[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 51 (Monday, March 20, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4165-S4187]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             LINE-ITEM VETO

  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, while we have several speakers lined up 
today to speak on the line-item veto, none is here at this time. I 
think what I will do is take the occasion to delve into a little bit of 
the history of line-item veto so we could at least make that part of 
the record.
  On Friday, I spoke at length in response to the minority leader's 
presentation before the Senate, of his concerns and objections about 
the line-item veto and the direction he thought he should go. I do not 
know that I need to repeat those at this particular point.
  Let me reflect back a little bit on how we got to this particular 
point and why line-item veto was considered necessary by a number of 
our former 
 [[Page S4166]] Presidents and a number of Governors, and in attempting 
to put it in the historical context, perhaps we can better understand 
the case for it today.
                     history of the line-item veto

  Reflecting upon the experience of the U.S. Government, Confederate 
rebels met to draw up a new constitution.
  An individual by the name of Robert Smith--not the same Robert Smith 
who so ably represents the State of New Hampshire in the Senate today--
but Robert A. Smith, in addressing the people of Alabama, had this to 
say: ``We have followed with almost literal fidelity, the Constitution 
of the United States,'' reflecting on his drafting of a constitution 
for when they anticipated a new Confederate Government.

       We have followed with almost literal fidelity the 
     Constitution of the United States, and departed from its text 
     only so far as experience had clearly proved that additional 
     checks were required for the preservation of the Nation's 
     interest. Of this character is the power given the President 
     to arrest corrupt or illegitimate expenditures, and at the 
     same time approving other parts of the bill. There is hardly 
     a more flagrant abuse of its power, by the Congress of the 
     United States than the habitual practice of loading bills, 
     which are necessary for governmental operations with 
     reprehensible, not to say venal dispositions of the public 
     money, and which only obtain favor by a system of 
     combinations among Members interested in similar abuses upon 
     the Treasury.

  That speech could have been given yesterday. That speech can be given 
today. Yet here we have Robert Smith more than 100 years ago in writing 
with his colleagues a new constitution, basing it upon the experience 
that this Nation had at that point with its then Constitution, the 
experience of granting to the legislative body a power that was not 
checked by the checks and balances of those powers given to the 
executive branch.
  As Robert Smith said, ``We basically are writing our new Constitution 
on the basis of the existing U.S. Constitution because that 
Constitution is a sound model for what any new Constitution ought to be 
made of.'' ``Yet,'' he said, ``based on our experience, that has 
clearly proven that there are some changes that need to be made, some 
additional checks,'' as he said, ``were required for the preservation 
of the Nation's interest, checks necessary to arrest corrupt or 
illegitimate expenditures on the part of the legislative branch.''
  I go on to quote Robert Smith:

       Bills necessary for the support of the Government are 
     loaded with items of the most exceptional character, and are 
     thrown upon the President at the close of the session, for 
     his sanction, as the only alternative for keeping the 
     Government in motion. Even, however, under this salutary 
     check, the evil might be but mitigated, not cured, in the 
     case of a weak or highly partisan President, who would feel 
     that the responsibility of such legislation rested but 
     lightly on him, so long as the unrestrained power and duty of 
     originating appropriations depended upon a corrupt or pliant 
     Congress--hence the conventions of confederate States wisely 
     determined that the Executive was the proper department to 
     know and call for the moneys necessary for the support of 
     Government, and that here the responsibility should rest.

  In closing, he said:

       * * * By giving the President the power to veto 
     objectionable items in appropriation bills, we have, I trust, 
     greatly purified our Government.

  America fought a painful and bloody war to save the Union. We are 
standing here today because that war was won. Millions of our fellow 
Americans won their freedom and put an end to one of the most 
disgraceful chapters in American history. And yet a germ of an idea was 
born in the Confederacy that took root across our country. The idea was 
enhanced accountability for the taxpayers money through the line-item 
veto.
  After the Civil War, line-item veto authority spread like wildfire in 
the States. Today, 43 Governors enjoy the same power we are fighting to 
give the President of the United States--the authority to veto wasteful 
spending items.
  Line-item veto became a reality in the U.S. possessions as well. 
Congress, though it failed to give the President line-item veto 
authority, gave this power to the Governors General of the possessions. 
The line-item veto was granted to the Governor General of the 
Philippines in 1916, and the Governors of the territories of Hawaii in 
1900, Alaska in 1912, Puerto Rico in 1917, and the Virgin Islands in 
1954. Thus Congresses recognized the need for and virtue of this 
authority which it has never given to the President of the United 
States and to the American people.
  States have been successfully using the line-item veto, many for over 
100 years. Today, almost uniformly, the Governors endorse giving the 
President of the United States the same tool for controlling spending.
  A Cato Institute survey of 118 U.S. Governors and former Governors--
including Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Michael Dukakis, and Bill 
Clinton reveals a strong consensus that a line-item veto for the 
President would be an effective method of reducing the massive Federal 
deficit: 67 of respondents were Republicans, 50 Democrat; 19 were 
serving Governors when they responded; 92 percent of the Governors 
believe that a line-item veto for the President would help restrain 
Federal spending; 88 percent of the Democratic respondents supported 
the line-item veto; 55 percent of the Governors believe Congress has 
too much authority over the Federal budget, versus only 2 percent who 
think the President has too much authority.
  When asked ``Was the line-item veto a useful tool to you as Governor 
in balancing the State budget?'' 69 percent said the line-item veto was 
a very useful tool, 23 percent said it was a somewhat useful tool, 7 
percent said it was not useful, 91 percent of Democratic Governors said 
the line-item veto was very useful or somewhat useful.
  The survey also asked, ``Do you think that a line-item veto for the 
President would help restrain Federal spending?''
  Ninety-two percent of the respondents replied yes.
  Eighty-eight of Democrats agreed.
  Since the Budget Reform and Impoundment Act of 1974, every President 
has complained that Congress has usurped the executive branch's 
traditional powers over the budget process. The Governors agree.
  ``In your opinion, does Congress or the President have too much 
authority over the Federal budget today?'' The survey asked. The 
majority responded, ``Congress has too much power.''
  Nine of ten Governors--regardless of party--support a line-item veto 
for the President as a way to restrain spending. A majority of 
Governors think that Congress has too much authority over the budget 
process.
  Here is what some Governors have actually said:

       The line-item veto is a useful tool that a Governor can use 
     on occasion to eliminate blatantly `Port Barrell' 
     expenditures that can strain the budget. At the same time he 
     must answer to the voters if he (or she) uses the veto 
     irresponsibly. It is a certain restraint on the legislative 
     branch.--Keith H. Miller, Alaska, Republican (1969-70).
       I support the line-item veto because it is an executive 
     function to identify budget plan excesses and wasteful items. 
     It is an antidote for pork--Hugh L. Carey, New York, Democrat 
     (1975-83).
       Congress's practice of passing enormous spending bills 
     means that funding for everything from Lawrence Welk museum 
     to a study of bovine flatulence slips through Congress. The 
     President may be unable to veto a major bill that includes 
     such spending abuses because the majority of the bill is 
     desperately needed. A line-item veto would let the President 
     control the irresponsible spending that Congress can't. A 
     line-item veto already works at the State level. It not only 
     allows a Governor to veto wasteful spending, it works as a 
     deterrent to wasteful spending legislators know will be 
     vetoed--Pete Wilson, California, Republican, (1991-?).
       Legislators love to be loved, so they love to spend money. 
     Line-item veto is essential to enable Executive to hold down 
     spending--William F. Weld, Massachusetts, Republican (1991-
     ?).
       When I was Governor in California, the Governor had the 
     line-item veto, and so you could veto parts of a bill or even 
     part of the spending in a bill. The President can't do that. 
     I think--frankly of course, I'm prejudiced--Government would 
     be far better off if the President had the right of the Line-
     item veto.--Ronald Reagan, California, Republican (1967-75).
       I believe it provides a check and balance which is helpful 
     even if only because it requires legislators to consider the 
     potential for veto and may thereby make them more 
     accountable--Mike Sullivan, Democrat, Wyoming (1991-94).
       It can be a surgical tool to highlight foolishness, and 
     thus help the Executive make his case.--Pete Du Pont, 
     Delaware, Republican (1977-85).
       To the detriment of the Federal process, the President is 
     not held accountable for a balanced budget. Congress takes 
     control over budget development with its budget resolution, 
     after which, the President may only approve or veto 13 
     appropriation bills. Without the line-item veto the President 
     has minimal 
      [[Page S4167]] flexibility to manage the Federal Budget 
     after it is passed--L. Douglas Wilder, Virginia, Democrat 
     (1990-94).
  Almost every President since Ulysses S. Grant has made the same case 
as the Governors. Only one President in the 20th century has not 
requested the line-item veto.
  In a message to Congress on August 14, 1876, President Grant claimed 
``discretionary authority'' over the items of appropriations bills. In 
signing the river and harbor bill he said:

       If it was obligatory upon the Executive to expend all the 
     money appropriated by Congress, I should return the river and 
     harbor bill with my objections * * * without enumerating, 
     many appropriations are made for the works of purely private 
     or local interest, in no sense national. I cannot give my 
     sanction to these, and will take care that during my term of 
     office no public money shall be expended upon them * * * 
     under no circumstances will I allow expenditure upon works 
     not clearly national.

  No objection was made to President Grant's interpretation.
  After deprecating the practice of combining appropriations for a 
great diversity of objects, widely separated in their nature and 
locality, in one river and harbor bill, President Arthur, in his second 
annual message to Congress, dated December 4, 1882, suggested two 
suggestions to this problem:
  First, enactment of separate appropriation bills for each internal 
improvement, or, alternately, and
  Second, a constitutional amendment empowering the Executive to veto 
items in appropriations bills. He then listed 14 States whose 
constitutions gave the item or specific veto authority to their 
Governors and declared:

       I commend to your careful consideration and the question 
     whether an amendment of the Federal Constitution in the 
     particular indicated would not afford the best remedy for 
     what is often a grave embarrassment both to Members of 
     Congress and the Executive, and is sometimes a serious public 
     mischief.

  President Arthur repeated this recommendation in his third annual 
message, dated December 4, 1883, and in his fourth annual message, 
dated December 1, 1884.


                      president franklin roosevelt

  In his budget message for fiscal year 1939, President Roosevelt, 
after calling attention to the use of the item veto ``in the majority 
of our States'' and remarking that ``the system meets with general 
approval in the many States which have adopted it,'' said:

       A respectable difference of opinion exists as to whether a 
     similar item veto power could be given to the President by 
     legislation or whether a constitutional amendment would be 
     necessary. I strongly recommend that the present Congress 
     adopt whichever course it may deem to be the correct one.


                            president truman

  In the second volume of his memoirs, Harry S. Truman wrote:

       One important lack in the Presidential veto power, I 
     believe, is authority to veto individual items in 
     appropriation bills. The President must approve the bill in 
     its entirety, or refuse to approve it, or let it become law 
     without his approval * * * As a senator I tried to discourage 
     the practice of adding riders deliberately contrived to 
     neutralize otherwise positive legislation, because it is a 
     form of legislative blackmail.
                          president eisenhower

  In reply to a House request for recommendations on possible budget 
cuts, President Eisenhower addressed a letter to Speaker Rayburn, dated 
April 18, 1957, containing 10 recommendations including the following 
one:

       And, tenth, to help assure continuing economy on the part 
     of the Congress as well as the executive branch, take action 
     that will grant the President the power held by many State 
     Governors to veto specific items in appropriation bills.

  The plea for a line-item veto was illustrated dramatically by 
President Reagan when he slammed down a 43 pound, 3,296 page spending 
bill. It was a bill that represented 1 trillion dollars' worth of 
spending--not one penny of which he had the power to veto, unless he 
rejected it all.
  Most recently, President Clinton has asked that this Congress send 
him the strongest line-item veto measure possible. He has called the 
line-item veto ``one of the most powerful weapons we could use in our 
fight against out-of-control deficit spending.''
  He also said:

       I am strongly in favor of a line-item veto. I have it. I've 
     used a bunch as Governor. And, interestingly enough, in my 
     last legislative session, I didn't have to use it one time 
     because I had it. See? . . . I keep telling my friends in 
     Congress, they would be better off. They think they have got 
     to pass some piece of pork barrel for the folks back home. 
     Let me take the heat.

  Interestingly, many Presidents argued for the line-item veto while 
they still had considerable leverage over spending. Until the Budget 
and Impoundment Act of 1974, Presidents exercised their authority to 
rescind money, and thus control spending they felt was wasteful. This 
was a practice that had its origins with our first President.
  In his article, ``The Line-Item Veto: Provided in the Constitution 
and Traditionally Applied,'' Stephen Glazier wrote:

       At the beginning of our Government under the Constitution, 
     during the administrations of Washington and Adams, Congress 
     passed very general appropriations bills that permitted the 
     President not to spend appropriated funds . . . . In 
     Washington's day the practice was called ``impoundment.

