[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 51 (Monday, March 20, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4153-S4164]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             LINE-ITEM VETO

  Mr. McCAIN. I thank the Chair for his recognition.
  Mr. President, I would like to begin by addressing some of the 
remarks that were made on Friday by the distinguished Democratic 
leader. I think it is pretty clear now what the strategy of the 
opponents of S. 4 will be.
  Very frankly, Mr. President, it will be to attempt to foist off on 
the American people the idea that a majority vote in one House 
constitutes a veto. It will be the idea that the traditional belief 
that a two-thirds majority is required to override a veto is now 
replaced by a simple majority in one House.
  Mr. President, as a result of the 1994 elections, the American people 
sent a message and a clear and unequivocal one that they want the pork-
barrel spending stopped. They want it stopped. They figured out that 
the money that they sent to Washington, DC, does not all come back. In 
fact, it comes back to different States and congressional districts in 
different amounts, but some of it always stays here in Washington, DC.
  In Senator Daschle's remarks on Friday, he said:

       The President is prepared today or tomorrow or any time to 
     reiterate what he said all along.

  He said he just came from a meeting with the President of the United 
States.

       He supports the line-item veto. It is that simple. There is 
     no question about it.

  Mr. President, if that is true, and I do not question the 
distinguished minority leader's remarks, I would like to hear from the 
President. We on this side of the aisle would like to hear 
 [[Page S4154]] from the President. The American people would like to 
hear from the President of the United States. I would like to see a 
strong letter from the President of the United States to every Member 
of this body before we take up the debate on S. 4 this afternoon and 
amending it that he supports the line-item veto, and the line-item veto 
means two-thirds vote by both Houses in order to override.
  If there is no question about it and if the President of the United 
States is committed, as he was in the quote from ``Putting People 
First'' where he said he needed a line-item veto, where he personally 
told me 2 years ago that he was in support of the line-item veto, and 
just recently in a number of public occasions the President of the 
United States has said that he is in favor of the line-item veto, it is 
time for the President to weigh in and support it and support it 
strongly. Otherwise, what is going to happen is that those who know 
they no longer can take the line-item veto head on and defeat it on a 
procedural motion or just defeat it on a straight up-or-down vote will 
make every attempt to succeed by us being unable to get 60 votes to cut 
off debate because they will support a watered-down, meaningless 
charade that they call a line-item veto which allows an override of the 
President's veto by the majority of one House of Congress.
  Mr. President, it took a majority vote of two Houses of Congress in 
order to put the pork in. So let us not kid ourselves about what the 
issue is here.
  I have to go back, though. The distinguished minority leader said--
the fact is so for most Democrats:

       I have supported a line-item veto since coming to the 
     Congress. I did 15 years ago and I do today. I always have. I 
     believe that it is an important aspect of good legislating.

  I wish that that had been displayed on the numerous occasions in the 
last 8 years that Senator Coats and I tried to get the line-item veto 
up for a vote. We were blocked from doing so, Mr. President, on each 
occasion on the votes, on a procedural matter which prevented us from 
getting an up-or-down vote.
  In 1989, Senator Daschle voted ``no'' as far as allowing the line-
item veto to be brought up, as the vote was on a budget point of order. 
A budget point of order was raised against our efforts to bring up the 
line-item veto as an amendment. In November 1989, Senator Daschle voted 
``no.'' In 1990, Senator Daschle voted ``yes.'' In 1992, Senator 
Daschle voted ``yes.'' And on a motion to table in 1993, Senator 
Daschle voted to table.
  So I must say that the position of my friend from South Dakota on 
this issue has been somewhat mixed.
  In 1993 on a motion to waive the Budget Act, the vote was 45 to 52. 
Senator Daschle voted ``no'' to waive the Budget Act as late as 1993, 
so that we could bring the line-item veto up for consideration.
  But I will accept Senator Daschle at his word. I will accept the 
minority leader at his word that ``everybody wants a line-item veto.'' 
But if they really do support the line-item veto, Mr. President, they 
will support the meaning of the word ``veto.''
  The word ``veto,'' according to the Constitution of the United 
States, calls for a two-thirds majority in order for the veto to be 
overridden. Section 7 of the Constitution of the United States:

       Every Bill which shall have passed the House of 
     Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it becomes a 
     Law, be presented to the President of the United States; if 
     he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, 
     with his Objections to that House in which it shall have 
     originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their 
     Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such 
     Reconsideration two-thirds of that House shall agree to pass 
     the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to 
     the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, 
     and if approved by two-thirds of that House, it shall become 
     a Law.
  Mr. President, the Constitution of the United States describes what a 
veto is and what is required in order to override that veto.
  Mr. President, the Senator from South Dakota goes on to say:

       I recognize that 43 States have already done what we would 
     like to do here. Forty-three States have already acknowledged 
     that Governors ought to have an opportunity to review and 
     send back for further review items in legislation.

  Mr. President, he does not mention that it requires a two-thirds vote 
to override a Governor's veto. In the 43 States out of 50 that have 
line-item vetoes that Senator Daschle obviously approves of, there 
obviously clearly is a two-thirds vote required in order to override.
  Mr. President, may I ask how much time is divided between the two 
sides?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the order there are 209 minutes for each 
side. The Senator from Arizona has used 8 minutes.
  Mr. McCAIN. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. President, last Friday, the Democratic leader, as I mentioned, 
took the floor of the Senate to lay out his views regarding the line-
item veto, which I assume are in league with many others on the other 
side of the aisle. I must say I found the statements confusing and 
contradictory. The Senator from South Dakota vowed his support for the 
line-item veto, then in the course of remarks expressed his opposition 
to the pending bill and the expected substitute, both of which provide 
true line-item veto authority.
  Mr. President, he alleged that the separate enrollment substitute was 
something the Senate has never seen before. The facts are quite to the 
contrary. The Senate voted on this measure in 1985. It has been 
introduced in every Congress since that time. In fact, two separate 
enrollment bills have been introduced in this session, cosponsored by 
Senators on the other side of the aisle and cosponsored by a number of 
our Democratic colleagues.
  But most confusing of all, the Senator from South Dakota went on to 
pledge his support for a measure that is not a line-item veto at all, a 
process known as the expedited rescission which would allow a simple 
majority in either House to block a Presidential veto of wasteful or 
unnecessary spending. I am disturbed by the contradiction, and it begs 
the application of the tried and true admonition: ``Watch what we do, 
not what we say.''
  I just quoted from the Constitution of the United States, but I wish 
to emphasize again that this issue of the line-item veto will come down 
to whether we enact a true veto, which is a two-thirds majority in both 
Houses in order to override a President's veto and eliminate the 
unnecessary spending and wasteful spending that has become epidemic to 
the point where we now have nearly a $5 trillion national debt, or 
whether we will enact some kind of sham or charade or false line-item 
veto which will allow the President's veto to be overridden by a simple 
majority of one House.
  Mr. President, that is simply not acceptable. It is also, frankly, a 
terrible fraud that we would perpetrate on the American people.
  Each year the Library of Congress distributes an information packet 
on legislative procedures which House and Senate Members send to their 
constituents, many of whom are students educating themselves on how 
Congress works. This packet describes the veto override process as 
follows:

       Overriding a veto requires a two-thirds vote of those 
     present who must number a quorum and vote by rollcall.

