the first 
provision waived the Budget Act, so it did not matter how much was in 
the budget. We waived the Budget Act and passed whatever amount of 
spending that we in this body decided was important for that particular 
issue.
  So, the tools are here, and to say that this was all the fault of the 
President, be it Ronald Reagan or George Bush when we handicapped him 
with a continuing resolution, when we handicapped him with no line-item 
veto, when we handicapped them by backing them into a corner at the 
11th hour, I think is wrong, and I am glad my good friend and colleague 
has shown up, and I would yield to him, the gentleman from Maryland 
[Mr. Hoyer].
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  I was in the Cloakroom when I heard him reference my previous 1-
minute, which, of course, was in response to a line of new Members on 
the gentleman's side of the aisle getting up and pounding their chest 
about the balanced-budget amendment and how irresponsible the previous 
40 years of Democratic leadership in the Congress had been. I think it 
is appropriate, as the gentleman says, that the American people have 
the facts and have the truth.
  First, let me say to my friend--and I mean that sincerely; Mr. Weldon 
and I are close friends; we work closely together on a number of 
issues--that I think my portrayal was accurate.
  First, I would ask my friend if he knows that the President--forget 
about continuing resolutions, forget about the actions of the House, 
forget about the actions of the Senate--if my friend is aware of the 
fact that in the budgets that Presidents Reagan and Bush transmitted to 
Congress their administrations wrote, untouched by Democrats, and asked 
for more spending than the Congress appropriated. Is my friend aware of 
that?
  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, taking back my time--and I 
will be happy to yield further to my friend--I am well aware of that, 
and I am also well aware of the fact, as is my friend, that in this 
body budgets submitted in the past by this body have been ignored year 
after year after year. So I am aware of that fact.
  Will my friend admit on the record that this body has passed numerous 
spending bills during the Reagan and Bush years that waived the Budget 
Act that this body passed, largely on the Democrat side? Is my friend 
aware of that?
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I am aware of it. It is a totally esoteric 
question that I think has no relevance to our colloquy.
  Mr. Speaker, may I ask, did my friend ask for 5 minutes?
  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Yes.
  Mr. HOYER. That is lamentable.
  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. We will continue this at a future date.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I would love to do that.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Barrett of Nebraska). The time of the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon] has expired.


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