  Perhaps the most significant early impoundment was during Jefferson's 
Presidency, when he refused to spend $50,000 appropriated by Congress 
for gunboats. He also refused to spend money on two new fortifications.
  This instance and other early instances were mostly attributed to the 
fact that, unlike today, appropriations bills were

     Quite general in their terms and by obvious . . . intent, 
     left to the President . . . the power for . . . determining 
     in what particular manner the funds were spent (1971 
     hearings, testimony of Assistant Attorney General Rehnquist).
  Under the Grant administration, we saw more significant withholding 
of funds. Upon signing a measure which appropriated funds for harbor 
and river improvements, Grant sent a message to Congress saying that he 
did not plan to spend the total amount because some appropriations were 
for ``works of purely private or local interest, in no sense 
national.'' Grant asserted that no expenditures might be made except 
for ``works already done and paid for'' (Congressional Record 5628 
1876).
  Grant's Secretary of War also refused to spend $2.7 million of the $5 
million which had been appropriated by Congress. The House asked the 
President to respond with legal authority for impounding of funds. The 
Secretary of War replied that this act was in no way mandatory and that 
it was not fiscally practical or legally appropriate for the 
President's discretion to be limited than by the interests of the 
public service. Most of Congress agreed with the President.
  President Roosevelt impounded funds in the 1930's to cope with the 
emergencies of economic depression and war. In the 1940's Budget 
Director Smith ordered impoundment of amounts ranging from $1.6 to $95 
million which had been appropriated for the Civilian Conservation 
Corps' surplus labor force, civilian pilot training projects, surplus 
marketing corporation among others, because the projects did not have 
priority ratings to obtain the scarce resources.
  The Truman Presidency impounded funds appropriated for a 70-group Air 
Force and giant aircraft carriers.
  Eisenhower impounded funds appropriated for various defense projects, 
most notably funds for strategic airlift aircraft, $140 million, and 
procurement of Nike-Zeus--$135 million--hardware; in 1956, $46.4 
million to increase Marine Corps personnel strength was impounded. In 
1959, $48 million for hound dog missiles, $90 million for Minuteman 
Program funds, $55.6 million for KC-135 tankers. In 1960, $35 million 
for nuclear-powered carriers.
  Kennedy's administration was responsible for a controversial 
impoundment of funds for the RS-70 long range bomber. Congress 
appropriated nearly two times the amount that Kennedy had requested. 
Secretary of Defense McNamara refused to release the excess funds. 
Later, Congress voted to direct a lesser amount for the RS-70.
  President Johnson felt impoundments for domestic programs were 
legally sanctioned. Attorney General Clark said that the impoundment of 
highway trust funds was lawful. The Budget Director said that it was 
the general power of the President to operate for the welfare of the 
economy and the Nation in terms of combating inflationary pressures.
  The most controversial of Presidential impoundments were during the 
Nixon Presidency. Each year since first assuming office, President 
Nixon had 
 [[Page S4168]] impounded 17 to 20 percent of controllable funds 
appropriated by Congress. Nearly $12 billion appropriated for the 
building of highways--funds impounded of a cross-Florida barge canal, 
on which $50 million had been spent and which was already one-third 
completed--and pollution control projects had been withheld. Hundreds 
of millions of dollars appropriated for medical research, higher 
education--$18 million of the Indian Education Act, rural 
electrification, rural environmental assistance, public housing--over 
$70 million of HUD's 312 housing rehabilitation, loan programs, urban 
renewal and myriad other programs were impounded. In 1973, the U.S. 
Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit became the highest court to 
ever decide a case dealing with Executive impoundments. In Missouri 
Highway Commission versus Volpe, the issue of whether the Secretary of 
Transportation could refuse to obligate highway funds which had been 
apportioned to Missouri, because of the status of the economy and the 
control of inflation. The court ruled that the highway funds could not 
be lawfully impounded for the reasons asserted. This case did not, 
however, settle the constitutional question pending before the White 
House and Congress.
  Because of the sweeping nature of the Nixon impoundments, Congress 
responded. On October 27, 1972, Congress passed the Federal Impoundment 
and Information Act, which requires the President to submit reports to 
the Congress and Comptroller General detailing certain information 
concerning funds which are appropriated and partially or completely 
impounded.
  The act essentially forbade the President from impounding funds, 
unless Congress acted to approve that impoundment. But, the act did not 
force Congress' hand. By simple inaction, the funds would automatically 
be released.
  Under current law, the President sends up his recommended cuts, and 
if Congress does not act to approve them, they become meaningless. The 
cuts simply die on the vine as Congress spends more and more and 
accuses everyone but themselves of fearing tough spending choices.
  Over the years, the congressional attitude toward Presidential 
rescissions has become one of nearly total neglect. In 1991 President 
Bush proposed 47 rescissions for a possible savings of $5.55 billion. 
Only one rescission was approved by Congress. We saved $2.1 million--a 
drop in the bucket.
  Since 1974, Congress has approved a mere 30 percent of the 
President's rescissions. We have chosen to ignore more than $41 billion 
which the President identified as unnecessary spending.
  In 1974, Congress ignored all the President's rescissions, a 100 
percent failure rate. In 1975, 56 percent were ignored. In 1976, we 
failed to enact 86 percent. More recently, in 1983, 100 percent of the 
President's rescissions were ignored. In 1984, we failed to enact 67 
percent and in 1985 we failed to enact 60 percent. By 1986 and 1987, we 
failed to enact 95 percent and 97 percent of those rescissions. Since 
1974, we have acted on only 31 percent of the President's rescissions. 
In the meantime, our debt has more than quadrupled. Clearly, Congress 
has found the new impoundment procedures a bit too convenient.
  When I first came to the Senate in 1989, Senator McCain and I worked 
together to craft a legislative line-item veto to reverse these trends 
and restore some equilibrium between the Congress and the President. We 
have offered that bill every Congress, and we have forced the Senate to 
vote on it. But our bill has always been subject to a filibuster or to 
a budget point of order.
  In November 1989, I first offered my legislation as an amendment to 
another bill because the Senate would not even consider it on its own 
merits. That effort failed by a vote of 40 to 51. In June 1990, Senator 
McCain and I tried again. This time we went down by a vote of 43 to 50. 
Progress, though not much.
  But each time I'd brought the line-item veto to the floor I was 
subject to a chorus of advice. Address pork spending, I was told, while 
an appropriations bill is actually on the floor. Do not worry so much 
about giving the President line-item veto authority. Just offer an 
amendment to strike wasteful spending. So I tried it.
  Right after Desert Storm, the Congress was called on to pass a dire 
emergency supplemental to defray the costs of the war. It was 
legislation which came after noble sacrifice and unprecedented victory. 
And yet even this bill was a target of wasteful spending.
  It contained $1 million for the Maine Department of Agriculture to 
study potato virus. It included $609,000 for poultry inspection; 
$351,000 for new furnishings for the Library of Congress; $100,000 for 
the United States-Canada Salmon Commission. All this in a dire 
emergency supplemental to pay for the war costs of Desert Storm.
  But perhaps most disturbing, the bill required that the Navy overhaul 
and upgrade the U.S.S. Kennedy at the Philadelphia Navy Shipyard, 
giving it a Service Life Extension Program [SLEP]. This was a classic 
case where special interests went far beyond what was actually needed 
or requested. The Navy strongly opposed the work for two compelling 
reasons.
  First was cost. While the SLEP at Philadelphia would cost the 
taxpayer $1 billion, the Navy felt that a simple overhaul--at half the 
price--was all the work that was required. In addition, the Navy had 
downsized its fleet, so extensive service to older carriers was not 
needed. The Navy could simply deactivate the older carriers.
  So the issue was $1 billion of spending that the Department of 
Defense said was unnecessary. I decided that this would be a good 
candidate for an amendment on the floor. I would take the advice of 
those who said that Congress can provide its own form of line-item veto 
by simply amending bills. That experience taught me a lot about the 
business-as-usual pork practices that are now so common in this 
distinguished body.
  When I offered my reasons for opposing this spending, a good number 
of my colleagues agreed. My amendment passed with a healthy majority of 
56 votes. Yet when the doors closed on the conference committee, the 
funding was quietly restored to the bill without debate. What was won 
on the Senate floor after a lengthy floor debate, was quietly easily 
restored behind closed doors.
  Since that time, Senator McCain has gone to heroic lengths to 
scrutinize appropriations bills and help save the taxpayer money. He 
and his staff have been on the floor during debate on most 
appropriations bills to ensure that last minute deals funding 
unauthorized projects are not cut to slip spending into bills.
  But those efforts alone are not enough. We have learned that they 
simply do not work. We need true reform. We need the line-item veto. So 
we have pursued our efforts in each Congress.
  But we have not been the first in Congress to try. The line-item veto 
was first introduced on January 18, 1876, by Congressman Charles 
Faulkner of West Virginia. It was referred to the Committee on the 
Judiciary where it died. About 200 line-item veto bills have since been 
introduced. In nearly every succeeding Congress the proposal has been 
reoffered in varying forms.
  The proposed amendment has for the most part been buried in the 
Judiciary Committees. Very few have been reported, and those which 
have, were reported adversely.
  In 1883 on a motion to suspend the rules so that the House Judiciary 
Committee might be discharged and House Resolution 267 passed, the 
motion was defeated: This has been one of the few occasions in which 
the item-veto principle has been subjected to a vote in either House.
  On April 21, 1884, for the first time, the Senate Judiciary Committee 
favorably reported a Resolution--S. Res. 18 by Mr. Lapham of New York--
proposing to amend the Constitution so as to confer on the President 
the power to veto items in appropriation bills. By unanimous consent on 
December 9, 1884, Senate Joint Resolution 18 was made special order of 
business for December 17. But on that date and again in February the 
resolution was passed over in the Senate indefinitely.
  In this century, the line-item veto continued to be actively 
considered.
  In 1938, the line-item veto passed the House of Representatives, but 
failed to be considered in the Senate.
  In 1957, Congressman Stewart Udall had this to say:

       The tendency in the Congress naturally is that the local 
     interest is predominant. Each of us have projects, we have 
     Federal programs we feel are vital to our districts. In 
      [[Page S4169]] our system of checks and balances, it seems 
     to me a good argument can be made that it is good and it is 
     wise to have someone outside the legislative, namely the 
     executive, also weigh and particular proposal against the 
     national interest, and I think that is essentially what the 
     item veto would do.

  Congressman Charles Bennett added:

       As far as I can ascertain, our Constitution and practices 
     in the early days of our country contemplate that the 
     President would find the means readily available to him to 
     veto an appropriation. This is no longer possible for a 
     President in 1957, not because of any change in the 
     Constitution, but because of the practice of Congress in 
     bringing in very large bills from the standpoint of money and 
     from the standpoint of number of items and diversity of items 
     covered. The evil is not so great in authorizations, because 
     in authorizations there is no emergency generally involved. 
     There is an emergency in having adequate funds to carry on 
     the Government, and when you have a large sum of money in an 
     appropriations bill involving many employees and may facets 
     of Government, there is an emergency in passing such a bill; 
     so that the President has an almost impossible situation 
     confronting him if he desires to see any economies made in 
     these bills that are so multiplicitous in material and detail 
     and in dollars.

  In 1957, the Nation ran a budget surplus of $3.4 billion, and our 
country's debt was $272 billion. In other words, the total debt our 
Nation accumulated in the first 181 years of our history was 
approximately equal to our annual operating deficits today. And in 
1957, our Nation's books showed no red ink. Yet Members of Congress 
were arguing for a significant change in the name of the national 
interest and in the name of good government. They were arguing for the 
line-item veto.
  Today, the situation has changed radically. The Nation's total 
Federal debt has increased 1,665 percent to $4.8 trillion. We will 
borrow more in 4 days this year than we borrowed in the entire year of 
1958.
  The arguments of 1957 still stand. Line-item veto helps to balance 
the parochial interest with the national interest; it enables a 
President to rationally deal with omnibus spending bills. Nothing has 
changed but the urgency of our circumstances.
  According to CBO:

       Failure to reverse [current] trends in fiscal policy and 
     the composition of Federal spending will doom future 
     generations to a stagnating standard of living, damage U.S. 
     competitiveness and influence in the world, and hamper our 
     ability to address pressing national trends.

  And when we proceed to S. 4 on Monday, it will be the first time in 
the history of the U.S. Senate that the legislative line-item veto will 
be actually considered as a free standing bill in its own right.
  Last November, anger against Congress burnt white hot. With their 
votes, the American people decisively demonstrated their deep 
frustration with the status quo. Last week, the U.S. Senate fueled that 
anger and betrayed their trust. By failing to pass a balanced budget 
amendment, we clearly demonstrated that we as an institution are more 
concerned with preserving our power than with protecting our Nation's 
posterity.
  Let us show the American people that we are serious about radically 
changing the way Congress does business. Let's show them that we intend 
to present appropriations bills without embarrassment. Let's send the 
message to taxpayers that, under our guidance, their dollars will not 
be wasted. Let us act to boldly eliminate the dual deficits of public 
funds and of public trust. Let us resist the urge to continue business 
as usual.
  Let us finally pass the line-item veto. The time has come.
  As I said, this is a speech that could be given today, a time-
honored--``honored'' is the wrong word--a time-abused practice of the 
legislative branch of submitting to the executive, to the President a 
bill which, as Smith says, is necessary for the support of Government 
but loaded with illegitimate expenditures, knowing that the President's 
only choice is to accept the entire bill or reject the entire bill, 
because he does not have the power to line-item veto, or to reject a 
part of that bill that is not necessary to the future of this country 
or not deemed a wise expenditure.
  That is what we are all about. Nothing has changed. Nothing has 
changed in over 130 years. Nothing has changed since the formation of 
this country and the adoption of this Constitution because, as Smith 
says, we are doing this based on our experience, what the legislature 
has accomplished and what the country has experienced in terms of the 
inability to check, check, as he said, an illegitimate or corrupt 
expenditure, the flagrant abuse of the power by the Congress through 
its habitual practice of loading bills necessary for governmental 
appropriations.
  Subsequent to that, America fought a painful and bloody war to 
preserve the Union, to keep us one Nation, united. Millions of our 
fellow Americans won their freedom and put an end to one of the most, 
if not the most, tragic chapters in American history. Yet, at the time, 
the germ of an idea was born in the Union that took root across the 
country. The idea has enhanced accountability for the taxpayers' money 
through the line-item veto.
  After the Civil War, line-item veto authority spread like wildfire 
throughout the States. Today, 43 Governors enjoy the same power that we 
are fighting to give the President of the United States: The authority 
to veto wasteful spending items.
  Line-item veto became a reality in the United States possessions as 
well, not just the States but the possessions. Congress, though it 
failed to give the President line-item veto authority, gave this power 
to the Governors General of the possessions. The line-item veto was 
granted to the Governor General of the Philippines in 1916 and the 
Governors of the territories of Hawaii in 1900, Alaska in 1912, Puerto 
Rico in 1917, and the Virgin Islands in 1954. Thus, Congress recognized 
the need for and the virtue of this authority which it had never given 
to the President of the United States and to the American people.
  States have been successfully using line-item veto since, many for 
over 100 years. Today, almost uniformly the Governors endorse giving 
the President of the United States the same tool for controlling 
spending that they enjoy. As someone on this floor--it may have been 
the Senator from Missouri who is presiding in the chair--said on 
Friday, we are not aware of any rush in any State legislatures across 
the country in these 43 States to take away their Governor's authority 
under line-item veto. If that is happening in any of the legislatures 
across this land, we are not aware of it.
  It seems to have worked very well, this check and balance system, the 
power to appropriate, the power to say, ``Yes, but not 100 percent of 
what you have sent we think is in the national interest, we in the 
executive branch think is in the national interest. We will take 97 
percent of it, but this 3 percent just does not go to expenditures in 
the national interest,'' and then to turn that back to the Congress, 
and the Congress, if it wants, can override that decision, but it takes 
a two-thirds vote to do so.
  A Cato Institute survey of 118 former Governors and current 
Governors, including Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Michael Dukakis, and 
Bill Clinton, reveals a strong consensus that a line-item veto for the 
President would be an effective method of reducing the massive Federal 
deficit. One hundred eighteen former or current U.S. Governors, 
bipartisan--Jimmy Carter, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Ronald 
Reagan--reveals a consensus and a support for a line-item veto.
  That survey showed that 67 of the respondents were Republicans, 50 
were Democrats, 19 were serving Governors when they responded.
  Ninety-two percent of the Governors--92 percent--believe that a line-
item veto for the President would help restrain Federal spending; 88 
percent of the Democratic respondents supported the line-item veto; 55 
percent of the Governors believe Congress has too much authority over 
the Federal budget, and only 2 percent think the President has too much 
authority.
  Let me repeat that: 55 percent of the Governors believe that Congress 
has too much authority over the Federal budget, and only 2 percent 
think the President has too much authority.
  When they were asked, ``Was the line-item veto a useful tool to you 
as Governor in balancing the State budget,'' 69 percent said the line-
item veto was a very useful tool, and 23 percent said it was a somewhat 
useful tool. Only 7 percent said it was not useful. Ninety-one percent 
of the Democratic Governors said that the line-item veto 
 [[Page S4170]] was a very useful or somewhat useful tool.
  The survey also asked, ``Do you think that a line-item veto for the 
President would help restrain Federal spending?'' Ninety-two percent 
said yes; 88 percent of the Democrats agreed.
  Since the Budget Reform and Impoundment Act of 1974, every President 
has complained that Congress has usurped the executive branch's 
traditional powersover the budget process. The Governors agree.
  ``In your opinion,'' the survey went on to ask, ``does Congress or 
the President have too much authority over the Federal budget today?'' 
The survey said and the majority responded, Congress has too much 
power.
  Let me quote from what some of the Governors have actually said:

       Line-item veto is a useful tool that a Governor can use on 
     occasion to eliminate blatantly pork-barrel expenditures that 
     can strain the budget. At the same time, he must answer to 
     the voters if he or she uses the veto irresponsibly. It is a 
     certain restraint on the legislative branch.