  That is what we tell students, and it is perfectly correct. But in 
this Chamber in classic Orwellian fashion we seem to be redefining the 
process and, contrary to the facts, call expedited rescission a veto. 
Why? Because it is politically convenient. It sounds tougher.
  Mr. President, the American people have not had enough reform. They 
have had enough rhetorical bait and switch. Substance is what counts, 
substance is what the American people deserve, and substance is what we 
are duty bound to legislate.
  Let me also point out, Mr. President, that by a vote of 294 to 130, 
the other body adopted the line-item veto that we are considering today 
and will be taking up formally this afternoon. The same proposal of a 
simple majority in one House was also voted in the other body, and that 
vote was overwhelmingly in rejection of it. I have talked to the 
leadership of the other body, and the fact is clear that they will not 
accept anything less than a true line-item veto.
  I must say I was somewhat surprised, if not a little amused, by the 
remarks of the Senator from South Dakota in which he criticized 
separate enrollment as too cumbersome and time consuming. The President 
of the United States, the Speaker of the House, and 
 [[Page S4155]] the President pro tempore will have to sign more 
paperwork.
  I know they are busy people, and I am sorry for the extra burden but, 
Mr. President, if eliminating wasting of the taxpayers' dollars and 
reducing the deficit spending on this and future generations is not 
important, please tell me what is. If our political leadership is not 
here to ensure that the fruits of our constituents' labors are not 
squandered and that Government functions in a lean and efficient 
manner, then what are we here for? Is it about the debated trappings of 
the Founders' oak desks, gilded ceilings, and marble halls, no matter 
how it is exercised?
  No, I do not believe it. I categorically reject that any extra 
paperwork resulting from the line-item veto is a waste of time. Given 
the tens of billions of dollars that will be saved, it may be the best 
cost beneficial expenditure of time in the Federal service.
  As Senators, we take an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of 
the United States. There is not one amongst us who does not regard that 
pledge, that responsibility with the highest sense of duty and 
obligation.
  When we debate the issue of public expenditures, there is always 
intense discussion regarding the intention of our Founding Fathers. Mr. 
President, the Framers vested the President with veto authority as part 
of that miraculous system of checks and balances that distinguishes our 
national character from any other in the history of mankind. They knew 
that the veto was an essential check on the legislative branch. They 
had no idea how wise they were.
  Mr. President, I will show you the first spending bill approved by 
Congress. It was one page. And I can tell you that what the Congress in 
its early years enacted were single-page bills that were addressing one 
item and were sent to the President's desk.
  It was not until sometime around the Civil War that the so-called 
riders began to be added to appropriations bills and other bills, and 
one of the first to really complain vociferously about it was President 
Grant. And, of course, as we know, that has proliferated and 
proliferated to the point where I remember in 1984 when President 
Reagan, speaking in the State of the Union Message had displayed a 
1,300-some page--I believe it was 2\1/2\ pounds--continuing resolution.
  Now, Mr. President, which would the American people prefer, a 1,300-
page continuing resolution, most of which had never been seen or read 
by the majority of the Members of both bodies, much less the President 
of the United States, or would they prefer a single bill that they know 
is going to contain much-needed and vital funds, their taxpayers' 
dollars for much-needed projects or efforts? I think the answer is 
obvious. I think it is long ago time for us to look seriously at single 
enrollment.
  Another thing about single enrollment is that maybe we will reduce 
some of the rampant numbers of riders and additional appropriations and 
items that are tucked into appropriations bills which most of us never 
see until long after the bill is passed and has reached the President's 
desk.
  I urge my colleagues to look at the way we used to do business in the 
early days, and when we are debating this issue of the intentions of 
the Founding Fathers I do not believe that there was a single Founding 
Father who believed that we would be considering bills of thousands of 
pages in length with tens of thousands of line items associated with 
them. I think we could avoid many items--for example, fruit and 
vegetable market analysis, Russian wheat aphid, wood utilization 
research, et cetera, et cetera--that we find highlighted on an annual 
basis unfortunately after the fact.
  Let us take a look and see what 200 years has done to the legislative 
process. I want to show the continuing resolution, as I mentioned, in 
1984. It is thousands of pages of every kind of spending. We told the 
President either to swallow the whole thing or to shut down the 
Government. Is this what James Madison and Thomas Jefferson had in 
mind? I do not think so.
  In the coming days, some will question whether we have the 
constitutional authority to separately enroll bills for presentation to 
the President, even though article I section 5 of the Constitution 
leaves to Congress the determination of its rules and what shall 
constitute a bill. I wonder where those who handwring about the 
constitutionality of separate enrollment were in 1984? I did not hear 
any outcries of indignation of the constitutionality of thousands of 
pages of continuing resolution passed in the form of a single bill.
  In 1985, when the Senate debated separate enrollment, the argument 
was made that the President never sees the details of appropriations 
bills and that the line-item veto would simply empower bureaucrats at 
the Office of Management and Budget. They used the ignorance argument 
to oppose separate enrollment.
  Mr. President, the allegation of Presidential ignorance cries out for 
separate enrollment. Perhaps it is high time the Chief Executive sees 
where taxes are going specifically. Maybe when he is asked to affix his 
consentual signature to a sentence saying that millions of dollars will 
be appropriated for a research participation center at a specific 
university or for military construction at a base to be closed by the 
Pentagon, the bells will ring, the lights will flash, and line-item 
veto of our expenditures will give rise to line-item responsibility by 
those both in the legislative and executive who have been invested with 
stewardship in the public purse. Allowing the President to remain 
ignorant of what it is he signs is a very poor and uncompelling 
argument against the line-item veto.
  The assertion will also be made that line-item veto will give the 
President the opportunity to extort Members of Congress; the President 
would get a leg up in the executive-legislative contest, or tit for 
tat. The President would say, either I get your vote for this bill that 
I want, Congressperson, or I will kill your project.
  There are two fundamental flaws in this argument. First, despite 
being an extremely cynical assessment of the President, it completely 
ignores the court of public opinion, before which the President and 
every other elected official must be called to account and the 
judgments of which vote-seekers are extremely sensitive to. Legislative 
extortion, if it were to occur, would be a gold mine for the fourth 
estate which is always eager to shed sunlight on such mischief. No 
doubt practitioners in the public arena would feel the swift rebuke of 
public disapproval.
  The second is the argument never takes into account the current and 
more supportive practice of log rolling, ``I'll support your pork if 
you support mine,'' which leaves its mark on practically every 
appropriations bill and which has given Congress approval ratings 
somewhere between Stalin and peptic indigestion. The ``go along to get 
along'' is far more dangerous than the prospects of legislative 
extortion which, if it does occur, would only manifest itself if 
Members willingly give in to such pressure. Surely we think better of 
ourselves and our colleagues than that.
  The debate that will take place over the next several days is sure to 
be spirited and the debate we are certain to hear much more about is 
the balance of power. The allegation that line-item veto distorts the 
balance of power will become, I suspect, the mantra. The statement will 
be made, and it is correct, that Congress retains the power of the 
purse. How have we exercised that power? What is the fruit of that 
virtually unchecked authority? Yearly deficits of nearly $250 billion, 
an amount that will triple in 10 years if we stay the present course; a 
$4.6 trillion millstone of debt we have hung around the neck of future 
generations; a yearly budget one-fifth of which must be dedicated to 
pay the interest on our debt.
  Mr. President, I point out again, from the earliest days, from the 
earliest Congresses of the United States, expenditures and revenues 
were roughly equal. I have a chart that indicates that was so 
throughout this Nation's history.
  Also throughout this Nation's history, beginning with Thomas 
Jefferson, Presidents exercise the right to impound funds. Thomas 
Jefferson impounded $50,000 which the Congress of the United States had 
appropriated to procure gunboats. The threat no longer existed, the 
President of the United States, President Jefferson, did not 
 [[Page S4156]] spend that money, and from then on every President of 
the United States, to a greater or lesser degree continued that 
practice of impoundment of funds.
  In 1974, the Congress of the United States passed the present Budget 
and Impoundment Act which deprived the President of the United States 
of that ability and put the rescission process basically into the hands 
of the legislative branch. In other words, if the President of the 
United States proposes a rescission and if the Congress does not act, 
then that rescission is not enacted. So, by merely passively reacting 
to a Presidential rescission, the Congress of the United States 
virtually stymies any President's efforts to reduce wasteful and pork-
barrel spending.
  In 1974, that is when expenditures and revenues began to diverge in a 
dramatic fashion. We have not, throughout this Nation's history, had 
this burgeoning debt that I just described, or anything like it, except 
in times of war. And the Congress and the people of the United States, 
when those times of war were over, have quickly acted to bring us out 
of deficit by their practice of appropriating so the debt was removed, 
because for nearly 200 years Congress and the people of the country 
realized that a burgeoning debt, laid on future generations of 
Americans, is nearly an unconscionable act--it is, in fact, an 
unconscionable act.
  But in 1974, because of the shift in power, the shift in power that 
will be debated right here on this floor, the ability of the executive 
branch of the United States to exercise fiscal responsibility and 
fiscal restraint on the Congress of the United States disappeared and 
the deficits began to grow and the debt began to accumulate.
  I will have a pie chart at some time during this debate that shows 
how much of the Federal budget in 1974 was spent on paying interest on 
the national debt. It was a very small amount, somewhere around 1 or 2 
percent.
  Now, this year, we will spend more on paying interest on the national 
debt than we will on national defense. I do not know how you pay off a 
$4.6 trillion debt. I do know this, that there are many experts who are 
saying that the recent decline in the dollar was directly related to 
the Congress' failure to enact a balanced budget amendment to the 
Constitution of the United States because our debt is so large and 
requires such a huge influx of foreign dollars that we are very 
vulnerable to the vagaries of the investment policies of foreign 
investors and foreign nations.
  All that aside, I do not know, as the Senator from Missouri stated so 
eloquently on Friday in his presentation, how in the world you can 
expect any family, any business, any government to operate on a 
continuously deficit basis and not sooner or later have a crisis of 
enormous proportions. And the longer we wait and the larger this debt 
gets, the greater will be the cataclysm when we finally face up.
  I was fascinated, again on Friday, when we strayed back into the 
issue of Social Security and raiding the Social Security trust funds 
and the terrible impact that a balanced budget amendment to the 
Constitution would have on the Social Security trust funds. I not so 
proudly point out I was one of two Republicans who voted for the 
amendment that would protect Social Security. But the fact is, we 
cannot protect Social Security, we cannot protect Medicare, we cannot 
protect anything--there is nothing we can protect--if this country goes 
bankrupt; if we do not stop amassing this huge debt that is a millstone 
around the neck of future generations of Americans.
  So, to argue that Social Security must be protected I think is a 
legitimate argument. But to ignore the consequences of a failure to 
balance our budget on Social Security or any other program--because 
either the country goes bankrupt or
 we debase the currency through inflation thereby reducing the national 
debt in real terms. And what happens, though, when you debase the 
currency? When you debase the currency, as we have found time after 
time in other nations throughout the world, and nearly so in this 
Nation a couple of times, you destroy the middle class and the middle 
class is the fundamental pillar of democracy as we know it.