  Gov. Keith Miller, of Alaska, Republican Governor, 1969.

       I support the line-item veto because it is an executive 
     function to identify budget plan excesses and wasteful items. 
     It is an antidote for pork.

  Gov. Hugh Carey, of New York, a Democrat, who served from 1975 to 
1983.

       Congress' practice of passing enormous spending bills means 
     that funding the Lawrence Welk Museum to the study of bovine 
     flatulence slips through Congress. The President may be 
     unable to veto a major bill that includes such spending 
     abuses because the majority of the bill is desperately 
     needed. The line-item veto would let the President control 
     the irresponsible spending that Congress can't. The line-item 
     veto already works at the State level. It not only allows the 
     Governor to veto wasteful spending, it works as a deterrent 
     to wasteful spending because legislators know it will be 
     vetoed.

  That is a statement by current Gov. Pete Wilson, of California, 
Republican.

       I believe it provides the checks and balance, even if it 
     requires legislators to consider the potential for veto and 
     thereby makes them more accountable.

  Gov. Mike Sullivan, a Democrat from Wyoming.

       Legislators love to be loved, so they love to spend money. 
     Line-item veto is essential to enable the executive to hold 
     down spending.

  That was spoken by William Weld, the current Governor of 
Massachusetts.

       When I was Governor of California, the Governor had the 
     line-item veto, so you could veto parts of a bill or even 
     part of the spending in a bill. The President can't do that. 
     I think, frankly--of course, I'm prejudiced--Government would 
     be far better off if the President had the right of the line-
     item veto.

  Ronald Reagan, former California Governor.

       It can be a surgical tool to highlight foolishness and thus 
     help the executive make his case.

  Said Pete DuPont, Republican Governor of Delaware from 1977 to 1985:

       To the detriment of the Federal process, the President is 
     not held accountable for a balanced budget. Congress takes 
     control over budget development within its budget resolution 
     after which the President may only approve or veto 13 
     appropriation bills. Without the line-item veto, the 
     President has minimal flexibility to manage the Federal 
     budget after it is passed.

  So said Douglas Wilder, Democrat Governor of Virginia from 1990 to 
1994.
  Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives, moderates, current, 
past, historical, virtually all have said the line-item veto works in 
their States. It worked for them. It worked in their relations with 
their legislators. It ought to apply to the Congress.
  Senator Ashcroft, now presiding in the chair, eloquently spoke on 
Friday of the line-item veto and what it meant to him when he was 
Governor of Missouri and how the interaction between the executive and 
the legislature worked to eliminate unnecessary, unneeded spending of 
hard-earned, scarce taxpayers' dollars. And he had a terrific chart 
illustrating that it not only works when you are Governor of the State 
of Missouri, but it works when you are head of household or father of a 
household and you sit down around the kitchen table with the family and 
say, ``Let's plan out next month's or next year's budget, the things we 
have to do, the things that we would like to do. Let's check our 
revenues and see what funds might be available, everybody submit their 
request and let's go down the line and see what works.''
  There might be an item that you have to line out and in many cases 
substitute something for that. Instead of the trip to Disney World that 
everybody would like to take every year and stay at the hotel right on 
the grounds and not have to worry about being down the road or across 
the street and driving in and parking but just get on the tram in the 
lobby of the hotel and go to the next exhibit, which we would all like 
to do but which most of us cannot afford to do once in a lifetime, let 
alone once every year, you might have to adjust. You might have to go 
to Sea World instead or you might have to, as Senator Ashcroft said, go 
to the State park for a vacation.
  You line out some items. You substitute some others. You reduce it. 
You negotiate. That is the process that takes place under line-item 
veto, and that is the process that would take place if the President 
would have that line-item veto.
  Almost every President since Ulysses Grant has made the same case as 
the Governors made. Only one President in the 20th century has not 
requested the line-item veto, only one. In his message to Congress on 
August 14, 1876, President Grant claimed discretionary authority of the 
items of appropriations bills. In signing the river and harbor bill he 
said, and I quote:

       If it was obligatory upon the executive to expend all the 
     money appropriated by Congress, I would return the river and 
     harbor bill with my objections. Without enumerating, many 
     appropriations are made for the works of purely private or 
     local interests and in no sense national. I cannot give my 
     sanction to these and will take care that during my term of 
     office no public money shall be expended upon them. Under no 
     circumstances will I allow expenditure upon works not clearly 
     national.

  No objection was made to President Grant's interpretation of that. 
Congress knew that it had been caught with its hand in the cookie jar. 
Does that mean expenditures on rivers and harbors are not necessary? Of 
course not. Some of those are very necessary. But in some years you 
cannot do as much as you would like to do in other years. And at other 
times there are higher priorities. Of course, the natural thing to do 
for Congress is to want to spend that money because, as Governor Weld 
said, ``Legislators love to be loved and so they love to spend money.''
  Nothing brings a smile to the face of your constituents or special 
interest group more than the word ``yes.'' ``Yes, we will fund your 
request.'' ``Yes, we will give you everything you ask for.'' Boy, does 
that make life easy as a legislator. It is fun to go home and say, 
``You know that request you asked me about 6 months ago? Done. I 
slipped it in the--such and such--appropriations bill. The President 
signed it just the other day.'' You are a hero. They hold a dinner in 
your honor. They give you a little plaque and you put it on the wall, 
``Legislator of the year.'' Of course, we love to be loved. Of course, 
we love to go home and say ``yes'' to people.
  However, under the process that we have operating today at the 
Federal level, we have a very convenient excuse to say ``yes,'' that 
allows us to say ``yes'' that is not available to most legislators. 
Most legislators are operating under either a balanced budget 
constitutional prohibition, a constitutional mandate to require a 
balanced budget or they are operating under line-item veto or both.
  Do you know what that means? One of two things. It means that when 
those interest groups come and say, ``Can you get this money for us?'' 
you have to look them back in the eye and say, ``That may be a worthy 
project and in fact I even support it, but here's my dilemma. Right now 
we are running really close on the amount of revenues coming in and the 
amount of expenditures going out. And there's only one of two ways that 
I can really address your request this year. The first is to look at 
some other program and cut that out and substitute your program, take 
the money from that and use it to pay for yours.''
  Of course, that is not the preferred method today because nobody 
wants to go over to the other group and say, ``By the way, we are going 
to eliminate your program, cut your program so we can give it to the 
new program over here,'' because everybody wants to please everybody.
   [[Page S4171]] The second option available to them is to raise 
taxes, to go to the public and say, ``We've got a new idea, a new 
program we would like to increase funding for. We are not willing to 
take the heat to cut out any existing program and so we are going to 
have to raise your taxes to generate more money.'' Not too many 
legislators like to do that, like to run home and tell people they are 
going to raise their taxes.
  Now, the Federal legislators have a third option. Here is the 
problem. The third option is to say ``yes'' to everybody and then 
borrow the money to cover the expenditure, float some more debt so you 
do not have to go to the constituents and say, ``We are going to raise 
your taxes to pay for this.'' You do not have to go to some other 
program and say, ``We are going to have to cut your expenditures to pay 
for this.'' You say ``yes'' to everybody. And you produce an unbalanced 
budget--deficit spending--borrowing the money to pay for it, and we 
will let some future Congressman worry about the implications of that.
  Well, the future is now. The future is here. That time-honored 
practice has now led us to a nearly $5 trillion debt. Line-item veto is 
one of the tools which we will use, if it is passed, to adjust 
significantly the way that Congress spends the taxpayers' dollars. I 
deeply regret we did not pass a balanced budget amendment--it failed by 
one vote--because it is a much more significant change in the way we 
would do business.
 That would force us, year after year after year after year, in support 
of the Constitution of the United States, to not spend more money than 
we take in. That would make honest legislators out of all of us. That 
would bring integrity back to the halls of the Congress, in terms of 
the way we address the people's interests and the people's wishes and 
the way in which we handle the people's money.

  That having failed, the only other real game in town that will bring 
change in the way we make decisions about how to spend money is line-
item veto. Will it balance the budget? Absolutely not. I wish it would, 
but it will not. But will it fundamentally change the way in which we 
look at how we spend taxpayers' dollars? Yes, it will. And it will 
help. It will add up to some real significant savings. It will change 
the way we do our business.
  I contend, with all the promises, all the rhetoric, all the 
wonderful, ``Oh, we just need to summon up the will we need to get this 
job done,'' it just has not happened. Year after year, one decade after 
another, for one reason or another, Congress has not summoned up the 
will to get the job done. There is the human temptation of saying we 
will do it after the next election--and then comes the next election, 
and then the next election, and before you know it, it is the next 
decade, and before you know it we have a $5 trillion debt and, ``Yes, 
it is terrible, it is horrible, it impacts the next generation, but not 
yet; we are not quite there yet. See, we have these problems, those 
problems, et cetera.''
  So we are talking about fundamental structural change in the way 
Congress does it business. Line-item veto is the second best way I can 
think of to do it. A balanced budget amendment is first. That failed. 
Line-item veto is a distant second, but frankly it is the only other 
game in town. It is the only game we are talking about. If somebody has 
a better structural way to change things around here, I am all for it.
  Listen to the words of President Franklin Roosevelt. In his budget 
message for fiscal year 1939, President Roosevelt, after calling 
attention to the use of the line-item veto in the majority of our 
States and remarking that the system meets with general approval in the 
many States which have adopted it, said:

       A respectable difference of opinion exists as to whether a 
     similar line-item veto could be given the President by 
     legislation or whether a constitutional amendment would be 
     necessary. I strongly recommend that the present Congress 
     adopt whichever course it may deem to be the correct one.

  The bottom line is, even though some of us would like to amend the 
Constitution and give the President the constitutional line-item veto 
authority, we do not have the votes to do that. We came one vote short 
on balanced budget, and we do not have the votes to accomplish that on 
line-item veto. But we do have the votes to do it legislatively.
  As Franklin Roosevelt said, ``* * * whichever course Congress may 
deem to be the correct one.'' I do not know if it is the correct one, 
but it is the doable one. We have a doable one. We have one that can 
pass, and can be enacted into law. And, frankly--frankly--the way it is 
structured, if it does not work, Congress can repeal it. I would regret 
that. That is the problem with a statutory fix. But we can do it this 
Congress; we can do it this week.
  President Truman said--and I think this is the most telling statement 
of all--in the second volume of his memoirs, Harry S. Truman wrote the 
following:

       One important lack in the Presidential veto power, I 
     believe, is the authority to veto individual items in 
     appropriation bills. The President must approve the bill in 
     its entirety or refuse to approve it or let it become law 
     without his approval.
       As a Senator, I tried to discourage the practice of adding 
     riders deliberately contrived to neutralize otherwise 
     positive legislation [Truman said] because it is a form of 
     legislative blackmail.

  I quoted that last week. Legislative blackmail, that is what it is. I 
do not care what sugar-coating we put on it. I do not care what 
justification we raise. A lot of this pork-barrel stuff is legislative 
blackmail.
  We may have a defense emergency bill to pay for operations in Haiti, 
Rwanda, or Somalia that have already taken place, and the Defense 
Department accounts are drained. Or we may have a hurricane in Florida 
and we need emergency money to be appropriated to deal with those who 
are homeless and those who need health care and those who need 
emergency rations. Or we may have floods and earthquakes in California 
or floods in the Midwest, we have pressing national needs, and we 
construct a bill to take care of those needs. And at that point 
legislators say, ``Aha, there is one the President has to sign. I mean, 
this is an emergency. We have to get this money out in a hurry. That is 
going to have to go through the Congress. That is the one I will attach 
this little item I have been carrying for the folks back home. That is 
the one where I can get my, not national interest item, but parochial 
interest item attached to. We will just attach that in committee, and 
we will put it on the floor and we will send it to the President of the 
United States.''
  It will be buried in there and the President will say, as every 
President in this century except one has said, ``If I only had the 
line-item veto, I could do what I have to do to accept that 
appropriations bill, but I could take out that unnecessary piece of 
spending that I know was attached on there just because they saw this 
train rolling through and this was a great vehicle to attach it to.''
  Of course, let us understand if Congress wants to overturn that 
decision of the President, it can do so. It has to come down here and 
debate the item. Members have to cast their yea or nay on it so the 
folks back home understand what they voted for and have the right to 
say, ``What in the world? I did not send you to Washington, DC, to vote 
for that item. What are you doing that for?''
  Right now they do not have that because legislators have a very 
convenient excuse. ``Oh, I don't support that either. But, you see, we 
had this emergency, this bill came through, and Senator so-and-so from 
such-and-such a place snuck that devil in here and, boy, my dilemma was 
either deny the health payments to veterans or emergency funds for 
homeless victims or money to take care of the farmers in the flooded 
Midwest, or reject all that in order to take care of Senator such-and-
such's little item.''
  The voters scratch their heads and say, ``Is there not a solution to 
that?'' The solution is line-item veto.
  Mr. President, I am going to skip some items here. My colleague from 
Mississippi is on the floor. I am going to try to get to a point where 
I can wrap up.
  But, there is a great history of abuses of the spending power by the 
Congress. It is a natural human tendency. I am not here pointing 
fingers at any of my colleagues. The only right I have is to point a 
finger at myself. I am a legislator. As the Scriptures say, we have 
all 
 [[Page S4172]] seen it and come short of--I am paraphrasing the 
Scriptures here--come short of what our obligations are.
  We are all guilty. We all know this is an abuse of power by the 
legislative branch, by the spenders. So what we are saying here is let 
us institute a structural reform that really liberates all of us from 
this insidious practice of adding pork-barrel spending to otherwise 
needed appropriations bills. Let us make a structural change so we, as 
a legislature, can restore some credibility and integrity to our work 
here.
  It is easy to read down the lists, Senator so-and-so did such-and-
such. Look at this item. Look at that item. But I am not going to do 
that. I am not going to do that because we are all guilty. We all need 
the liberation of doing what I think in our hearts we know is right.
  Mr. President, as has been stated often, this adds up to some pretty 
big money. Senator McCain and I have been offering this alternately 
over the past many years. We have not been able to break through the 
filibuster or we have not been able to break through the budget points 
of order to get the 60 votes necessary to get to a vote on the bill. We 
trust there will not be a filibuster attempt on this issue. I guess we 
will find out this evening at 5 o'clock when we go to the bill. We are 
appreciative of the fact that the Senator from West Virginia has 
consented to allow us to not have a filibuster on the motion to proceed 
so we are going to go to the bill at 5 o'clock today. We will find out 
soon whether or not the Congress is willing to go forward with this in 
serious debate and serious study.
  There is going to be an alternative version, apparently, presented to 
the version now on the floor. It will be, we believe, substituted for a 
version that Senator McCain and I and others, Senator Domenici and 
others have worked with Senator Dole on which we think is a stronger 
version. We expand the scope of line-item vetoes to not only include 
appropriations but also target tax expenditures and new entitlements--
not existing entitlements but new entitlements. But there is going to 
be a mild alternative presented, apparently, according to the minority 
leader--a mild alternative. We considered that, but we rejected it 
because it is not line-item veto. The same 51 votes that were collected 
to pass the appropriation in the first place can be used to thwart the 
President's efforts to stop that spending.
  Veto means veto. Veto means two-thirds. Technically, the Constitution 
does not use the word ``veto.'' But it does call for a two-thirds 
override by the Congress for bills not accepted by the President, or 
returned to the Congress by the President. We are applying that same 
principle, that same rule, to the practice that the President is 
granted that authority of taking out by line-item pieces of those bills 
rather than rejecting the whole. So, if there is going to be a measure 
which fundamentally alters the way in which this Congress operates, it 
has to be a two-thirds vote. Anything short of that is a mild version 
that will have little, if any, significant effect on the way we do 
business.
  I think that has been pretty well decided among at least Republicans. 
And I think it is supported by a number of Democrats who have supported 
line-item veto authority before, some of them former Governors, others 
who believe that we could need some structural changes in the way that 
this Congress operates. And we welcome and appreciate their support.
  Members have been told, ``Just offer these amendments. If you do not 
like something in a bill, offer an amendment.'' Senator McCain in 
particular has gone to heroic lengths to scrutinize appropriations 
bills. But they always run up against budget points of order. They 
always run up against reasons why it really cannot happen. Then the 
aggregate, in the end, very little change is made and somehow these 
things keep slipping through. Everybody scratches their head, and, 
says, ``I don't know how that got in there. It is kind of embarrassing. 
But I do not know how that got in there.''
  For more than 100 years Members have been trying to strike 
unnecessary pork-barrel spending from appropriations, and the results 
are not all that good. In 1957 Congressman Stewart Udall said:

       The tendency in Congress naturally is that the local 
     interest is predominant. Each of us have projects. We have 
     Federal programs we fell vital to our districts. In our 
     system of checks and balances, it seems to me a good argument 
     can be made that it is good and it is wise to have someone 
     outside the legislature, namely, the executive, also weigh 
     any particular proposal against the national interest, and I 
     think that is essentially what the line-item veto would do.