  So let us not kid ourselves about balance of power. The balance of 
power has resided basically in a very fundamentally balanced fashion 
for nearly 200 years. In 1974 that balance of power was skewed 
dramatically on the side of the legislative branch.
  Let me also mention another thing that seems to come up quite often. 
During the many years that passed, 8 years that I have been a Member of 
this body, when I would bring up the line-item veto, one of the first 
responses would be, ``Well, you would not support that if it was a 
Member of the other party who was President.'' I have always stoutly 
denied that to be the case, and indeed I am now proving that is not the 
case. But the fact is, too, that this President of the United States 
will probably, if when given this power--and I believe he will sooner 
or later be given this authority--will veto an item that I think is 
wrong. Because he and I are of different philosophy and different 
party, he will take some executive actions that I do not agree with. It 
may be harmful in the short term, especially in the area of national 
security. Clearly, I am in strong disagreement with the administration 
on how much funds should be spent on national defense and this 
President of the United States may choose to veto some items especially 
brought up on the floor, such as the ballistic missile defense 
capability. I am willing to take that risk because, if we bankrupt the 
country, we are not going to have any ballistic missile defense 
capability at all.
  So I would like to state again, it matters not who is the President 
of the United States or what persuasion or what party. What matters is 
that are we going to be able to stop the terrible things that have gone 
on for so long which have caused us to find ourselves in a deplorable 
situation where paying off the national debt is rapidly becoming one of 
the largest portions of our national budget.
  Mr. President, in the case of the separate enrollment being 
constitutional, I think it is important for us to consult with various 
leaders who are experts on the Constitution. I think it is important 
that we understand that the Congress has the right to present a bill to 
the President of the United States. As I mentioned article 1, section 
5, each House of Congress has unilateral authority to make and amend 
rules governing its procedures. A separate enrollment speaks to the 
question of what constitutes a bill. It does nothing to erode the 
prerogative of the President as that bill is presented. Under the 
rulemaking clause, our procedures for defining and enrolling a bill are 
for ourselves to determine alone.
  There is precedent provided in the House rule, the so-called Gephardt 
rule. Under this rule the House clerk is instructed to prepare a joint 
resolution raising the debt ceiling when Congress adopts a concurrent 
budget resolution which exceeds the statutory debt limit. The House is 
deemed to have voted on and passed a resolution on the debt ceiling 
when the vote occurs on the concurrent resolution. Despite the fact 
that a vote is never taken, the House is deemed to have passed it.
  The American law division of the Congressional Research Service has 
analyzed separate enrollment legislation and found it constitutional.
  Johnny Killian wrote:

       Evidently, it would appear to be that simply to authorize 
     the President to pick and choose among provisions of the same 
     bill would be to contravene this procedure. For a separate 
     enrollment, however, a different tack is chosen. Separate 
     bills drawn out of a single bill are forwarded to the 
     President. In this fashion, he may pick and choose. The 
     formal provisions of the presentation clause would seem to be 
     observed by this device.

  Laurence Tribe also has observed that the measure is constitutional. 
He recently wrote,

       The most promising line item veto idea by far is . . . that 
     congress itself begin to treat each appropriation and each 
     tax measure as an individual ``bill'' to be presented 
     separately to the President for his signature or veto. Such a 
     change could be effected simply, and with no real 
     constitutional difficulty, by a temporary alteration in 
     congressional rules regarding the enrolling and presentment 
     of bills.
       Courts construing the Rules Clause of Article I, Sec 5 have 
     interpreted it in expansive terms, and I have little doubt 
     that the sort of individual presentment envisioned by such a 
     rules change would fall within Congress' broad authority.
  [[Page S4157]] The distinguished Senator from Delaware, Senator 
Biden, during his tenure as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee 
wrote extensive additional views in a committee report on a 
constitutional line-item veto. He wrote about a separate enrollment 
substitute he offered:

       Under the separate enrollment process instituted by the 
     statutory line-item veto, the items of appropriation 
     presented to the President would not be passed according to 
     routine lawmaking procedures. Congress would vote on the 
     original appropriations bill, but would not vote again on the 
     separately enrolled bills presented to the President. The 
     absence of a second vote on the individual items of 
     appropriation has raised questions of constitutionality. For 
     the following reasons, such concerns are unfounded.
       1. No change in congressional authority:
       Each House of Congress has the power to make and amend the 
     rules governing its internal procedures. And, of course, 
     Congress has complete control over the content of the 
     legislation it passes. Thus, the decisions to initiate the 
     process of separate enrollment, to terminate the process 
     through passage of a subsequent statute, to pass a given 
     appropriations bill, and to establish the sections and 
     paragraphs of that bill, are all fully within Congress' 
     discretion and control.
       A requirement that Congress again pass each separately 
     enrolled item would be only a formal refinement--not a 
     substantive one. It would not prevent power from being 
     shifted from Congress to the President, because under the 
     statutory line-item veto Congress will retain the full extent 
     of its legislative power. Nor would it serve to shield 
     Congress from the process of separate enrollment, because 
     Congress will retain the discretion to terminate that 
     process.
       2. House Rule XLIX: Statutory Limit on Public Debt.
       Rule XLIX of the House of Representatives empowers the 
     enrolling clerk of the House to prepare a joint resolution 
     raising the debt ceiling when Congress adopts a concurrent 
     resolution on the budget exceeding the statutory limit on the 
     public debt.
       This procedure, which has been in existence since 1979, 
     provides a clear precedent for the separate enrollment of 
     items of appropriation. The House never votes on the joint 
     resolution. Nonetheless, the House is ``deemed'' to have 
     voted on the resolution because of its vote on the concurrent 
     resolution. House Rule XLIX states, in part:
       The vote by which the conference report on the concurrent 
     resolution in the budget was agreed to in the House * * * 
     shall be deemed to have been a vote in favor of such joint 
     resolution upon final passage in the House of 
     Representatives.

  The committee report continues:

       House Rule XLIX has not been found unconstitutional because 
     of its modification of routine lawmaking procedures. The 
     joint resolution engrossed by the clerk is transmittal to the 
     Senate for further action, and then presented to the 
     President for his signature. This process has been in effect 
     for a decade. Despite the absence of a separate vote by the 
     House on the joint resolution, there have been no 
     constitutional challenges.

  Mr. President, I would like to quote from an editorial written in the 
Los Angeles Times on July 23, 1985.

       Growing support for the line-item veto in the Senate and 
     the House is a reflection of the Pogo principle in 
     contemporary politics, ``we have met the enemy, and they is 
     us.'' The budget process is in shambles, the deficit is out 
     of control * * *

  Mind you, Mr. President, this was written in 1985.

       The budget process is in shambles, the deficit is out of 
     control, and Congress is the problem. Our systems of checks 
     and balances which functions adequately, even brilliantly in 
     most areas, is out of kilter in the area of the budget. 
     Congress has too much power over the purse and the President 
     has too little. The line-item veto is, while neither the 
     miracle cure that the proponents promised nor the disaster 
     that the opponents feared, is one of the few available tools 
     to redress imbalance. The fundamental issue is fiscal 
     responsibility, and it has little to do with partisan 
     politics or the current budget wars that pit a Republican 
     President against a Democratic House, and even against his 
     own Republican Senate. A larger principle and a longer 
     perspective are at stake. When 100 Senators and 435 
     Representatives have primary responsibility for the budget, 
     no one is adequately responsible. The traditional veto power 
     of the President, which worked well until the 1970's, is 
     still sufficient to keep most other legislation in check. But 
     it is too unwieldy to impose significant discipline on the 
     appropriations process. In 1983, and 1984, the 98th Congress 
     produced 623 bills that were sent to the White House and 
     signed into law. Only 27 were appropriations bills. But they 
     made up in size and scope for what they lacked in number, 
     dispensing hundreds of billions across the entire range of a 
     myriad of Federal programs.
       Very occasionally, Presidents have been bold enough to veto 
     one or another of these behemoth appropriations bills because 
     they have objected to particular provisions. More often, the 
     massive nature of the modern appropriations process has 
     overwhelmed the executive veto power, and the President 
     acquiesces in bills that by any standards are badly flawed. 
     By giving the President a stronger role, the line-item veto 
     would instill a new and needed measure of Presidential 
     accountability and Federal spending, and reduce the excesses 
     of a congressional process that too readily focuses on 
     individual districts and separate interests, not the national 
     interest. In any event, the line-item veto is hardly a 
     riverboat gamble. Forty-three States have already given a 
     similar power to their Governors who universally regard it as 
     an indispensable tool of budget control, at least until they 
     become U.S. Senators.
       Presidents since Grant have sought the line-item veto, but 
     until now Congress has refused to cede the power, and with 
     considerable justification because earlier Congresses seldom 
     brought in budgets that were unbalanced. The Congress has 
     only itself to blame for the irresistible pressure to yield 
     some of its power to the President. We gave that to the 
     Treasury with massive tax cuts and huge increases in military 
     spending
      in the past 4 years and the country will continue to sink 
     into an irreversible morass of deficits unless corrective 
     action is taken. Everybody talks about balancing the 
     budget, but nobody is currently doing much about it. 
     Congress claims it is the President's fault for failing to 
     use the veto: ``Stop us before we spend again.'' The 
     President pleads, in turn, that he fervently detests 
     deficits but does not have the power to fight them fully. 
     So let us give it to him and help him live up to his own 
     rhetoric, and let us see to it that Congress will be 
     looking over its shoulders as it packages and passes 
     future appropriations bills.

  Mr. President, that is from a column, written in the Wall Street 
Journal on July 23, 1985, by Senator Edward M. Kennedy. I agree with 
everything Senator Kennedy says. If he was worried about the debt and 
deficit being out of control in 1985, it has increased by trillions of 
dollars since then. I look forward to working with him and other 
Members on the other side of the aisle who, back in 1985, supported a 
motion to invoke cloture on the then separate enrollment bill that was 
brought up at that time.
  Mr. President, I am also going to address the issue of the separate 
enrollment and how many extra items that would require for the 
President's signature. Mr. President, this is the Commerce, State, and 
Justice appropriations bill. It was the longest appropriations bill 
that was passed last year. As you can see, it is about an inch thick, 
and it is in fairly small print. Of all of the 13 appropriations bills, 
this is the longest. Using modern computers which, I am happy to say, 
our enrolling clerks in the Senate and the House have access to, it 
took approximately 4 hours to take this bill, which was the longest of 
the appropriations bills, and convert it into this, which is 500 
different bills.
  Mr. President, there is a difference between these two. But the fact 
is that the statements that are made about a Mack truck that will be 
required to take it down to the White House, et cetera, et cetera, do 
not work.
  I also suggest, when you are looking at this, Mr. President, that 
there is probably good opportunity that about this much of it would 
probably never appear, never have to be enrolled if the line-item veto 
were a threat because there are probably about this many appropriations 
that were added that were unnecessary, wasteful, and, in some cases, 
outrageous. So when we are talking about the huge difference that it 
would make, as far as enrolled items are concerned, as opposed to a 
regular appropriations bill, yes, there is a difference.
  If there is a difference between these two and taking the time for 
the President of the United States to sign 500 bills, I would ask how 
much would we save in tens of billions of dollars of wasteful and 
unnecessary spending, and would it be worth that additional time? I 
think the American people would argue that if it takes a little extra 
time to have a bill signed separately and it would save billions of 
dollars, they would opt for the latter.
  Mr. President, finally, I say--and I do not want to take too much 
time because the time is equally divided on both sides--this afternoon 
we will be in formal debate on S. 4. I expect the majority leader to 
come forward with a substitute to S. 4, which is a compromise that we 
have agreed to, and there are certain aspects of it that I think 
improve the bill. There are also aspects of it which I think are 
negotiable.
  We know where the crisis will lie. Sometime on Wednesday or Thursday, 
a motion to invoke cloture will be 
 [[Page S4158]] voted on, which, as we all know, requires 60 votes. I 
do not know how that will turn out. I am confident that, of the 54 
Members on this side of the aisle, they will all vote in favor to cut 
off debate, even if one or two of them may oppose the bill in its 
present form. I look forward to negotiating with them and working with 
them. But the fact is, to not even have this issue come to a final vote 
before the Senate would be a very serious mistake.
  I also want to point out that the construction of the issue, again, 
lies not on whether it is separate enrollment, not whether some new 
entitlement programs are covered and which ones, not whether targeted 
tax benefits is covered or not; it will boil down to one single issue, 
have no doubt about it, and that is whether we would have a two-thirds 
vote on the part of both bodies in order to override the President's 
veto--that is what 43 Governors have and that is what the 
constitutional meaning of veto is--or whether we will have a majority 
vote of one House, sufficient to override the President's veto, which 
will then make the very meaning and intent of trying to impose some 
kind of fiscal discipline on the entire U.S. Government a sham and a 
charade.
  I know that my partner, the Senator from Indiana [Mr. Coats], feels 
as I do, that we would be willing to negotiate any other aspect of this 
legislation, because there is no legislation which cannot be improved. 
But there is one nonnegotiable issue. It is nonnegotiable with the 
other body, which voted overwhelmingly in favor of this legislation and 
against a watered-down version of it, and that is the two-thirds 
version.
  For the record, by a vote of 294 to 134, with 70 members of the 
Democratic Party voting ``yes,'' this version of the bill was passed, 
with a two-thirds majority required. There was a Stenholm expedited 
rescission substitute that was defeated by 266 to 156.
  I believe that is the will of the American people. They are fed up. 
They are tired of pork, tired of wasteful and outrageous expenditures 
of their tax dollars. I believe that this issue is a defining issue if 
we are ever going to achieve that goal.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum, and I ask unanimous 
consent that the time be equally divided on both sides.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Grassley). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, we are here before the U.S. Senate and the 
American public today to talk about a line-item veto. Mr. President, we 
have talked recently about a lot of issues that some people believe are 
gimmicks. We know, for example, that we, the Congress of the United 
States, have the power to more evenly match the money that we receive, 
the money that we spend, in effect, to do a better job of balancing the 
budget.
  Another one of the gimmicks that is floating around is term limits. 
That is to arbitrarily have a cutoff date as to how many years a person 
can serve in the House or the Senate. Mr. President, we know that the 
most important and effective term limit is the ballot box.
  On November 8, we had a remarkable term limit go into effect. I was 
speaking to one of my friends in the House of Representatives just the 
other day. This man is beginning his third term, and out of 435 Members 
of Congress, I think he is number 180. He is way below half. I have 
served 8 years in the Senate. I am 56th, I believe, in seniority. So I 
am almost in the top half, having been here only 8 years. There is a 
hue and cry to do things with what we call quick fixes; to do things 
that sound good, to divert attention from our solving problems in the 
way that our Founding Fathers established in the Constitution as to how 
they should be handled.
  Let us talk, Mr. President, about the line-item veto. The Articles of 
Confederation, which was an original document for a very short period 
of time that directed this country, had a form of line-item veto in it. 
The man who drew up the Constitution of the United States determined 
that was something that was not good and should not be in the 
Constitution.
  The effort to have a line-item veto is not something that was first 
devised by President Reagan, who was the first to bring it up in recent 
memory. No, that is not the case. The fact is, the line-item veto comes 
up about every 20 years and has since this country was formed.
  Why has it not passed up to this point? It has not passed because it 
is a bad idea. It is a bad idea, especially bad for States that are 
sparsely populated.
  Mr. President, if, in fact, the President wanted to line-item veto 
something, it would make good sense, and I am sure his advisers would 
indicate, that the President likely should not go after the State of 
California, the States of New York, Texas, or Florida, but rather 
should go after South Dakota, Wyoming, Nevada, Idaho, States with small 
congressional delegations who do not have the ability to fight back 
with strength, with numbers.
  The line-item veto is not opposed by liberals. The line-item veto, 
Mr. President, is opposed by some of the most outstanding conservatives 
in the country. For example, James Kilpatrick, who is certainly a bona 
fide conservative, has written on numerous occasions about the line-
item veto, and has said, among other things:

       There is, indeed, something ridiculous, perhaps 
     hypocritical is a better word, in the current fit of hand-
     wringing over the deficit. All the old demands for a quick 
     fix are surfacing once more. The line-item veto, in its pure 
     or impossible form, would not work at the Federal level. At 
     least it would not work as effectively as its advocates 
     suppose. There are no line items for Social Security 
     benefits, food stamps, crop subsidies, interest on the 
     national debt, and other untouchable programs.