  Mr. President, in 1957 this Nation ran a budget surplus of $3.4 
billion, and our country's debt at the time was $272 billion. The total 
debt of our Nation accumulated in the first 181 years of our history 
was approximately equal to this year's current operating deficit; 181 
years of effort, of spending the people's money by this legislature is 
equal today to 1 year of deficit spending.
  In 1957 our Nation's books showed no red ink. Yet, even then Members 
of Congress were arguing for a change in the name of the national 
interest and in the name of good government. Even when we did not have 
a significant deficit, even when we were, the last time we operated at 
a balanced budget on a current year, Members were arguing for a line-
item veto because they knew that it would stop a practice of, as Harry 
Truman said, ``blackmailing the President.''
  Today however, the situation as we know has changed radically. The 
Nation's total Federal debt has increased 1,665 percent; 1,665 percent 
to $4.8 trillion. Let us go back over that. One-hundred and eighty 
years it took to get to $272 billion. That was in 1957. And since then 
it has increased. The debt has increased from $272 billion to $4.8 
trillion, a number I cannot begin to comprehend--1,665 percent 
increase. Maybe this puts it in better perspective. We will borrow more 
in 4 days in 1995 than we borrowed in the entire year of 1958. We will 
borrow more in 4 days of this year, 1995, than we borrowed in the 
entire year of 1958. That is how far we have gone. The arguments of 
1957 still stand. Line-item veto helps balance the parochial interest 
with the national interest. It enables the President to rationally deal 
with omnibus spending bills. Nothing has changed but the urgency.
  According to the CBO, failure to reverse current trends in fiscal 
policy in the composition of the Federal spending will doom future 
generations--doom future generations. Every one of us knows that in our 
heart we will be dooming the future generations by what we are doing 
here with the taxpayer dollars, and creating a debt which we will not 
be able to pay as a Nation, which our children and grandchildren will 
not be able to pay. They will not be able to buy a house at a 
reasonable interest rate. They will not be able to finance an education 
for their children. We are dooming future generations.
  That is the Congressional Budget Office conclusion. We will doom them 
to a stagnating standard of living, they said. We will damage U.S. 
competitiveness and influence in the world, and we will hamper our 
ability to address pressing national trends. If there is time to do 
something, it is now, not next Congress, and not next century; now.
  So when we proceed on this bill today at 5 o'clock, it will be the 
first time in the history of the U.S. Senate that the legislative line-
item veto will actually be considered as the freestanding bill in its 
own right.
  Last November anger against this Congress burned white hot. With 
their votes the American people decisively demonstrated their deep 
frustration with the status quo. Last week the U.S. Senate fueled that 
anger, and betrayed their trust 2 weeks ago by failing to pass a 
balanced budget amendment. We demonstrated that we as an institution 
are more concerned with preserving our power than with protecting our 
Nation's prosperity.
  Let us show the American people that we are serious about changing 
the way this Congress does business. Let us show them that we intend to 
present appropriations bills without embarrassment. Let us send the 
message to taxpayers that under our guidance their dollars will not be 
wasted, and let us act to boldly eliminate the dual deficits of public 
funds and of public trust. Let us resist the urge to continue business 
as usual. Let us finally pass the line-item veto.
  Mr. President, the time is now.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
   [[Page S4173]] Mr. LOTT addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Mississippi.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I wish to be heard on the line-item veto. 
But just for a moment, I would like to observe the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Mack). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, first, I want to thank several Senators for 
their tireless effort to put together a process whereby this line-item 
veto legislation could be considered by the Senate. Without the 
tenacity and the dedicated work and support of Senator Coats from 
Indiana, who has just been speaking, and Senator McCain of Arizona, the 
moment for this consideration would never have occurred. I think they 
deserve a lot of credit for pushing it through the years, many times as 
amendments to other bills. They have seen their efforts meet with 
defeat. But they continued to push for it because they know it is the 
right thing to do.
  Also, I take note of the fact that they have worked with a number of 
other Senators to come up with a compromise that will be the basis for 
our consideration as the week goes forward. The majority leader, 
Senator Dole, has put a high priority on this legislation. He committed 
early on that this would be on the Senate agenda early in the session. 
I think it is probably the fifth bill we have considered this year, and 
I think he certainly deserves credit for moving line-item veto to the 
top of our priorities. Senators Domenici and Stevens have played 
decisive roles in bringing us to the point where this legislation could 
be laid down, so we could move forward on this important issue.
  The quest for a line-item veto has been a 10-year quest. An idea so 
simple has had a very complicated history; an idea so needed has been 
needlessly blocked, in my opinion, by politics or by institutional 
concerns which I do not think are well founded.
  We hear from the opponents that there is a plan, perhaps, for a 
filibuster against the compromise proposal that will be offered later 
today, sometime around 5 o'clock or later. We also hear from the other 
side that this may be opposed on a partisan basis, or that it is really 
not needed by the people. I hope none of that will happen. We have had 
too much of that already this year. We have already had filibuster 
after filibuster or slowdowns. We have had to go to cloture votes. This 
is an important substantive issue which should be debated fully, no 
question about that. But I hope we will not go to a filibuster. I hope 
we will not get to accusations about the motives of Senators on both 
sides of this issue. It is an issue that the American people are 
familiar with. Basically, I think they understand it and support it. I 
think we ought to go ahead and debate the merits and have a straight 
vote on the substance and not get into another protracted filibuster.
  The line-item veto, as a matter of fact, has a history of bipartisan 
support. As my friend from Indiana, Senator Coats, pointed out, 
Senators Hollings, Bradley, and Biden have, in the past, offered bills 
similar to the compromise line-item veto proposal that we shall offer 
later today. In fact, Senator Hollings has been very much involved in 
this legislation in the past. Senator Bradley has, also.
  In the past, Senators Exon, Graham of Florida, Kohl, Heflin, Simon, 
and Robb have all voted for a version of the line-item veto. The 
distinguished minority leader, Senator Daschle, of South Dakota, has 
voted for the line-item veto in the past. I assume he will vote for one 
in the next few days. He says he supports one version of the line-item 
veto. But it is a very, very, very weak approach, one that even 
President Clinton has said he could not support, because it would be 
very difficult for the President--this President or future Presidents--
to actually have their veto sustained, because in fact the Senate, by a 
simple 51 vote or majority vote, could override that veto. At least, 
that is as I understand the proposal that will be offered by the 
minority leader. So we will have to take a close look at that.
  The line-item veto has not been just a Republican proposal. Senators 
of both parties, Presidents of both parties, who believe that we must 
restore a constitutional balance and fiscal sanity, believe in giving 
the President this line-item veto authority. That is why I hope we will 
move quickly on this bill, with the least possible partisan bickering. 
We need to allow the President --even a Democratic one--the ability to 
veto waste and pork or line items that have not been properly 
considered or sufficiently justified. We need to begin to get our debt, 
which now runs up to something like $13,000 for every man, woman, and 
child in this country, under control. And it will continue to grow. As 
has been stated today already, we are looking at a national debt of 
almost $5 trillion. Where will it end?
  I have been for this line-item veto as far back as the late 1970's, 
when President Carter was in office. I wanted to give him that 
authority. I was for it during the Reagan-Bush years. I wanted them to 
have that authority, and I am still for it. President Clinton has 
supported it and wants to be involved in trying to get this legislation 
passed by the Senate. So it is bipartisan. It should be nonpartisan.
  There have been differences of opinion, and different approaches have 
been offered in the past. But I think we have come to the point where 
we have to quit arguing over the approaches and decide to go with one 
line-item veto or another, but it must be a real one, one that requires 
a two-thirds vote for the Congress to override the President's action.
  So we have before us one that will be offered this afternoon, a solid 
bill, one that has unity of purpose, to give this authority to the 
President. It points a way to a future of more controlled spending on 
the Government's part. It will help us to begin to reduce the size of 
Government. It will not solve the deficit problem, but it can help. In 
fact, in discussing this matter with President Clinton, he said when he 
had the legislative veto as the Governor of Arkansas, it was not that 
he had to use it so much, it was just the mere presence, the mere 
existence of that opportunity that provided a chilling effect on 
excessive or wasteful spending.
  Since we are talking about the future versus the past, let me say 
that those who oppose the line-item veto, on the whole, in my opinion, 
really are clinging to the past--the way it has been done over the 
years here in the Congress. As a matter of fact, if you go back and 
look at the history, Presidents all the way back to Thomas Jefferson 
had ways, and, in fact, used different ways, to try to control 
Government spending. The tool used most often was impoundment.
  So the Presidents had impoundment from Thomas Jefferson's days all 
the way up to the 1970's when, during the Nixon administration, the 
Congress passed the Budget Impoundment Act of 1974. I voted for that 
act and sometimes I think maybe it was a mistake. When I first came to 
Washington as a young Congressman in 1973, I was amazed--having served 
as a staff member and then a Congressman--that really there was no 
process whereby the Congress looked at the budget. There was never any 
process where we racked up the revenues coming in and expenditures 
going out and added them up and admitted what the situation was, 
admitted how much of a deficit we were creating each year and how much 
that was adding to the national debt. There was no process to do that. 
I thought there should be a budget process in the Congress. So I 
accepted the Budget Impoundment Act of 1974, even though I was opposed 
to taking away the authority of Presidents to impound funds. I thought 
Presidents should have the authority to say, no, we should not spend 
that, it is not the right way, or the times have changed, whatever; but 
that authority was taken away. In its place we were giving to the 
President the ability to send up rescissions. But the truth of the 
matter is that the Presidents' rescissions have not gotten much 
consideration from the Congress. I will talk more about that in a 
moment.
  So, over the years, we have taken away the ability of the Presidents 
to really get involved in trying to control and limit or stop spending. 
So if there 
 [[Page S4174]] has been a shift in power in this area, it has been to 
the Congress, away from the President. I tell people in my State of 
Mississippi that Presidents do not even have the authority, are not 
required to, and do not sign budget resolutions, that they are out of 
the budget process other than to send up a budget, and then the 
Congress sometimes considers it, sometimes throws it out in the street 
and ignores it, and Congress passes its budget resolution without the 
President being involved in having to sign a joint resolution on the 
budget. I think the President should have that authority.
  The President does have the authority to sign or veto appropriations 
bills en bloc. But he must sign it all, whole hog. He cannot say, ``We 
shouldn't spend in this area,'' or ``There is a problem in this area.'' 
He has to sign it all or veto it all.
  So Presidents over the years have lost a lot of their authority over 
how the people's money is spent.
  Now, I acknowledge under the Constitution the appropriations process 
rests in the Congress. We should originate the appropriations bills in 
the House and vote on them in the Senate and we should have a very key 
role. But I think it is important also that the President have a role.
  Now, as a Member of Congress for the past 22 years, I have watched 
the Congress on occasion try to control itself, control spending. But 
it never really has happened. Oh, occasionally we will rise up and cut 
spending a little bit. We did that in the 1980's. We saved a little in 
the early 1980's. But then the temptation is too great to keep 
spending, more programs for everybody, more programs for everything, 
very little consideration really being given to the taxpayers of 
America.
  And for those Americans that are preparing their income tax returns 
right now, I imagine they are pretty agitated, pretty angry, pretty 
disgusted with the complicated forms, and taxes seem to be going up 
every year to pay for a lot of wasteful spending and bureaucracy and 
regulations and waste and fraud.
  We have to find a way to get a grip on it.
  And there are those who will stand up, I am sure, in the next few 
days or next couple of weeks and say, ``All Congress has to do is to do 
it. We do not need a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. We 
don't need a line-item veto. All we need to do is do it.''
  I agree. Let us do it. But for 22 years, I have watched the Congress 
not do it. Congress cannot or has not controlled its insatiable 
appetite for spending the people's money. It is too easy to spend 
money. It is hard to control spending.
  When we go home as Senators, we sometimes have conflicting messages 
given to us. Sometimes we want to please everybody. This applies to all 
of us; I do not exempt any of us; we all get involved in it. When we go 
home, our constituents say to us, ``Control spending. You need to get 
the deficit under control. What about the debt?''
  And then, as we start out the door, they say, ``Oh, but don't cut Big 
Bird. Don't cut the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.'' Or, ``Don't 
cut the farm subsidy.'' Or, ``Can you get us some more money for 
highway construction, bridge construction, waterway projects, and 
Farmers Home Administration projects?''
  And, by the time you get out the door, you have 17 requests sticking 
in your pockets for programs not to cut or places they want more money 
spent.
  Now, you cannot have it both ways. We either are going to control 
Government spending or not.
  Do the people really want the deficit brought under control or not? 
Are the people really worried about here and now, the present, their 
wants and desires, what they would like to have from the Federal 
Government, or does anybody worry about the debt that we are dumping 
off on our children and our grandchildren? When does fiscal 
responsibility set in? It should set in now.
  What we are talking about is change--changing the status quo. Are we 
going to continue the way Congress has done business for 40 years, or 
are we going to begin to get a grip on the size of the Federal 
Government, the waste in the Federal Government, controlling our 
spending appetite and, yes, allowing the President to be involved in 
that process, also?
  That is why we need this line-item veto. It will be one more 
mechanism, one more tool that can be used by Presidents to try to 
control spending, not only in the appropriations area.
  And I think the Appropriations Committee members are right. They are 
not causing the major increases in spending and in the deficit every 
year. So much of it is in the entitlement areas. So when it was 
suggested by some of the Senators, in the compromise bill we are going 
to have offered later on today, that targeted entitlements ought to be 
included, I also said, ``I agree. Include everything. Anything that is 
spending.''
  Any program that is targeted to a special interest or a small group 
of people or even one person or one corporation, give us, or the 
American people, that one last avenue where it can be reviewed. Give 
the President the line-item veto authority.
  I trust the Presidents. At least, we know that it is that person who 
is the restraint of last resort. In the case of the Congress, quite 
often the people that are advocating programs are one of 535 people in 
the House and the Senate. You cannot even get a grip on who really did 
it.
  Somebody said, let us not shift this authority away from the Congress 
to the President. Well, as a matter of fact, it is not really the 
Congress. Out of 435 House Members, there might be 10 Congressmen that 
really, really, know what is going in these appropriations bills or 
these entitlement bills. In the Senate, maybe there is a half-dozen 
that really knows what is in this appropriations bill or that 
appropriations bill, or what is in an entitlements package. So you are 
really talking about giving the President of the United States one last 
opportunity to control the maneuvers of 18 or so Members of Congress. 
That is what you are really talking about.
  So I think the line-item veto, used to target wasteful spending, is 
the wise thing to do. I am even willing to support a line-item veto 
power for an area that I refer to as the tax area.
  Now, in Washington--and only in Washington--when the people get to 
keep their money, their own money, the money they worked hard and 
earned, in Washington, that is called a tax expenditure. That is the 
Government spending money by letting the taxpayers keep their money. 
How ridiculous can you get?
  The man and woman out there working every day, 8, 10, 12 hours a day, 
two jobs, if they get to keep their money, in Washington, that is a tax 
expenditure. Only in Washington can that happen.
  But, a so-called tax expenditure or a tax cut can also be a special 
deal. I have watched in wonderment in the past after we passed major 
tax bills, when I was in the House, the Ways and Means Committee would 
have transition rules. I never quite figured out what that meant. But 
sooner or later, I figured out what it means is a lot of special deals 
for a lot of Members of the House and particularly of the Ways and 
Means Committee.
  Every member of the Ways and Means Committee would get a little deal, 
a little line item, a little insignificant thing, just a few hundred 
million here or maybe a billion there. And then it would come over to 
the Senate. We would pass another tax bill. And then you would have the 
transition rules and this member of the Finance Committee or that 
member of the Finance Committee would get a special deal.
  Maybe I am just mad because I never got one of those. But it puts a 
burden on me as a Senator looking out for my State. If I do not get 
some of these special deals, my constituency maybe is left out and some 
other constituency in some other State gets a special deal.
  But that is ridiculous. We should stop that kind of stuff. That is 
what leads to waste of the people's money, waste of the taxpayers' 
dollars.
  And so if we can develop language that says, yes, in a narrow way, in 
a targeted way, where there is a special deal for a limited number of 
people or limited number of corporations, I am willing to look at that. 
Let the President look at that.
  I mean he is not a czar. He is not some person off in some foreign 
country. We are talking about the President of our United States.
   [[Page S4175]] I call the line-item veto accountability--
accountability. Let us at least put the monkey on the President's back. 
Let him have the authority. And if he does not use it, then we know who 
to blame.
  Now, you can hardly even find out who sponsored these transition 
rules. You cannot even dig around in a report and find out why this new 
Federal building is being built or who for. Let the President have this 
line-item veto authority. I think that it will begin to turn things 
around.
  For the future, if we do not change our ways, it will be very bleak. 
Higher and higher deficits, less and less savings, bigger and bigger 
Government spending--these are what we have to look forward to without 
change now.
  And that is what the American people voted for in 1992 and in 1994. 
They want change. Are they going to get it? Not unless there is a 
change of attitude in this body.
  We lost the balanced budget amendment by one vote. If any one of 34 
Senators would have changed their vote, we would have added that to the 
Constitution or given the people a chance to vote on it to put it in 
the Constitution through the ratification process.
  And now the line-item veto. This would be a major step forward.
  We have not let small differences of opinion block us from securing a 
better future. We should not let politics stand in the way of a better 
fiscal discipline in the future.
  The forces of the past that are fighting with their last breath in 
this city say that we are giving the President too much power if we 
pass the line-item veto.
  I just think that is wrong. The bill does not expand the power of the 
President. It allows the President to use the veto authority he already 
has to pare out waste, pork, and abuse. Congress still has the power to 
overturn the President. If the President is truly wrong, the Congress 
will overturn him.
  Also, why be afraid of allowing this current President to use his 
power? We, on this side of the aisle--the Republicans--are ready to 
give this authority to President Clinton so he can have the opportunity 
to pare spending. We believe the line-item veto wielded by any 
President is a way to limit Government.
  People might say, well, maybe President Clinton just wants this 
special deal. Other Presidents might not have felt that way. Let me 
just read what some of the former Presidents have said, going all the 
way back--I mentioned Thomas Jefferson--but let me go back to Ulysses 
S. Grant. He urged the Congress to give him the line-item veto. He 
said, ``I will not complain about the extra workload.''
  President Chester B. Arthur, after deprecating the practice of 
combining appropriations for a great diversity of objects widely 
separated in nature and locality in one river and harbor bill, 
President Arthur, in his second inaugural message to Congress on 
December 4, 1882, suggested that the Congress enact separate 
appropriations bills for each interim improvement, exactly what we are 
talking about doing right here. He wanted that authority to line out 
some of these projects that really were not justified.
  President Franklin Roosevelt, in his budget message for fiscal year 
1939, pointed out the advantages of the line-item veto in the majority 
of our States and remarked that the system meets with great general 
approval in the many States which have adopted it. Forty-three State 
Governors have this authority. Most of them have not abused it. And a 
lot of them do not use it very much.
  Franklin Roosevelt supported this initiative. President Truman said, 
``One important lack in the Presidential veto power, I believe, is 
authority to veto individual items in appropriations bills. The 
President must approve the bill in its entirety, or refuse to approve 
it, or let it become law without his approval.'' That is exactly what 
we are talking about doing in the compromise legislation we will be 
considering later today.
  President Eisenhower backed a line-item veto. And the list goes on. 
The Presidents have all recognized the great need for this authority. 
There have been many complaints in recent history, back in the 1960's, 
1970's, about the Imperial Presidency, but not enough about the 
spendthrift Congress.
  If Congress alone could control our spending habits and cut out pork, 
we would not have the deficit we have today. But we have it.
  The line-item veto puts Congress on notice that every Government 
program and policy will be under scrutiny. Spending and tax policy will 
no longer be done in the dark. I could talk for a long time about how 
that happens in some of our conferences that occur between the House 
and the Senate. The forces of the past say line-item veto will not 
solve the deficit. I say the line-item veto is a step in the right 
direction.
  As the saying goes, it might just save $100 million there, or a few 
million there, or maybe $100 million there. Sooner or later, it adds up 
to real money. But it is a start, and it will help put such a chill on 
a lot of useless spending that the President would never even have to 
use the line-item veto.
  Surely, a nation cannot spend without bounds forever. Surely, a 
country cannot rob from its children always. Surely, a government can 
change its ways. The line-item veto is part of a comprehensive 
strategy, including the balanced budget amendment, to limit the growth 
of Government. That is what we are talking about doing here today with 
this legislation.
  Mr. President, as the debate goes forward, I am going to talk more 
about the specifics of how we will have separate enrollment in the 
legislation we will be considering. I will talk more about the 
constitutional questions that have been raised about this legislation. 
I think that will be a very important discussion.
  I am satisfied that what we have proposed today, what will be laid 
down this afternoon, is constitutional and we will debate that at great 
length.
  Just one final point before I yield, because I see there is at least 
one other Senator waiting to speak. It has been maintained over the 
years that the President has the rescission authority, but it is just 
that they have not used it that much, or maybe the Congress just has a 
little different idea of how it ought to be used.
  As a matter of fact, I remember when I was in the House one time, the 
President sent up--I guess this was during the Bush administration--
sent up a couple billion dollars in rescissions. The distinguished 
Republican leader in the House at the time, Bob Michel, called in his 
appropriators, the college of cardinals, who sat around the table and 
said: We have a couple of billion of rescissions from the President. 
Can we go forward with those? Can we have these savings? The college of 
cardinals went away and they came back and said, ``Well, we think maybe 
we could get about $69 million out of $2 billion.''
  What happened in 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, and 1994? Congress enacted 
rescissions, but also replied to new spending. So it is the same old 
deal. Even if the President tries to save a little money, Congress 
says, ``Voila, a little more money. We can spend that.''
  Mr. President, I am glad we have come to this point. I hope my 
colleagues will really look seriously at this line-item veto. Let 
Members make it bipartisan. Let Members have it supported by the 
Congress and by the President. The House of Representatives has already 
done its job. The President, a Democrat, agrees with the Republican 
House. Now it is in the hands of the Senate.
  We will make the decision on the line-item veto. I maintain that this 
decision is a lot bigger than just this one item of the line-item veto. 
The bigger issue is whether or not we really have any desire to control 
spending. If we do, we will adopt this legislation.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, under the unanimous-consent agreement, it 
is my understanding that time is to be allocated between the two 
managers of the bill. I would like to ask the Chair what the current 
time situation is.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republicans control an hour and the 
Democrats control approximately 2 hours and 30 minutes.
  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I might just note to my colleagues that we 
are getting kind a time imbalance situation here. It is our thought the 
time would be allocated back and forth, and we would be roughly equal 
when we moved to the hour of 5 o'clock. That is not happening.
   [[Page S4176]] I had a number of speakers for the proponents of 
line-item veto that wished to speak. I am concerned about the 
allocation of time and not having an opportunity to speak. I would just 
state to my colleagues that those who are interested in speaking today, 
if they could notify me, we will try to ensure that they have the 
opportunity to speak. Those who are speaking in opposition to this, 
this is a good time to come to the floor in order to state their 
opposition.
  Otherwise, we may be in a situation where we have a lot more speakers 
for a line-item veto than against a line-item veto, and run out of time 
for those who are for, unless the minority is willing to yield some of 
their time, which they generously did on Friday. I just give that 
notice to my fellow Senators.
  I would now like to yield whatever time he may consume to the Senator 
from Missouri.
  Mr. ASHCROFT addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, it is my pleasure to have an opportunity 
to speak today on behalf of the line-item veto. As I have said many 
times over the course of the last several months, a balanced budget is 
an aspiration or a goal. It is like saying that we intend to live 
within our means. The question then becomes how do we move from an 
aspiration to the actual achievement of our goal? One of the ways is to 
have the right tools. The line-item veto is just that.
  I was very interested in the comments offered by the Senator from 
Indiana, Senator Coats, earlier in the day. He was talking about 
special interests and their impact on the appropriations process. 
Often, a number of special projects are inserted to benefit specific 
districts or States. Then, when either the Senate or the President acts 
on the bill, there is no real opportunity to knock these things out 
because they are voted on as a group. As a result, we end up spending a 
lot of money that we would not spend if each of these items were to be 
held up individually to the light of day.
  I think this is a critically important point. We should understand 
that there is a difference between the national interest and the 
special interest; for example, it could be in the interest of an 
individual State to get several transportation projects from the 
Federal Government. However, this allocation of funds, while in the 
interest of the State, might not to be in the best interest of the 
Nation.
  All too frequently, Members who are elected to represent the State 
interest or the interest of a specific district are willing to 
participate in putting these projects into legislation. Consequently, 
it is important to look at one person alone who is endowed with the 
ability to protect the national interest, the President of the United 
States. He is the only individual who is elected by citizens from every 
State and territory in the Republic.
  So it is appropriate, then, that the President be given the tool with 
which to protect the national interest. I think the President needs 
that tool. Every President this century, with the exception of one, has 
asked for it. They have asked for it even in times when we were not 
facing the overwhelming deficits we are facing now.
  If it is not good for America, in the long run, it cannot be good for 
our States. I think people all across America have finally decided they 
do not want any more special favors for their locality if it means that 
the United States as a whole will suffer. It is kind of like racing 
home to a different room in a big house and putting more and more rich 
goods and furniture into the room and not attending to the maintenance 
of the entire house.
  I think we have come to the conclusion that if we do not protect the 
structural integrity of our house, it will not matter how many benefits 
we drag home to our room. For if the house falls down, those things 
which we think we are enjoying will be of little value.
  Incidentally, the figures on the debt continue to rise. The end of 
the debate over the balanced budget did not end the increase in the 
debt of the United States. Every 4 days we increase the debt as much as 
we did in the entire year of 1958. That is how headlong we are racing 
into debt--$4,815,827,000,000 of debt, and we are moving, according to 
the President's projected budgets over the next couple years, to a $6-
trillion-dollar-plus debt by the year 2000.
  One of the things that was of interest to me in the last several 
weeks was the way in which the world markets responded to our failure 
to pass the balanced budget amendment. There was a crisis in confidence 
about the value of the dollar, and no matter to whom you talked, no 
matter which economist you interviewed, they all indicated there was a 
substantial impact of a loss of confidence that flowed from the failure 
of the U.S. Senate to pass the balanced budget amendment. One of the 
ways the world markets reflect disenchantment is to devalue our 
currency. They just will not pay as much for a dollar as they once did. 
Another way is that those who finance U.S. debt will be less likely to 
hold it.
  What happens if the interest rate on our debt goes up? If interest 
rates go up by one-one hundredth of 1 percent--this is known as a basis 
point in the financial industry--that is $350 million a year. If 
interest rates go up by 1 percent it will cost the United States of 
America $35 billion in additional interest.
  So what we do here does make a difference. It makes a substantial 
difference. It is time for us to enact the line-item veto so that we 
can put a tool in the hand of the President of the United States to 
help him manage, in the national interest, the expenditure of the 
resources that the people of this great country provide as a basis for 
our conduct of government.
  Some people try to estimate how much the President would be able to 
cut out of the budget. I believe almost all of the estimates about how 
much the President would cut underestimate the real impact of the line-
item veto. Because many of the projects which have been tucked away in 
appropriations bills are so embarrassing and self-serving, I do not 
believe any Senator would ever want to add them in the first place if 
they thought they would come back for individual inspection. So, as a 
result, I believe there would be a tremendous chilling effect on 
spending.
  President Truman, who hailed from my home State of Missouri--and, of 
course, I hailed from his home State--said that there was a great deal 
of legislative blackmail that went on in bills that needed to be 
signed. That is part of this culture of spending which is, in my 
judgment, a detriment to this country. It is not good for America. It 
is not good for our individual jurisdictions, and we must reject it.
  I have said in the past, and I would like to say again, that the 
people of this country all operate with the line-item veto. Every 
kitchen table in America has one. You sit down at the kitchen table, 
and you put your budget together. You talk with the family about what 
you can afford and what you cannot afford.
  The average family that sits down at the kitchen table engages in 
what I call kitchen table budgeting, and they do so in a way which 
provides balance, as well as a set of spending priorities. I preformed 
this same function not only as the head of my household, but also as 
Governor of the State of Missouri. I can remember in every year having 
to knock out some expenditures, one year for staff expenses at the 
public defender's office. We wanted to have the defense that was 
appropriate in our public defender's operations, but we had to cut a 
couple hundred thousand dollars there. We simply had to draw the line 
through the increase.
  I remember one year when some folks who were powerful politically 
wanted to have $15,000--just $15,000--to restore and repair a cemetery. 
It was not a public cemetery. It was not a State cemetery. It was not 
on State land. They thought they just might be able to talk their way 
through the legislature with it, and, sure enough, they did. But as a 
Governor I had the opportunity to draw a line through it and to send it 
back.
  There were other worthy things that had to be eliminated or reduced. 
The lawyers of the State were building a new law school when I was 
Governor, and I had a rule that I expected the institutions to come up 
with 20 percent of the funds for capital projects. I thought, if we 
were helping people with their education, some of these well-to- 
 [[Page S4177]] do lawyers could chip in and help build the new law 
school.
  They got through the general assembly a full appropriation so that 
they would not, these lawyers, these poor lawyers who were strapped for 
funds, have to provide 20 percent of the funding. But I had to draw a 
line through those extra funds and knock it back to 80 percent. In the 
end, they came up with the resources, and we have a great new facility 
at one of the finest law schools in the country. The reason we did, 
though, is that we have the kind of financial integrity that would 
protect us in the long run. The Governor of the State has the 
responsibility to keep spending in line. Mr. President, 43 Governors 
do. I did not do anything special as Governor of the State of Missouri. 
It is common for Governors to do that. And just as Governors do it, we 
do it around our kitchen tables.
  I have put together a chart here representing a budget for a normal 
family of four, a family that earns about $35,000 a year, monthly 
income of $2,900.
  The first thing you have to pay is your Federal income taxes. And if 
you take this $670 and you subtract it from the $2,990, you get down to 
$2,320 for the month. You move down to food, subtract it, and you have 
$1,870. Then, you need to make your car payment. You subtract the $300 
from the $1,870, and you come to $1,570.
  You have a Super Nintendo that the kids are screaming for. That is 
another $100. That would take you to $1,470. And clothing of 200 bucks 
to get the kids ready for summer. That takes you from $1,470 to $1,270.
  Utilities are a must. That is $150 from $1,270 to $1,120. And then 
Freddy needs braces, and that is $150 a month, which takes you from 
$1,120 to $970; eliminating the trip to Disney World takes you to $820. 
And rent--you do not want to fail to pay the rent--$210. Car and 
property insurance, another $110. Wait a second. I see I have run out 
of money before I have reached the end of my list.
  When you run out of money before you get to the end of your list, 
what you have to do is start to set priorities. You have to have a 
line-item veto or you go into debt. What are we going to do? Are we 
going to pay the interest on the credit card? We better. Are we going 
to continue to have a telephone? Well, that is probably a necessity in 
today's society.
  How do you handle it, when you come down here and you are only a 
third or two-thirds of the way through the list and you run out of 
money? Simply put, you make some adjustments in what you spend. You 
implement what I call the line-item veto.
  This is the way we handle it at our house. You know, we are $320 
short here at the end of the chart. We are going to have to make that 
up. If we knock out cable TV at $40 that will move us closer to our 
goal. Unfortunately, we're not quite there. Perhaps you could knock out 
this trip to Disney World; that would save you $150 a month over the 
twelve months in which you would save for the trip. Suddenly, we are 
$190. We still, however, need $130 more.
  Wait a second, Super Nintendo, you could remove that from the list of 
expenditures. Now you are at $290. You still need another $30. You 
could eliminate the swimming lessons at $30. That would get you to $0. 
Or, alternatively, you could reduce your general entertainment funding 
from $100 down to $70, score the swimming lessons as a form of 
entertainment, and still get to $0. Mr. President, this is the way the 
average family does it. You simply sit down, total up your resources, 
and then ensure that you don't subtract more from your resources than 
you actually have.
  This is what proponents of the line-item veto want for the President. 
I want to put this big, black Magic Marker in the hands of the 
President. I trust him enough to say, ``President Clinton, you take the 
line-item veto and mark off the things that we can't afford. You mark 
out the provincial, you mark out the parochial, you mark out the 
targeted spending that does nothing to help America. Then, you send it 
back here and force two-thirds of the Senate to vote to restore the 
individual appropriations.
  Mr. President, I believe it can work, and it is critically important 
that it does work. Because the debt of this country is being displaced 
on to the next generation. It is one of the truly tragic and unreported 
tragedy of our times. We need someone with the authority and the 
responsibility to draw a line through the Super Nintendos, through the 
things we do not fundamentally need and save this country for the next 
generation.
  We are $4.8 trillion in debt and the yet-unearned wages of the next 
generation are calling out for management, calling out for fiscal 
restraint, calling out for fiscal responsibility. We cannot allow 
ourselves to continually be the subject of the legislative blackmail of 
which Harry Truman spoke. We should give the President the authority to 
do in the Oval Office what every family does at the kitchen table.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. DeWine). The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, on the subject of a line-item veto, let 
me say that I want to join with those who believe that we should fix 
responsibility. Specifically, we have been trying over many years to do 
just that. Back in 1990, we reported out of the Budget Committee, by a 
bipartisan vote of 13 to 6, S. 3181, my separate enrollment line-item 
veto bill. Unfortunately, we were never able to see it enacted. I 
joined later with the distinguished Senator from New Jersey, Senator 
Bradley in extending this mechanism to wasteful tax expenditures as 
well as appropriations. We had a 53 Senators support us in 1993, but 
budget rules at the time would have required 60 votes.
  I say fix the responsibility in the sense of fixing it to a single 
Member of not only 100 here, but 435 on the other side of the Capitol; 
one in 535. I can put an amendment to any particular measure and, if I 
get a majority vote, it passes. I think the President of the United 
States ought to be able to put up an amendment, so to speak, with 
respect to the denial of a particular item and get a vote; namely, two-
thirds to override what he may have disapproved of.
  So often, the President will come, as President Reagan did during his 
8 years in office, with a big stack of books and papers. He would say, 
``Now look. Congress has given this to me at 12 o'clock last night, and 
I had to either sign it immediately or close down the Government the 
next day.''
  If my memory serves correctly, President Reagan vetoed only one 
spending measure at the very beginning of his first term. Thereafter, 
there was almost a working agreement between the Congress and the 
President of what was veto bait and what would be approved by the 
President. In conference, the conferees would say, ``We will have to 
leave these things off.'' As a result, there was a sort of comity 
between the White House and the Congress that those vetoes were not 
necessary.
  I suspect the case was much the same with President Bush. However, I 
should note that in his 4-year period, our past President never vetoed 
one red cent of spending. He never vetoed a spending bill.
  So it was not really a thing that was causing so much a culture of 
costliness, as my distinguished friend from Missouri was previously 
referring to, but in the public's mind, there was a cynical game being 
played in which neither the President nor the Congress was willing to 
accept responsibility for spending money on certain programs.
  Mr. President, I used the line-item veto 35 years ago as Governor of 
South Carolina. It was very, very helpful to this particular Governor, 
at that time receiving a AAA credit rating, which I am sorry to observe 
at this particular time has been lost. But this Governor was the first 
southern Governor from Texas up through Maryland to get a AAA credit 
rating. I was proud of that. I could talk to my colleagues. I had the 
vetoes and used them to help balance the budget.
  But without a line-item veto, we are treated to spectacles similar to 
the flap over Lawrence Welk's home that occurred a few years ago. If I 
remember correctly, the distinguished former 
 [[Page S4178]] Senator from North Dakota, Senator Burdick, did not 
even realize that someone had stuck in money for Lawrence Welk's home. 
That was an embarrassment to both Houses of Congress, all the 
Congressmen and all the Senators.
  A line-item veto not only fixes responsibility but, more than 
anything else, saves the body from the embarrassment and the charge 
that we are willy-nilly passing pork-barrel projects.
  Now, with respect to the relinquishment of power, as the old saying 
goes down in my backyard, ``I studied my humility under the mental 
rules.'' You do not have to worry about the power of the Senator. In 
this day and age we have Senators who not only hold up the President 
but who hold up the whole Congress as well. You are not lacking power. 
If a Senator wants to put in Lawrence Welk's home, and he does not like 
the idea that the home has been vetoed by the President, he has plenty 
of opportunity to speak extensively if he pleases. But in the light of 
our fiscal dilemma, the present gamesmanship has to stop. I think it is 
unforgivable that we engage really in the procedures in the process 
rather than the substance.
  I remember my distinguished friend, the chairman of the House Budget 
Committee, said on December 18 on ``Meet the Press'' that he was coming 
in January with all of the spending cuts before they came with the tax 
cuts, and that he had three budgets and did not have to wait on the 
President's budget. He said that we would start moving immediately in 
January. Of course, the House passed the tax cuts, and are yet to pass 
specific spending cuts.
  It is now getting toward the end of March and the Budget Committee 
has yet to meet to start marking up a budget. They tell us it will be 
sometime in May before we even begin. Mr. President, I hope the Record 
will reflect that at least this Senator thinks we ought to be getting 
to the substance.
  If I could digress for a moment back to the debate on the balanced 
budget amendment, I would like to refer one more time to section 13301 
of the Budget Enforcement Act, wherein a line says: Thou shalt not use 
the Social Security trust funds in any calculation of budget deficits.
  I ask unanimous consent at this particular point to have printed in 
the Record the vote at that time, on October 18, 1990, where we got a 
vote of 98 to 2 in favor of section 13301.
  There being no objection, the vote was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:
                           [Rollcall No. 283]