  Mr. President, we not only have James Kilpatrick, but two qualified 
conservatives who wrote an article together--they have written many 
articles, but I am going to refer to one-- Bruce Fein and William 
Bradford Reynolds. Bruce Fein is certainly, by all accounts, one of the 
leading constitutional scholars in America today. People may not agree 
with his results all the time, but liberals, moderates, and 
conservatives agree that he is a fine constitutional scholar. And 
William Bradford Reynolds, of course, is a partner in a large D.C. law 
firm and he worked for President Reagan as an assistant attorney 
general. He was the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights during 
the Reagan administration.
  What these two men have said is, ``The short answer is that the line-
item veto is unconstitutional.'' These gentleman go on at some length, 
Mr. President, to point out the historical arguments behind the line-
item veto. And if you read anything about the line-item veto, you 
realize that the Founding Fathers consciously kept out of the 
Constitution any ability of the President to interfere with the ability 
of the Congress, especially the House of Representatives, to do 
anything with the purse.
  The historical argument is concluded by another professor that they 
talk about, largely by negative inference, that the veto authority in 
these settings did not entirely foreclose the exercise of the line-item 
veto. They debunked that. They say that certainly is not the case.
  Then, Mr. President, they go on to outline why the Founding Fathers 
did not want anything to do with the line-item veto. And it goes back 
to the battles that were held in England over the centuries dealing 
with the power of the King and the power of the Parliament. As you 
know, during those battles, wars were fought. And what the Founding 
Fathers did not want to have happen is that, after the Congress set a 
standard as to spending, as to money, they did not want the President 
to be able to go in and willy-nilly nitpick those moneys.
  In fact, when the Colonies were here, the Founding Fathers knew what 
King George and other kings had done to the Colonies. The King of 
England had the power, after the Colonies passed a law, to repeal it. 
The Founding Fathers wanted no part of that.
  So, the Founding Fathers reacted, according to Reynolds and Bruce 
Fein, reacted strongly to make sure that 
 [[Page S4159]] there was nothing to allow the President to overrule 
the actions of the Congress.
  And after the constitutional fathers met and deliberated for long 
periods of time, what emerged was a veto power. They were very 
restrictive in what power the President of the United States should 
have.
  Mr. President, that was based, I repeat, on centuries of dealing with 
Parliament and the King and decade after decade of dealing with the 
Colonies and the King of England. And what emerged is set forth in 
article I, section 7, clause 2 of the Constitution.
  A look at the genesis of this, Mr. President, is that during the 
course of the debates in the Constitutional Convention, it clearly 
shows and, in fact, disabuses any notion that it was intended as a 
line-item veto authority to the President's power under clause 2. The 
veto power in explicit terms applied to ``any enrolled bill,'' and the 
President's constitutional authority was solely to approve it or not. 
The Constitution does not suggest that the President may approve part 
of a bill or indicate any Presidential prerogative to alter or revise 
the bill presented.
  In fact, to put it another way, the Congress acts as the author of 
the legislation, the bill, and the President as the publisher. Absent, 
as indicated by Fein and Reynolds, an extraordinary consensus in 
Congress, the President retains the ultimate authority to decide, in 
effect, whether to publish the law. He does not have to. That is the 
key.
  That is what I said when I first came on this floor today. We now 
have in our constitutional framework the ability of the President to 
veto a bill if he does not like it. We have had Presidents who have 
been courageous and have done that.
  The most successful in exercising the veto, according to Fein and 
Reynolds, was Rutherford B. Hayes. He did not like these unrelated 
riders. We do it now. But he did not like it. He wanted legislation to 
be germane. As an effort to prove his point, he kept vetoing 
appropriations bills, and it paid off. It paid off for him, Mr. 
President, because Congress usually is unwilling to take the heat of 
being responsible for having something that is ridiculous in an 
appropriations bill. So Rutherford B. Hayes was extremely good in what 
he did, in chastening Congress.
  But also take a more recent example. President Bush. I am a member of 
the Appropriations Committee. We passed appropriations bills. There was 
one where President Bush said, if you put--this is very controversial. 
Whether you are pro-life pro-choice, it is very controversial.
  Whether we agree or disagree with President Bush, he said, ``You put 
abortion language in that appropriations bill, and I will veto it.'' He 
dared Congress to do that. Congress did it. He accepted their dare, and 
he vetoed. It was late in the session. People said he would never do 
that. Well, he did it.
  Who prevailed? The President of the United States prevailed. That was 
taken out by the Congress and sent to him in a form he wanted. The 
President today has the right to veto appropriations bills. We have 13 
appropriations bills. If there is something in them that he does not 
like, he can veto the whole bill.
  I believe if there is as much bad in those appropriations bills, that 
is what he should do and not violate the Constitution. I believe that, 
as with President Bush, such a response, according to Fein and 
Reynolds, is far more likely to produce the desired legislation 
stripped of objectionable riders than would be the unconstitutional and 
wholly irresponsible exercise of a line-item veto, which would most 
certainly not be upheld in a court.
  So we have talked about conservatives. Certainly Kilpatrick is a 
conservative. Certainly Fein is a conservative. Certainly Reynolds is a 
conservative. I do not think anyone would dispute that George Will is a 
conservative.
  George Will, Mr. President, is also opposed to the line-item veto. He 
has written about it on a number of occasions, but most recently 
February of this year. George Will, as we all know, has a great way of 
putting things on paper. Certainly, his ability to put things on paper 
to him is much better than his spoken word.
  This article he wrote is outstanding because what he indicates is 
that the State of North Carolina refused to ratify the Constitution 
until we had the Bill of Rights. Their State constitution has never 
given the Governor any veto power. He goes on to say that we should 
follow that example. They should carry the threshold question--the 
Congress--of whether the line-item veto merely serves conservative 
values. He goes on to say that it does not. I am not going to belabor 
the point, Mr. President, other than to say that I think it is clear 
that conservative scholars, conservative pundits, conservative writers, 
believe the line-item veto--I should not say all of them, but a 
significant number, and certainly the respected scholars I have 
mentioned. I could have gotten more of the writers that I have 
mentioned. I could have gotten more, but I think certainly it is 
enough.
  Will ends by saying the intended consequence of a line-item veto is 
to deter spending, but lacks a national rationale. However, the 
unintended consequence might be to make Congress even more 
conscienceless than it is about voting such spending. Indeed, the line-
item veto might result in increased spending if Presidents agreed not 
to exercise it on legislative projects in exchange for legislative 
support on other matters. The Nation should not be overeager to do what 
liberty-loving North Carolina has been so reluctant to do.
  My point as far as this phase of my presentation, Mr. President, is 
that the line-item veto is not being opposed by a bunch of Northeastern 
liberals, as is referred to so often by some of my friends in Nevada, 
but rather some of the more thoughtful opposition to the line-item veto 
comes from conservatives throughout this country, not the least of 
which are George Will, James Kilpatrick, Bruce Fein, and William 
Bradford Reynolds.
  It is not just opposition from the conservatives. There are many 
others who oppose the line-item veto. For example, Mr. President, there 
is an excellent column that was written, again in February of this 
year, by Cokie and Stephen Roberts in the Baltimore Sun. I think it 
does a good job of talking about why the line-item veto is an 
ineffective way to achieve what we need to achieve, and that is to do a 
better job of matching our income with our outgo.
  It is pretty clear that, according to Roberts, the Founders left no 
doubt that Congress, particularly the House of Representatives, elected 
every 2 years, should control the purse. I do not think there are many 
who would dispute that. They go on to say:

       We think it is pretty clear that the line-item veto would 
     shift power down Pennsylvania Avenue from Capitol Hill to the 
     White House. That is why Executives--Presidents and Governors 
     of both parties like it. Taking some of the purse string out 
     of the body closest to the people might not be so bad if it 
     resulted in a real ratio of red ink. It won't. A swipe at a 
     highway here, a dam here, even a space station or super 
     collider won't make a significant dent in the deficit.

  That is debatable.
  They go on to say that a President could line-item the entire space 
operation, the entire highway program, all agriculture subsidies, all 
education subsidies, eliminate every item in what is called the 
discretionary budget, including the entire U.S. Congress and its staff, 
all the Federal courts and prisons, wipe out everything the Government 
pays for except defense, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and 
interest on the national deficit, and there would still be a budget 
deficit.
  But, Mr. President, in the legislation that is before the Congress, 
or certainly will be--the amendment that I have seen I understood will 
be offered--the President will be unable to line-item anything in these 
four or five big programs. This is why, representing a small State, I 
am opposed to the line-item veto.
  They go on to say: And think of the political mischief. The President 
wants to punish a State that did not support him in the last election. 
Easy. Just line out programs of benefit to Kansas, for example. A 
President, eager to please his friends and punish his enemies, could 
happily lose the veto and never lose anything.
  As it stands now, Presidents often swallow something they do not like 
in order to get something else they like in legislation, and that means 
they have 
 [[Page S4160]] to share power, that they cannot control spending 
singlehandedly. That is just fine with us, and I submit, Mr. President, 
that is just fine with the Founding Fathers, because that is what they 
intended.
  Carrying forward with my point that the opposition to the line-item 
veto does not come from the conservatives or the moderates, but also 
from the liberals, the Las Vegas Review Journal, a paper in Las Vegas, 
had an article which ran over the weekend by Joe Sobran--who writes a 
column from Washington, DC--and he says, among other things:

       The drive to amend the Constitution is really a way of 
     passing the buck. Like a man who blames his wife for his own 
     infidelity, the Republicans are saying in effect that the 
     fault for their own inability lies in the Constitution.

  That is not the way it is, Mr. President. I believe that the line-
item veto, as it is presented here, is a ploy, a dodge, a gimmick. And 
I believe the case is extremely overstated. We know that 46 percent of 
every dollar we spend is entitlements. We know that about 14 or 15 
percent of what we spend is interest on the debt. That is 60 percent. 
We know that 20 percent, approximately, is for defense. And usually 
those defense numbers come to Congress from the President--not usually, 
they do come to Congress from the President--so the President is not 
likely to hack away at his own budget that he has presented. Twenty 
percent of the budget is domestic discretionary spending.
  My fellow Senators should understand, as should the American public, 
that the amount of discretionary domestic spending has dropped 
significantly and it is dropping every time we appropriate moneys. What 
is discretionary domestic spending? It deals with the National 
Institutes of Health. It deals with construction of highways, bridges, 
and dams. It deals with our parks--Lake Mead recreation area, 
Yellowstone, and Yosemite. It deals with education. That is what 
discretionary domestic spending is. The only area the President can 
line-item veto is discretionary domestic spending.
  Now, what we have before us is a moving target. We at first were told 
we will go with S. 4. Then we were told we are going to go with the 
McCain balanced budget procedure. Then we were told a compromise had 
been worked out with Senators Exon and Domenici. When there was general 
acceptance of that proposal on this side of the aisle, it was 
determined--because we supported it--it must not be good and, 
therefore, it went back to the drawing board. I think we do not want to 
solve these problems as much as talk about them.
  I think the legislation suggested by Senators Domenici and Exon, the 
chairman of the Budget Committee and the ranking member of the Budget 
Committee--two men who have had a great deal of experience dealing with 
money matters relating to this Government--I think it was a good 
compromise. It did not give away constitutional prerogatives to 1600 
Pennsylvania Avenue. It was a good compromise, something I could 
support.
  But now we have something different. Now we have a process where, 
when an appropriations bill passes, it would be broken up into hundreds 
of line items. This is absolutely unconstitutional. It just will not 
sail. We know that.
  There have been a number of different things written on this. For 
example, I see the Presiding Officer here, the senior Senator from the 
State of Iowa. The Iowa Law Review says:

       Arguably, the bicameral process is violated if the 
     enrolling clerk presents proposed legislation to the 
     President in a form not approved of by the House and the 
     Senate. The presentment clauses, therefore, may require that 
     a bill is presented to the President, for approval or veto, 
     be in the form in which the bill passed through both Houses. 
     Otherwise, such a bill is unconstitutional.

  So, in effect, if we pass a bill and we sent it to the enrollment 
clerk and the enrollment clerk breaks this up into different sections, 
it is unconstitutional. We cannot send something to the President and 
have somebody else chop it up for us. If we want 400 separate 
appropriations bills, then we have to present them to the President. We 
cannot have an enrolling clerk do that. It is clearly unconstitutional, 
and many scholars have written about this, but the most recent, I 
think, and one of the most erudite is that from the Iowa Law Review.
  It goes on to say:

       Put differently, Congress cannot delegate to an enrolling 
     officer in either House the legislative function of deciding 
     how many appropriations bills shall be presented to the 
     President, or the form those bills shall take.