                               yeas (98)

                         Democrats (55 or 100%)

     Adams
     Akaka
     Baucus
     Bentsen
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Boren
     Bradley
     Breaux
     Bryan
     Bumpers
     Burdick
     Byrd
     Conrad
     Cranston
     Daschle
     DeConcini
     Dixon
     Dodd
     Exon
     Ford
     Fowler
     Glenn
     Gore
     Graham
     Harkin
     Heflin
     Hollings
     Inouye
     Johnston
     Kennedy
     Kerrey
     Kerry
     Kohl
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Metzenbaum
     Mikulski
     Mitchell
     Moynihan
     Nunn
     Pell
     Pryor
     Reid
     Riegle
     Robb
     Rockefeller
     Sanford
     Sarbanes
     Sasser
     Shelby
     Simon
     Wirth

                        Republicans (43 or 96%)

     Bond
     Boschwitz
     Burns
     Chafee
     Coats
     Cochran
     Cohen
     D'Amato
     Danforth
     Dole
     Domenici
     Durenberger
     Garn
     Gorton
     Gramm
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Hatfield
     Heinz
     Helms
     Humphrey
     Jeffords
     Kassebaum
     Kasten
     Lott
     Lugar
     Mack
     McCain
     McClure
     McConnell
     Murkowski
     Nickles
     Packwood
     Pressler
     Roth
     Rudman
     Simpson
     Specter
     Stevens
     Symms
     Thurmond
     Warner
     Wilson


                                nays (2)

                          Democrats (0 or 0%)

                         Republicans (2 or 4%)

     Armstrong
     Wallop
  Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I also ask unanimous consent that an 
article entitled ``Impact: Stop Playing Games With Social Security'' be 
printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

             [From the State, Columbia, SC, Mar. 12, 1995]

            Impact: Stop Playing Games With Social Security

                      (By Senator Fritz Hollings)

       ``Nobody, Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal, 
     moderate, is even thinking about using Social Security to 
     balance the budget.''--Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., ``Face the 
     Nation,'' Feb. 2
       In the recent weeks of floor debate and television 
     interviews, many senators repeatedly pledged not to use 
     Social Security funds to balance the budget.
       They even passed an amendment by Senate Majority Leader Bob 
     Dole to instruct the Budget Committee to develop a budget 
     that didn't use Social Security funds but would conform with 
     the constitutional balanced-budget amendment.
       In the meantime, while Dole was struggling to pick up one 
     vote to pass the amendment, five Democrats vowed they were 
     ready, willing and able to vote for Social Security. In fact, 
     the night before the vote, the five sent Dole a letter of 
     commitment to vote for the amendment if Social Security were 
     protected.
       On March 2, the constitutional amendment failed by one 
     vote. And over that weekend on ``Face the Nation,'' Dole 
     again reaffirmed his intent on Social Security when he said 
     ``We are going to protect Social Security.''
       If he remains that committed, why did he refuse to put his 
     word on the line in black and white on March 2 and pass a 
     constitutional amendment by at least 70 votes? Because he 
     knew that accepting the five Democratic votes would have cost 
     him an equal number of votes of Republicans determined to 
     spend Social Security surpluses on the deficit.
       Dole didn't want to expose his Republican troops or expose 
     the truth. While Republican rhetoric pledged to protect 
     Social Security, Sen. Pete Domenici, chairman of the Budget 
     Committee, and other Republicans were telling Dole that the 
     budget could not be balanced without using Social Security 
     surplus funds.
       All of this word-batting--of saying one thing in public and 
     trying to work around it in private--has led Americans to 
     believe that there is a free lunch, that all we have to do to 
     eliminate the deficit is to cut spending. The vote on Social 
     Security exposes this myth.
       Republican senators have no real intent on eliminating the 
     deficit; they just want to move it from the federal 
     government to Social Security.
       Currently, Section 13.301 of the Budget Enforcement Act 
     prohibits the use of Social Security funds for the deficit. 
     But part of the balanced-budget amendment would repeal 
     current law.
       Even with all the promises tendered to correct Social 
     Security with future legislation, any civics student knows 
     you can't amend the Constitution with legislation. That's why 
     the five Democrats--me included--insisted on including Social 
     Security protection in the wording of the constitutional 
     amendment.
       Dole's stonewalling against our five votes on the 
     constitutional amendment reveals another harsh truth: $18 
     trillion in spending cuts is necessary to balance the budget 
     in seven years. But many senators reveal their intent to use 
     Social Security surpluses when they state that only $1.2 
     trillion is necessary. Let face realities:
       There won't be enough cuts in entitlements. A jobs program 
     for welfare reform will cost. Savings here are questionable.
       You can and should save some on health reform, but slowing 
     the growth of health costs from 10 percent to 5 percent still 
     means increased costs. Social Security won't be cut, and any 
     savings by increasing the age of retirement would be 
     allocated to the trust fund, not the deficit.
       Both the GOP's ``Contract with America'' and President 
     Clinton have called for increases in defense spending. 
     Result: No savings.
       Therefore, savings must come from spending freezes and cuts 
     in the domestic discretionary budget.
       Coupling these cuts and freezes with a closing of tax 
     loopholes still isn't enough to meet the target of a balanced 
     budget in seven years. That's why Domenici has determined 
     that Social Security funds will have to be used.
       But using Social Security won't eliminate the deficit. It 
     simply would increase the amount we owe Social Security. 
     Already we owe $470 billion to the trust fund. If we keep 
     raiding it, the government will owe Social Security more than 
     $1 trillion by 2002.
      Harsh realities. But there's a fifth and even harsher 
      [[Page S4179]] reality. All of the spending cuts in the 
     world aren't politically attainable now. Domenici knows it's 
     hard to get votes for enough cuts. To his credit, he tried in 
     1986 with a long list of cuts by President Reagan and the 
     Grace Commission. But he got only 14 votes in the Senate.
       Rep. Gerald Solomon, a New York Republican, also tried a 
     list of $1 trillion in cuts just a year ago in the House. He 
     got only 73 votes of 435.
       In addition, the problem of balancing the budget with 
     spending reductions is exacerbated by the ``Contract with 
     America's'' call for a $500 billion tax cut.
       The reality today is that a combination of cuts, freezes, 
     loophole closings and tax increases must be cobbled together 
     to put us on a glide path to balancing the budget. Now is the 
     time to stop the finger-pointing, the blaming of the other 
     guy. Now is the time to stop dancing around the fire of 
     changes in the process.
       It's a pure sham to think that constitutional balanced-
     budget amendment will give Congress discipline.
       It you put a gun to the head of Congress, it will get more 
     creative. The proof is in the pudding that's being cooked all 
     over town.
       Some tout abolishing departments like Commerce and 
     Education. But their functions would continue somewhere. 
     Others say send everything back to the states. But that way, 
     the states would pick up deficits instead of the federal 
     government.
       Of course we know some want to use $636 billion in Social 
     Security funds. And there's talk of picking up $150 billion 
     by recomputing the Consumer Price Index and another $150 
     billion by re-estimating the growth of Medicare and Medicaid.
       There are even those who want one-time savings, like 
     selling the electric power grid or switching to the capital 
     budget system.
       In other words, there are people throughout town who are 
     figuring out ways to make the federal budget appear balanced 
     with hardly any cuts. With a balanced-budget amendment, they 
     would be able to play this game for seven years.
       Time out!
       The gamesmanship, the charade, must stop. If this nonsense 
     goes on for seven years, the United States will be down the 
     tubes.
       For all the talk about eliminating the deficit, the debt 
     snowballs. Why? Because we add $1 billion a day to the debt 
     by borrowing to pay interest.
       In January and throughout February, I offered 110 spending 
     cuts or eliminations from domestic discretionary spending. 
     This was worth $37 billion in the first year and put deficit 
     reduction on the glide path toward a balanced budget by 2002.
       But even if these politically impossible cuts were agreed 
     upon, the interest cost on the debt is growing at more than 
     $40 billion a year.
       The United States is in a downward budget spiral and we are 
     meeting ourselves coming around the corner. Like the Queen in 
     ``Alice in Wonderland'' told Alice: ``It takes all the 
     running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to 
     get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as 
     that!''
       Let's get past all the shenanigans. Let's include Social 
     Security protection in the balanced-budget amendment. Then we 
     could pass the amendment and get down to the hard work of 
     balancing the budget.

  Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, the point of this particular article, of 
course, is in responding to the statement of the distinguished majority 
leader that we will call up the balanced budget amendment later this 
year. What the article plainly outlines it that we can call up the 
balanced budget amendment this afternoon and immediately pick up five 
votes if they only put in black and white what they say verbally. They 
say time and time again that ``We are not going to use Social Security 
funds.'' In fact, after the particular vote, the distinguished majority 
leader, on ``Face the Nation,'' said, ``We are not going to use Social 
Security funds.'' All we are asking for is to put that rhetoric into 
constitutional language.
  When Members on the other side of the aisle get into these demeaning 
antics of holding up signs depicting Senators as ``Wanted,'' like a 
rogue's gallery for flip-flopping, that, of course, is a double-edged 
sword. Maybe we should go out in front of the Capitol and get the 
pictures of the leaders on the other side who voted for the Hollings-
Heinz amendment in 1990 and who now have flip-flopped.
  Mr. President, let me conclude this afternoon with a comment about a 
particular article. I ask unanimous consent that this article be 
printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                      [From the State, July 1991]

                  Line-Item Veto Can Cut the Nonsense

                        (By Ernest F. Hollings)

       Taxpayers are fed up with spending bills that are chock-
     full of baubles for the folks back home.
       In one widely publicized line-item caper, the 1991 
     agriculture (agricultural) appropriations bill earmarked 
     $500,000 to spruce up Lawrence Welk's birthplace in 
     Strasburg, N.D. Now we all know that, in Washington terms 
     $500,000 isn't ``real money,'' but thousands and thousands of 
     these little line-item outrages add up to real money indeed. 
     Budget Director Dick Darman now says that the 1991 federal 
     deficit will top $280 billion--a new record--with next year's 
     deficit skyrocketing to $348 billion. These mega-deficits--
     and the nearly $380 billion in interest we pay annually on 
     the national debt--constitute the worst case of waste, fraud 
     and abuse in government today.
       Right now, the burden of budget cutting is almost 
     exclusively in the hands of Congress, and--no surprise--this 
     one-sided arrangement just isn't working. Telling Congress to 
     cut out the pork is like telling Liz Taylor she can't have 
     any more husbands.
       The line-item veto would give the President a cleaver and 
     oblige him to join the fray as a more active player in the 
     fight against waste. If he's politically courageous and puts 
     his veto where his mouth is, then those annual deficit totals 
     will start heading south instead of north.
       Certainly, the line-item veto has worked superbly in South 
     Carolina, as well as in the other 42 states that have it. 
     During my term as Governor, I repeatedly used the line-item 
     veto to eliminate millions of dollars in unnecessary 
     spending. In the process, I was
      able to balance four state budgets and win the first AAA 
     credit rating of any Southern state.
       In contrast, the Washington budget process relegates the 
     executive to the sidelines. After the President submits his 
     budget proposal in January, he--along with members of his 
     party in Congress--can effectively wash his hands of the 
     messy business of actually writing a budget. He doesn't have 
     to cooperate in the drafting of bills, and the President can 
     even disclaim responsibility for the bills he signs into law.
       Accordingly, we are subjected to the showmanship made 
     famous by President Reagan: With TV cameras rolling, the 
     President holds up the massive text of an appropriations 
     bill, feigns disgust at all the wasteful spending larded into 
     its thousands of line items, then signs the bill under mock 
     protest, claiming that the devil--i.e., Congress--made him do 
     it.
       And who can blame him? As it now stands, the President has 
     only two options: He can sign an appropriations bill, or, if 
     he objects to one or more specific line item provisions, he 
     can veto the bill in its entirety. My line-item veto bill 
     would give the President a vital third option; to veto 
     wasteful specifics in an appropriations bill while signing 
     into law the overall measure.
       Opponents of my bill invoke high-falutin constitutional 
     arguments; they claim that a Presidential line-item veto will 
     skew power toward the executive branch. But these critics 
     simply miss the point. The point of the line-item veto is to 
     eliminate waste and get a handle on the deficits. Given the 
     magnitude of our budget crisis, it is grossly self-indulgent 
     to make a fetish out of legislative prerogatives. The issue 
     here is not the separation of powers; the issue is Congress 
     and the White House sharing co-responsibility and co-
     accountability for paying the bills.
       The line-item veto has another purpose, too: To restore the 
     credibility of our government in Washington. Congress' 
     reputation as an institution suffers the death of a thousand 
     blows as these line-item excesses are made public on the 
     evening news.
       My line-item veto bill has passed in the Budget Committee 
     with a 13-6 majority. But, realistically--with so many 
     senators of both parties jealous to protect their personal 
     and institutional prerogatives--it will be an uphill fight on 
     the Senate floor.
       This opposition is misguided. With the budget ox in the 
     ditch, it is silly to squabble over whether Congress or the 
     White House will hoist him out. Clearly, it's a job we must 
     do together--urgently.