  The only thing that can go to the President is what we pass in the 
form that we pass it. Otherwise, you can imagine the mischief that 
could take place.
  So now this moving target has a bill that is going to break up the 13 
appropriations bills into thousands of different bills--not hundreds, 
but thousands of different bills. I think that that is certainly unwise 
and something that we should not do.
  Reading from a Harvard Law Review article:

       Item veto advocates may be overstating their case * * * 
     much of the budget is uncontrollable.

  About 60 to 80 percent--if we include defense, it is 80 percent. If 
we do not include defense, it is 60 percent.

       * * * of the budget is ``nondiscretionary,'' and, as such, 
     is not even addressed by the appropriations process. Of the 
     remaining 40 percent that is considered discretionary 
     spending, nearly half is appropriated for defense 
     expenditures.

  As I outlined earlier.

       The congressional ``pork barrel'' spending so commonly 
     criticized thus only constitutes approximately 20 percent of 
     the budget. Yet, it would be difficult to cut a substantial 
     portion of this spending because much of this money funds 
     worthwhile projects, such as highway repair or cancer 
     research. These figures demonstrate that even a President 
     armed with the line-item veto could hardly spare the country 
     from outrageous debt overnight * * * A determined President 
     using the line-item veto might be able to cut * * * 1 percent 
     * * * of the total annual budget.

  And that is a worthwhile goal, if it does not violate the 
constitutional prerogatives established by our Founding Fathers.
  Mr. President, we had published last week ``The Senate of the Roman 
Republic.'' You will recall over the last Congress, the senior Senator 
from West Virginia gave a number of speeches dealing with the line-item 
veto and the loss of power of the Roman Empire indicating that when you 
give away power that the legislative branch has to the Executive, as 
they ultimately did with the great Caesar, it destroys a country. And 
that is what he wrote about. His opening statement, I think, is worth 
reading, paragraph 2:

       In search of antidotes for this fast-spreading fiscal 
     melanoma of suffocating deficits and debts, the budget 
     medicine men have once again begun their annual pilgrimage to 
     the shrine of Saint Line-Item Veto, to worship at the altar 
     of fool's gold, quake remedies--such as enhanced rescission, 
     line-item veto, and other graven images--which, if adopted, 
     would give rise to unwarranted expectations and possibly 
     raise serious constitutional questions involving separation 
     of powers, checks and balances, and control of the national 
     purse * * *.
       On the other hand, Mr. President, some of these people 
     inside Congress, and outside Congress, who constantly press 
     for the line-item veto, enhanced rescissions or other quack 
     nostrums know, or ought to know, that these are nothing more 
     than placebos, spurious magic incantations, witch's brew, and 
     various brands of snake oil remedies.

  Skipping a paragraph or two:

       Mr. President, the deficit problem is not caused by 
     congressional appropriations. Since 1945, and through last 
     year, beginning with Truman, and following with Eisenhower, 
     Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush, the 
     total appropriations--supplementals, regular, and 
     deficiencies--have amounted to about $200,848,154,902 less 
     than the totality of all the budget requests that these nine 
     Presidents have submitted during all those years.

  So, in short, Mr. President, the Congress has the terrible reputation 
of being spendthrifts, spending all this money we do not have. Every 
year we have come in with less money through Democratic Presidents and 
Republican Presidents than they have submitted to us. I think that says 
a lot.
  Just like the battle that took place with the balanced budget 
amendment, that was an effort to balance the budget using Social 
Security moneys. We need not change the Constitution to balance the 
budget. We have the authority to do that. The President today has the 
authority to veto appropriations bills. If there is spending that is 
out of line in those bills, he has the right and, I believe, the 
obligation if it is something that is not in the best interest of the 
people of this country to veto it. If it is something that is as 
 [[Page S4161]] outrageous as some people would lead us to believe, his 
veto will be upheld and we would send him back an appropriations bill 
that did not have that information in it, did not have that request in 
it.
  For example, there was a lot of public outcry because in an 
agriculture appropriations bill there was a provision in it a few years 
ago that appropriated $500,000 to the State of North Dakota to 
commemorate, to redo--I do not know what they were going to do with the 
money--the home of Lawrence Welk. The American people thought it was 
outrageous. The President had the right if he wanted to veto that 
agriculture appropriations bill.
  Had that bill come back here, that would have been taken out in a 
split second. The fact of the matter is, it was taken out in the next 
year in a rescission and the money was never spent, as outrageous as it 
was. But the President has the power today to veto outrageous 
expenditures in appropriations bills. We do not need to pass a new law 
to change the balance of power, to mess with the Constitution, to have 
the President veto bills. We have 13 appropriations bills.
  If every one of them has pork or something he does not like, he can 
vote to veto either one of them and go to the American public and say 
the reason I did that was because there was an appropriation here for 
Lawrence Welk's home in North Dakota, or whatever else is outlandish in 
that appropriations bill, and 99 times out of 100, his veto would be 
upheld.
  Now, for us to say, well, he is not going to do it because it is a 
big appropriations bill and it would just cause friction between the 
two branches, I would rather have a little more friction between the 
two branches than to give up our power to the executive branch.
  Remember, our Founding Fathers, in setting up the separate but equal 
branches of Government--the legislative, executive, and judicial--set 
them up so there would be friction between the branches; we would have 
to fight for power. That is what they wanted. They wanted us to fight 
for prerogative, with the legislative, executive, and judicial branches 
of Government. We do not need a new bill passed. We do not need to 
amend the Constitution for a line-item veto. The President can veto any 
one of the appropriations bills, if he wants, or all 13 of them. Had we 
had a little more courage in the past by Presidents, there would be a 
lot less bad stuff in those bills. I again use the example of President 
Bush. You may not agree with what he did, but on the abortion issue he 
said, ``You put that in there, I am going to veto it.'' He vetoed it, 
and he won. The Executive usually always wins because it is hard to 
override a Presidential veto.
  Some have described the line-item veto as a panacea for congressional 
misspending. We know that is not the case. Others have described it as 
resulting from a profound shift in the balance of powers as we know it.
  I say the Senate had an opportunity--I hope we still do--to take up 
and consider a line-item veto that would allow us to impose greater 
checks on our spending process without upsetting the balance of power 
between the executive and legislative branches of Government. That is 
why I like the Domenici-Exon approach. It did not hack away from the 
power of the executive branch but yet it gave the President more 
ability than he now has to look at matters that are wrong in our 
spending. I think that is what we should have done. I hope we can still 
do it. And while we are talking about having this line-item veto, I 
hope, Mr. President, that we do not lose sight of the fact we should 
take a look at taxes.
  We have heard described lots of times, with the 13 appropriations 
bills, the bad parts of those appropriations bills, and the people who 
complain have something to complain about. There were things in those 
appropriations bills such that I believe the President should have 
vetoed the whole bill. If he did that more often, we would have better 
appropriations bills.
  However, the one thing we have not talked about is what about the 
bills that come from the Finance Committee? What about these bills that 
have little tax shelters, tax dodges, and tax gimmicks for 
corporations? We have bills that are reported out of the Finance 
Committee where they take care of one corporation, they take care of 
one individual, one sector of our economy at the expense of another. If 
we are going to start having all of these line-item vetoes, I believe 
we should have a line-item veto for tax bills.
  A bill comes out of the Finance Committee every year, a big bill, and 
in it usually are mischievous things, in this Senator's opinion, that 
are put in by members of the Finance Committee, put in because of 
pressure by special-interest groups, pressure by lobbyists, pressure 
from people at home, industries at home that are at the sacrifice of 
other parts of our economy. I think we should be able to line item 
that. I support that.
  Take the Domenici-Exon approach and put in there the additional 
ability that the President would have to take out various items of that 
tax bill. I think that would be good.
  I hope we are still going to have the opportunity to consider such 
legislation. The minority leader has indicated he is going to prepare a 
substitute. I am told and I believe it will be comparable to the 
Domenici-Exon approach except it will have in it more ability of the 
President to look at line items in bills that come from the Finance 
Committee. I hope that is the case.
  It is my understanding that we have moved away from consideration of 
either of the line-item bills that were reported out of committee. 
Therefore, I hope the minority leader will move forward with an 
enhanced version of the Exon and Domenici legislation.
  What we are going to take up, in my opinion, is an enormous 
bureaucratic nightmare as indicated by the Iowa Law Review article and 
other things that I have now in the Record. It would certainly be 
unconstitutional, in addition to being unworkable. The so-called line-
item veto bill supported by some now I believe ought to be called the 
Paperwork Enhancement Act. This is directly 2 weeks following our 
passage of the Paperwork Reduction Act. Now we will just turn right 
around and increase paperwork because that is what this would do.
  It is most disappointing that we are passing up an opportunity today 
of acting on a bill that would assure widespread support on both sides 
of the aisle. The Domenici version of the legislation we could have 
passed last Friday. We would be out of here. But some people do not 
want results. They want issues to talk about, gimmicks. I think that is 
too bad.
  As I have indicated, the most popular of the two earlier measures was 
the legislation put together by two qualified deficit hawks, Domenici 
and Exon. Domenici and Exon have earned the reputation, as I said, of 
being two of the most outspoken, toughest deficit hawks in the Senate. 
The measure that they have drafted and reported out of committee made 
great strides toward eliminating some of the less than meritorious 
gains. It provided a procedure that would have allowed us to eliminate 
wasteful spending without undermining the constitutional duties imposed 
on the legislative and executive branches of Government.
  It was a commonsense proposal that would have eliminated spurious tax 
spending of taxpayers' dollars. In effect, what it did, within 10 days 
of the enactment of the appropriations bill or revenue bill, the 
President could propose a reduction or repeal of new appropriations, 
and as I have indicated, I hope that will be built upon. With the 
Daschle proposal, the President could also repeal targeted tax 
benefits.
  Under the Domenici-Exon legislation, the rescission bill, which is 
limited to the President's proposal, would be introduced in Congress. 
Within 10 days, Congress would have to vote on that bill. The floor 
rules are very simple. No amendments are allowed in the President's 
rescission bill. Motions to strike would be allowed. If Congress passes 
the bill and the President signs it into law, you would in effect have 
a lockbox, providing any savings, any of these savings would be devoted 
to the deficit by lowering the discretionary caps on spending.
  The significance of this measure is that it provides for greater 
rescission authority without placing unbridled authority on the 
President, which the Founding Fathers and others have guarded against 
since the days of the Constitution.
   [[Page S4162]] The New York Times, in a recent editorial, made the 
case as to why we ought to consider the Domenici legislation. Its 
editorial about a week ago said:

       One version of the McCain-Coats legislation would 
     dangerously increase the President's already formidable 
     power. The other, sponsored by Senator Pete Domenici, would 
     give the President more power than he has now, 
     counterbalanced by reasonable congressional checks. The 
     Senate should go on with Mr. Domenici.

  Unfortunately, we are not doing that. Unfortunately, the matter we 
are dealing with will shatter the separation of powers doctrine, so 
carefully crafted by our Founding Fathers and so tightly guarded these 
past 200-plus years. Even if we were to accept this as a necessity to 
achieve the greater good, the line-item veto is rendered almost 
meaningless by the economic reality of our current budget.
  As I have indicated before, we need to get spending under control. 
Mr. President, 46 percent of every dollar we spend is for entitlements; 
14 to 15 percent is for interest on debt, that is 60 percent; another 
20 percent is for defense.
  The threshold question in consideration of any line-item veto is the 
extent the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers will be 
disturbed. We know the Founding Fathers went to a great deal of effort 
to make sure that was set forth very clearly in article I of the U.S. 
Constitution. I believe we all want the President to have more 
authority to get rid of matters that should not be in appropriations 
bills. Most of us agree that he, the President, should have the 
authority of a line-item veto for taxing matters also that are harmful 
to the country, but we need to do that within the confines of the 
Constitution. The legislation that either has or will be offered 
setting forth the enrollment procedures will not do that.
  We should always realize the fallback position that we have is one 
that is in the Constitution and that is the President now has the 
authority to veto matters dealing with appropriations that are bad for 
the country. He cannot veto a little piece of the bill, he has to veto 
the whole bill. Why should he not be able to do that? Why should he not 
do that? It has been done in the past, and I use the example of 
President Rutherford B. Hayes. It was difficult. It caused the country 
some concern. But he prevailed.
  So I respectfully submit that no matter how well-intentioned those 
are who are seeking to pass this legislation, recognizing the sincerity 
of the chief sponsor of the bill, the senior Senator from Arizona, and 
how diligently he has worked on spending matters during the time he has 
been in the House and Senate, I again respectfully submit this is the 
wrong way to go. I believe we should adopt the Domenici approach and do 
what we can to make sure this well-intentioned legislation, offered by 
my friend from Arizona, is defeated.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I note with interest that the Senator from 
Nevada, who voted against the balanced budget amendment, now opposes a 
meaningful line-item veto, so I was interested in hearing him talk 
about how spending is out of control. I would be interested in hearing 
any of his proposals for bringing spending under control.
  I also remind him, if he could not find anything that the Founding 
Fathers said concerning expenditures and revenues, I would refer him to 
a letter from Thomas Jefferson to John Tyler, November 26, 1798. Thomas 
Jefferson said:

       I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our 
     Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for 
     the reduction of the administration of our Government to the 
     genuine principles of its Constitution. I mean an article 
     taking from the Federal Government the power of borrowing.

  That was Thomas Jefferson's view.
  I say to my friend from Nevada--he is my friend--in all due respect, 
if he thinks the status quo is acceptable to the people of Arizona or 
Nevada or anybody else in this country, I think he is wrong. If he 
thinks one single majority vote in either House is really the meaning 
of veto, then I do not believe he is in consonance with the 43 States 
in this country out of 50 where it takes a two-thirds majority.
  The meaning of the word ``veto'' is clearly defined in the 
Constitution as requiring a two-thirds majority. But I say to my friend 
from Nevada, in all due respect, where is it that the Senator from 
Nevada wants to turn to get some fiscal discipline in this country? I 
would like to hear his proposal. I reject his proposal that it would be 
a single majority vote in either House, since it took a majority vote 
in two Houses to put the pork in. The only way you are going to get it 
out is through a two-thirds vote of both Houses, in my view; the threat 
of that.
  As far as his argument goes that the President of the United States 
should veto 1 of the 13 major appropriations bills, the Senator from 
Nevada and I were both in the other body when we were doing continuing 
resolutions, when everything was thrown into one appropriations bill--
every single one was thrown into one massive appropriations bill. Did 
the Senator from Nevada expect him to veto that? Of the 13 
appropriations bills the Senator from Nevada knows there are billions 
of dollars in each one and if the President vetoes an entire bill he 
shuts down the Government; he deprives the people of this country of 
vitally needed programs. There is not a single appropriations bill that 
comes to the President's desk that has billions of dollars in spending 
in it that, if the President vetoes it, will not deprive the people of 
this country of much-needed Government services.
  The only way the President of the United States can effectively do 
what 43 Governors in this country do is selectively veto appropriations 
that are not needed and are unwanted and are wasteful.
  At this point of the debate I am not going to tell the Senator from 
Nevada about the outrageous spending going on in this country because I 
will refrain from doing so for some time, but it is well known to the 
American people. If the Senator from Nevada believes that is 
acceptable, that is fine with me. But when 83 percent of the American 
people support a line-item veto, when the overwhelming majority of the 
American people are sick and tired--sick and tired--of running a $4.6 
trillion debt, then it is time to act. If there is any living proof 
that the Congress is unable to discipline itself it is the fact that we 
do have a $4.6 trillion debt. In 1974 that debt was in hundreds of 
billions; now it is in trillions with no end in sight.
  If we do not do something--the Senator from Nevada rejects the 
balanced budget amendment. ``That is not constitutional.'' He rejects 
my line-item veto. ``That is not constitutional.'' I ask my friend from 
Nevada, what does he want to do? What is it that needs to be done to 
bring this undisciplined, outrageous fiscal behavior under control? I 
would be very interested in hearing that.
  I know of no expert who believes that a single majority vote by one 
House is going to do the job.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I believe there are a number of things we 
need to do. The first thing we need to do is approach the problems head 
on. As I indicated during the debate on the balanced budget amendment, 
why do we not balance the budget the hard way, the honest way, and that 
is do it without using the surplus for Social Security? As has been 
indicated and was indicated in here last week by one of the Senators 
from North Dakota, the fact of the matter is you cannot use the surplus 
to retire the debt and also use it for Social Security. It can only be 
used for one. It cannot be used for both places because you cannot 
spend money twice, and that is what we try to do around here.
  I believe we should have a balanced budget, but we should do it the 
hard way.
  My friend from Arizona said, ``What needs to be done?'' There are a 
lot of things that need to be done. First of all, with the line-item 
veto, I believe--and this has not been responded to, of course--as I 
read from the articles, with a line-item veto we may be able to save 1 
percent of the money--1 percent. Mr. President, 99 percent we could 
not, 1 percent we could. When you have a budget of $1.5 trillion that 
is a worthy 
 [[Page S4163]] goal. There is no reason you should not try to save 1 
percent.
  But I think we should do that with a procedure that allows the 
Congress not to give its power to the executive branch of Government. 
And I do not think the American public is concerned about two-thirds or 
a simple majority, but rather that we do it. I am willing to support a 
veto that the President has, as long as it does not give up our 
constitutional prerogative.
  I also think that one of the things that needs to be done is deal 
with the high cost of health care. We have done nothing about that 
problem. We have done nothing. I recognize--certainly accept--that the 
legislation that was attempted last year was too broad, we tried to do 
too much. We should have narrowed our scope and hopefully brought down 
to Earth some of the health costs that were going up every year. This 
year, health care costs will go up over $100 billion. The No. 1 item 
that is driving State, local, and Federal deficits is health care 
costs. It is really hurting us. We have to do something to get that 
under control. I do not see anything on the agenda this year to do 
anything about that.
  What else needs to be done? I am watching very closely what is going 
on in the House this week. They are going to come up with welfare 
reform. I think that is important. We need to do something on welfare 
reform. I believe we can save huge amounts of money with meaningful 
welfare reform.
  One of the areas we need to look at is immigration reform. We can 
save lots of money.
  The costs to the States of California, Nevada, even though we are not 
a border State, suffer significantly because of the illegal 
immigration, and Arizona and New Mexico. There are lots of places we 
can go to save huge amounts of money. We have to make those tough, hard 
decisions.
  My friend from Arizona said, ``What do you want? A continuing 
resolution?'' I do not want a continuing resolution. We have in recent 
years passed 13 separate appropriations bills. The President should 
veto those, and, if we send him a CR, a continuing resolution, which he 
does not like, veto that too. Because, if he is doing it based upon the 
fact that Lawrence Welk's home is in there or some kind of other 
appropriation that cries out for some type of relief, that we are going 
to accede to the President's wishes.
  I say to my friend from Arizona, outrageous spending is not 
acceptable. Outrageous spending is not acceptable. We are spending too 
much money based upon our income, and we have to stop that. In addition 
to that, we are spending money in areas that we should not be spending 
money on. I am willing to work on those. I hope this year. We are 
awaiting the Senator from New Mexico, the chairman of the Budget 
Committee to come forward with a budget that is going to be a glidepath 
that will get us to a balanced budget in the year 2002 or some period 
thereafter. I look forward to working with my friends from the other 
side of the aisle to see that we can do that. But let us not do it with 
gimmicks, with things that sound good but really are not going to allow 
us to accomplish anything.
  I am for a balanced budget amendment. But I want to exclude Social 
Security. I am for a line-item veto. But I do not want to accede 
authority to the President of the United States. Presidents can be 
extremely mischievous, especially with a small State, having the 
ability to say OK, Senator Reid, I see that you have here something in 
Nevada that is very important in Nevada--maybe a new highway, maybe a 
new bridge, maybe a dam that is important to the people of the State of 
Nevada. He could say, ``If you vote with me on this item, I am not 
going to line-item veto that.'' Well, I would hope that I would be able 
to do the right thing in that instance. I hope I could. I hope the 
right thing would be to do what was the best for the people of the 
State of Nevada.
  But let us not give the President that authority. He has not had it 
in over 200 years. He does not need it now. Veto is in the 
Constitution. It requires a two-thirds vote. That is why the President 
should use that veto if he thinks there is outrageous spending in any 
one of these 13 bills.
  I would also be interested to hear during the debate today from those 
on other side of the aisle to see if they are willing to put tax 
measures also in this form of rescission that we are giving to the 
President.
  So I would hope that we could accomplish something through reasonable 
men and women working together to recognize that there are provisions 
in the appropriations bills that are bad, that are wrong, and that the 
President should have the ability to send back to us something to take 
out more than he now has without giving up our constitutional authority 
to a President. I do not know who the President is going to be the next 
time or the next time. But I want to leave this body recognizing that I 
kept intact the intent of the Founding Fathers.
  Mr. McCAIN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, as the saying goes, everybody is entitled 
to their opinion, but not everybody is entitled to the facts.
  I wonder if the Senator from Nevada thinks that it is coincidence, 
that it is just sheer coincidence, that from 1787 until 1974 the 
accumulated debt and deficit and yearly deficit was very low, except in 
times of war when that spiked up and then the Congress and the American 
people would take action to reduce that debt again.
  I do not know if the Senator from Nevada can see this chart. But in 
1974, we were running an annual deficit somewhere around $25 to $30 
billion. The Budget Impoundment Act was enacted in 1974 which prevented 
the President of the United States from doing basically what the line-
item veto does; that is, the President of the United States, Thomas 
Jefferson did it first with a $50,000 impoundment of money to purchase 
gunboats. It has been exercised by every President of the United 
States. They will not spend the money thereby effectively exercising a 
line-item veto.
  So basically, what we are talking about, what happened in the history 
of this country up until 1974 is that we exercised fiscal sanity. We 
had elected men and women to the Congress of the United States and 
elected men to the Presidency of the United States who insisted that we 
not lay a crushing burden of debt on future generations of Americans.
  So in 1974, we passed the Budget Inpoundment Act. What happened to 
the deficit? Did it happen by accident? Did all of a sudden we lose all 
sense of fiscal control? All of sudden, the United States just went on 
a spending spree? Yes. Yes. Yes. We did. Why did we do it? Because 
there was no restraint, either Republican or Democratic Presidents 
alike.
  It is laudable that we have now reduced the annual deficit some, but 
all estimates are that the debt and the deficit after a couple of more 
years will go up again and skyrocket. We have now accumulated a $4.6 
trillion debt, about $4 trillion more than we had in 1974.
  So facts are facts. From the first Congress of the United States 
until 1974 we basically had a balanced budget. We for all intents and 
purposes did not spend more money than we took in. Thomas Jefferson in 
1789 clearly stated, as I just quoted:

       I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our 
     Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for 
     the reduction of the administration of our Government to the 
     genuine principles of its Constitution. I mean an article 
     taking from the Federal Government the power of borrowing.

  What we did, Mr. President, in 1974 with the passage of the Budget 
Impoundment Act was we gave the Federal Government the power of 
borrowing with no restraint. Now we borrow and borrow and borrow to a 
$4.6 trillion debt.
  I agree with everything that my friend from Nevada said. We should 
enact health care reform. We should take care of the skyrocketing 
health care costs to Americans. We should do a lot of things. But what 
have we done? Nothing, nothing to reduce the debt that is now $4.6 
trillion. Our forefathers must be rolling over in their graves when 
they see what we have done, when they look at the mountains of Federal 
budget that is being spent to pay interest on the debt that we have not 
stopped accumulating.
  So I say to my friend from Nevada, I agree with everything he says. I 
appreciate his advice and counsel as far as what we can do to stop the 
spending. 
 [[Page S4164]] But I would suggest to you that every President has 
said they need the line-item veto as a tool whether it be as President 
Ford or President Carter or President Bush or President Reagan saw it, 
and now as President Clinton sees it.
  I wonder how the Senator from Nevada reconciles his views with that 
of the President of the United States? The fact is that a veto is a 
veto is a veto, which means two-thirds majority, a majority vote in one 
House is less than an overriding veto because it took a majority vote 
in both Houses in order to put the unnecessary wasteful spending in.
  So, I say to my friend from Nevada. I appreciate his input as far as 
the macro issues that we have to resolve. I would also suggest to him 
that the abuses that he describes would so naturally accrue to any 
President of the United States threatening Senators or Members of 
Congress who were doing certain actions, line-item projects in their 
State. I could hardly wait for a President of the United States to do 
that to me.
 I could hardly wait. There are the media, the people of my State. It 
is the last time that a President of the United States or his party 
would ever carry my State in a Presidential election if he tried to 
blackmail me or any representative of my State. In 43 States of 
America, including a former Governor of Missouri who spoke on Friday--
and I do not believe the Senator from Nevada was ever Governor--the 
Governor never threatened to blackmail anybody. He said he could not 
balance the budget in his State without having the line-item veto, 
which he and 42 other Governors have.

  Again, I do not think we can reconcile the facts. There are opinions 
as to what happened and as to what we need to do. But there are facts 
that indicate that the Federal debt and deficit are out of control and 
almost every expert in America, including 83 percent of the American 
people, say, ``Give the President of the United States the line-item 
veto.'' When they say veto, they mean veto, and they do not mean 
overriding by one House of Congress.
  I say again to my friend from Nevada, with 70 Democrat votes, the 
line-item veto that is being proposed here was passed by the House of 
Representatives, and I believe their will is perhaps more in tune with 
American public opinion today than is true over here in this body.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I am going to vacate the floor shortly. But 
I want to make sure the record is very clear that there is no way I 
think spending is now under control, even though we have made 
significant progress. This is the third year in a row where we have a 
declining deficit--the first time in 15 years. Federal payroll is about 
$150 million less; economic growth is the highest since the days of 
President Kennedy. Good things are happening, but we have much more to 
do. What we have to do--and more important than anything else, as 
indicated by the Senator from Arizona--is to do something about the 
deficit that is already here and the deficits that come about every 
year. We must do something about that. I served a year on the 
entitlement commission. We have a lot of work to do and we have a lot 
of programs that need to be looked at, because 46 percent of every 
dollar we spend is for entitlement programs.
  The Impoundment Act, there has been a lot written about that. But it 
was an effort to go after President Nixon--the so-called imperial 
presidency that people talked about. I think a lot of things done as a 
result of Watergate were not good Government. It was a reaction to a 
man rather than a form of Government. That is why I am so concerned 
about what we do here.
  The record should be very clear. The deficits have accumulated. But 
the big jump, of course, as indicated on the chart my friend just 
showed the Senate and the American public, occurred during the Reagan 
years, when in fact we cut back on our income and increased spending 
considerably. We cut back on the revenues, reduced taxes, and increased 
defense spending and other spending, and as a result of that, trillions 
of dollars in debt accumulated. We have to do a better job of taking 
care of those problems than we did. The problem with the debt going up 
is not as a result of passing a law to do away with the Impoundment 
Act. It is as a result of simple mathematics. When you spend more than 
you take in, you accumulate a debt. That is what happened beginning in 
the Reagan years, and that is what is happening now. We need to get 
that under control.
  I am not here to argue that every matter and every appropriations 
bill is good. I think there are things in appropriations bills that 
should not be in there, that are the result of compromises of committee 
members, and as a result of back-room politics, for lack of better 
words. The President should have an easier way of getting to those 
items, and I am willing to give him that. If we are unable to arrive at 
that, I hope President Clinton, and other Presidents that follow him, 
would be more demanding in what they ask in their appropriations bills. 
I am confident and hopeful that we can arrive at a reasonable 
compromise in the next few days in this body.
  It is my understanding that there is going to be no effort to stop 
this motion from proceeding. We are going to go ahead to the bill. 
There is no attempt to delay it. But I think it is a question of how to 
approach a problem. I believe that the approach of my friend from 
Arizona--as well-intentioned and as desperate as he is to get spending 
under control--is not the right way to go. I hope he and other sponsors 
of the legislation will step back and look at what we have in the 
Domenici proposal and see if the proposal that is going to be offered 
in the form of a substitute is not something that would better serve 
this country. We need to get spending under control, and we need to 
work on some of the things I have talked about and some of the 
outrageous things that the Senator from Arizona has talked about over 
the years that have taken place in appropriations spending bills.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum and ask 
unanimous consent that the time be deducted equally from both sides.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Ashcroft). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as if 
in morning business for 7 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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