  Mr. HOLLINGS. This article is entitled ``Line-Item Veto Can Cut the 
Nonsense.'' We put this article in our own hometown newspapers back in 
July 1991. We have been working many years now to get a line-item veto. 
I have used it, and 43 Governors use it today.
  I commend the leadership on the other side of the aisle for bringing 
this matter to the attention of our colleagues. As I understand it, 
when the Republican leadership presents their so-called compromise at 5 
p.m. today, they will put before the body legislation that includes the 
separate enrollment mechanism that I have long championed. You should 
not be misled by this political rhubarb about 2,000 items and 2,000 
vetoes. That has not been the experience of any Governor, and it is not 
going to be the experience of the National Government.
  The fact of the matter is that Prof. Laurence Tribe of Harvard gave 
to our good colleague, Senator Bradley from New Jersey, a letter 
supporting the constitutionality of the separate enrollment mechanism.
  I know the chairman of our Budget Committee, Senator Domenici of New 
Mexico, has been trying hard to get a line-item veto of some ilk or 
character 
 [[Page S4180]] into the hands of the House and to pass the U.S. 
Senate. If the compromise is based on the separate enrollment approach, 
then bless them all, because that is exactly what we voted out of the 
Budget Committee, Republicans and Democrats, 5 years ago. That is what 
53 Senators including Senator Bradley and myself voted for on the floor 
of the U.S. Senate. That is what stands constitutional muster. It 
allows the President to use his existing constitutional authority to 
approve or disapprove; and upon disapproval by veto, a two-thirds vote 
is required of both Houses to override.
  I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
  Ms. SNOWE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.
  Ms. SNOWE. Mr. President, as we all know, a couple weeks ago, we lost 
the balanced budget amendment by one vote. We turned back the tide of 
change that was pushed forward by the people of this country in the 
last election. That vote truly prevented us from changing the economic 
course of this entire Nation. Fortunately, and hopefully, we will have 
another vote on that issue at some point in the future. But, until that 
time, we have a moral obligation and, I believe, an economic 
responsibility, to continue the fight against increased deficits and a 
ballooning national debt.
  We in the Senate must take up that fight because it is obvious that 
the President and his administration have abdicated all fiscal 
responsibility and interest in ending the economic status quo. We just 
have to look at the latest budget proposal offered by the 
administration for fiscal year 1996. We still have $200 billion in 
annual deficits. We cannot allow them to be acceptable commodities for 
the future. We have a $4.8 trillion debt and we can expect, with the 
administration's projected budget for the next few years, that the 
budgets will add another $1.3 or $1.5 trillion in addition to the 
national debt. We have $200 billion currently in interest payments each 
year. That certainly is something that needs to be addressed.
  If you look at the President's budget estimates and what has been 
reestimated by the Congressional Budget Office, it is interesting, in 
the March 8 CBO report, they reestimated the administration's deficits, 
because they were underestimated, over the next 5 years, by between $14 
to $82 billion, for a total of $209 billion. In 1996, they 
underestimate the deficit by $14 billion; in 1997, by $18 billion; in 
1998, $34.6 billion; in 1999, $58.6 billion; in 2000, $81.6 billion.
  That is what we are addressing over the next few years. So while we 
have lost the balanced budget amendment--at least for the time being--I 
hope then that we can consider and pass the line-item veto.
  The line-item veto is an idea whose time has come. In reality, the 
line-item veto is an idea whose time came, went, and now has come back. 
In 1974, the Congress passed the Impoundment Control Act which, among 
other things, stripped the President of the power to impound specific 
and often wasteful spending programs from the Federal budget. It was a 
right our Chief Executive had been afforded already for almost 200 
years.
  Perhaps not coincidentally, 1974 marked the year that truly ushered 
in the era of perpetually unbalanced Federal budgets and established 
one of Congress' worst fiscal losing streaks: 26 straight years of 
unbalanced budgets and mounting national debt. While the retention of 
Presidential impoundment powers in 1974 may not have prevented a $4.8 
trillion debt, it may have helped decrease part of the more than $4 
trillion that has been added to our debt since that period of time.
  The line-item veto is another critical tool to help us reach our 
goals and to put us on the path toward fiscal responsibility, and 
America needs it now more than ever before.
  I would like to first commend the sponsors of this bill for their 
tireless work and for their ongoing commitment to eradicating waste and 
unnecessary spending from the Federal budget. The Senator from Arizona 
[Mr. McCain] has argued the merits of a line-item veto for the past 7 
years, since his election to the Senate. He has been ably joined by the 
Senator from Indiana [Mr. Coats], whose record on fiscal responsibility 
is one of the best in this Chamber.
  I think the majority leader deserves credit for his role in bringing 
this legislation to the floor.
  I am a cosponsor of the legislation, the original draft of S. 4, that 
provides for a line-item veto.
  I must admit in this debate that, unlike my colleagues from Kansas, 
Arizona, and Indiana, I am a newer convert to the merits of the line-
item veto, so I understand the concerns and feelings of those who may 
be reluctant and reticent to support a Presidential line-item veto. But 
I have come to the conclusion that it is necessary, over the last few 
years, to support this legislation because we have been unable to 
enforce the kind of discipline necessary to control Federal spending.
  I do not believe that any of us think that the decisions will be 
easy, but they never have been for any American generation pushing for 
positive change in our country.
  As one poet said, ``Change is not made without inconvenience, even 
from worse to better.''
  Despite these inconveniences, we must make a clean and swift break 
from the failed policies of the past--especially in our budgeting 
process. in the words of Thomas Schatz, president of Citizens Against 
Government Waste, ``The first step is to reverse old assumptions. 
Congress has often viewed programs as perpetual, without taking enough 
time to evaluate their effectiveness.'' The premise has been: How much 
was spent last year, and how much are we supposed to spend this year. 
As Schatz says, our question should be ``whether the money is spent 
well or should be spent at all.''
  I believe that we have no other choice than to use all the tools 
available to us to control Federal spending. The American people would 
have a hard time believing in some of the things that we do provide 
funds for--$1.1 million for a plant stress lab. I suppose pork just 
would not be pork if Congress did not spend $1.5 million for a national 
pig research facility. All these projects were identified by the 
Citizens Against Government Waste as examples in their annual analysis 
of the Federal budget, appropriately called the ``Pig Book.''
  They also identified $213 million in pork projects in the 1994 
Interior appropriations bill and an astounding $367 million in the 1993 
Interior appropriations bill. While to many in Congress these numbers 
may seem like a drop in the proverbial bucket, it is not insignificant 
to the American people. They want to know that their hard-earned tax 
dollars are being used wisely and efficiently.
  Now, wasteful spending--pork--may be funny to comedians. It may 
provide fodder for the cannons of American's radio talk show hosts, and 
it may be the perennial target of deficit and waste watchdog groups, 
but, ultimately, it is not a laughing matter for the American taxpayer. 
And it has become Congress' worst oversight.
  In these days of perpetual deficits and growing debt, the litany of 
Federal excesses gives new impetus for the waste-cutting power of a 
line-item veto. It will allow us to look at Government differently. It 
will allow us to examine the Federal budget process differently. It 
will allow us to change the power structure of an appropriations 
process that has bequeathed our Nation and future generations a legacy 
of deficits and debts. And it will allow us to finally put an end to 
the fiscal status quo.
  We hear time and time again that opponents of a line-item veto have 
said that the result of giving the President line-item veto authority 
is almost insubstantial, and insignificant considering the size and 
scope of the Federal budget. In fact, wasteful Government spending has 
cumulatively constituted a growing portion of our deficits and debt 
over the years. In fact, President Johnson used this authority to 
eliminate 6.7 percent of Government outlays in 1967. An equivalent 
percentage of today's budget would amount to over $100 billion--nearly 
half of our fiscal year 1996 deficit.
  A more striking example of the significance and impact of wasteful 
spending can be shown not between total dollars in wasteful spending 
and the total Federal budget, but between waste and the average family 
budget.
   [[Page S4181]] As Citizens Against Government Waste showed in 1994, 
a median-income, two-earner family paid $5,581 in Federal income taxes. 
This means that $10 billion in pork wastes the combined taxes of 
approximately 1.8 million median-income families. Eliminating $1 
billion in wasteful spending could actually provide $1,000 in tax 
relief to 1 million American families.
  The biggest cost of wasteful spending cannot and should not be 
measured in terms of dollars and cents. Even more important is the 
effect of wasteful Government spending in terms of moral imperative. 
Congress' fiscal irresponsibility demonstrates a clear lack of 
principle in our Nation's governing institutions, and it is a 
continuing debasement of our democratic process which results in an 
erosion of confidence.
  Opponents of a line-item veto have also failed to address how they 
would curtail Congress' ongoing practice of funding hundreds of 
projects and programs each year without the benefit of hearings, proper 
legal authorization, and frequently in violation of the rules against 
earmarking. We cannot continue to survive as a supposedly open, 
democratic, and free Government under late-night deals and last minute 
insertions of wasteful programs in joint House-Senate conference 
committees. It is a practice that completely disregards the due process 
of lawmaking as enshrined by our Founding Fathers.
  Since the power of Presidential impoundment was taken away in 1974, 
Presidents have been required to submit spending cut requests--
rescissions--for congressional approval, but only one-third of these 
have been granted. Under this current system, Congress can kill these 
requests through inaction, leaving no one to be held responsible for 
the wasteful spending often targeted by rescission requests.
  Some opponents of this measure might suggest that, since the 1974 
change in law, Congress has actually rescinded $20 billion more than 
Presidents have requested. However, Congress has ignored 564 rescission 
proposals offered by Republican Presidents alone, and accepted only 37 
percent of all rescissions proposals presented to it. And of the 1,084 
rescissions proposed by Presidents from Ford to Clinton, Congress has 
ignored all but 399. Just imagine how much more deficit reduction could 
have been attained if both Congress' and the President's rescission 
proposals had been adopted.
  Now, there is nothing wrong with the fact that Congress found about 
$93 billion in rescissions savings since 1974--and that $70 billion of 
this amount was derived from original proposals independent of the 
President.
  I am sure we will hear a lot about this later. But the very fact is, 
we could have had a much greater reduction in our deficit if we had 
accepted both the Congress' and the President's rescission proposals. 
We could have had a total of $143 billion in that time period, which 
would have represented a 54-percent increase in total deficit reduction 
above the amount actually rescinded.
  Now, if Congress disagrees with the President with respect to his 
rescission proposals, most certainly Congress could come up with 
alternatives to respond to the President's bottom-line figures in terms 
of eliminating additional spending.
  There was a very convincing study that was conducted by the General 
Accounting Office in 1992, which found that a Presidential line-item 
veto could, in fact, have saved $70.7 billion in unnecessary spending 
between fiscal years 1984 and 1989. As this figure indicates, even 
paring only the most egregious wasteful spending through the line-item 
veto will reduce the deficit. For those of us who are serious about 
deficit reduction and responsible spending, $70 billion in deficit 
reduction over 5 years builds a very strong case for a strong line-item 
veto.
  But while opponents will continue to persist about whether we should 
give the line-item veto authority to the President, clearly it will 
make a difference in terms of what we can do to the overall budget.
  Rather than tilting the power of the purse in favor of the President, 
it would restore some of the balance that has been eroded by Congress' 
misguided budget rules that favor excessive spending and eleventh-hour 
reconciliation bills--bills that have become a sanctuary for pork 
projects.
  I think we should point to the fact that more than 43 Governors in 
this country are required to have a line-item veto of some kind, and 
more than 49 State Governors have a balanced budget. So that the line-
item veto may be much less necessary at the State level, where most of 
the Governors, with the exception of one, are required to balance their 
budgets. But in the national level, we do not have a requirement for a 
balanced budget amendment.
  Without that requirement, without that self-imposed discipline, we 
continue to watch the rising tide of red ink and the continual rising 
tide of debts. This line-item veto could help provide substantial cuts 
in the deficit and Federal spending overall.
  It will force each and every Member of the House and the Senate to 
justify the appropriations and the line items in each of the 13 
appropriations bills. That they will have to rise and fall on their own 
merit. That is what it is all about.
  If there is anything I have heard from my constituents in the State 
of Maine over and over again is the fact that people are concerned 
about the way in which our money is being spent. They want to know that 
it is being spent effectively and efficiently. They want to know that 
there are merits and there are justifications for the way in which we 
appropriate their hard-earned taxpayers' dollars. That is the bottom 
line.
  In the final analysis, if we do anything else with the line-item veto 
in addition to cutting spending, we may restore the public's confidence 
in the way in which we expend their money. Every time they hear example 
upon example of egregious spending and frivolous spending, it erodes 
the public's confidence in the budget process, and more than anything 
else, erodes the public's confidence in this institution and its 
elected officials.
  That is why I feel so strongly about this line-item veto. It is one 
that should be supported by Members of both parties. In fact, President 
Clinton, during the course of his campaign in 1992, advocated a line-
item veto. He had some form of a line-item veto when he was Governor of 
Arkansas. In fact, he promised during his campaign that he could ax $10 
billion in pork-barrel projects over 4 years if he was President of the 
United States. Since 1993, he has proposed $3.5 billion in rescissions 
and Congress has only accepted $1.4 billion. Now, the President has 
called on Congress to give him the line-item veto. It will be 
interesting to see how many Members of the President's own party will 
rally to his side and support this measure.
  I believe the burden of proof is on those who have opposed the 
balanced budget amendment and those who oppose a line-item veto to 
suggest ways in which we are going to cut Federal spending. More than 
that is how we will reach a balanced budget over the next 7 years. This 
is an approach that makes sense.
  People have asked me why Congress has not passed a line-item veto. 
That is a very difficult answer to give. As I said earlier on, I had 
reservations about this legislation some years ago about wielding and 
giving too much power to the President. And I have seen the mounting 
debts and deficits, and the fact that since the last time the Senate 
passed a balanced budget amendment, but unfortunately Congress did not; 
in 1982 we have seen the debt grow by 309 percent, $3.5 trillion.
  I think that Congress needs all the help we can get. It certainly 
needs all the tools that it can use to reduce the size of this deficit, 
and ultimately and hopefully balance the budget.
  Mr. President, in conclusion, it is my hope that we will be able to 
reach an agreement on a compromise that will give Members the necessary 
tools to address this most serious of economic problems facing our 
country. It is not only for the President but it is also the future 
generations. I encourage all my colleagues on both sides of the aisle 
to support this measure. I yield the floor.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Maine who has had 
long experience on this issue, especially in the State of Maine in both 
bodies. I thank her for her very important statement on this issue. I 
hope 
 [[Page S4182]] and know she will return to this debate as it continues 
in the coming days.
  Very briefly, this morning I was talking about what had happened 
since 1974, because that was the year in which the Budget Impoundment 
Act was passed. I now have those specific numbers. In 1974, the deficit 
was $6.1 billion; the total debt was $483 billion. Repeating that, the 
deficit was $6.1 billion; it is estimated in 1994 to be $203 billion. 
And as I mentioned, the debt was $483 billion in 1974. In 1994 it was 
$4.6 trillion--trillion dollars.
  We are now carrying an annual deficit that is about half of what the 
national debt was, the entire national debt. We have now gone from $483 
billion in 1974 to $5.2 trillion estimated in 1996.
  This is my argument, Mr. President, that for most of our history 
revenues and expenditures stayed basically the same, and it was not 
until 1974 with the passage of the Budget and Impoundment Act that we 
really saw the deficits and debt explode. That is because of a lack of 
discipline imposed on the spending habits of Congress.
  Mr. President, I just had given to me by staff a listing of the 
National Taxpayers Union ratings for Congress, and I note with pleasure 
that my colleague from Oklahoma [Mr. Nickles], is the eighth most 
fiscally responsible Member of this body.
  I am sure he considers himself the first, but by an objective view he 
is rated the eighth. I think that is admirable and gives him a certain 
degree of moral authority on this issue, since he has been one of the 
most fiscally responsible Members of this body since 1981 when he came 
here, although he does not look like he has been here that long.
  I yield the Senator from Oklahoma such time as he may consume.
  Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I thank my friend and colleague, Senator 
McCain, from Arizona, and I wish to join him in complimenting our 
friend and colleague, the Senator from Maine [Ms. Snowe] for an 
outstanding speech. I agree with everything she said. It was not only a 
well-researched speech, but one that had great impact. I hope my 
colleagues will listen to it, and I hope the American people will 
listen to it.
  I also would like to compliment my good friend and colleague from 
Arizona, Senator McCain, for his courage in continuing to bring this 
issue to the floor of the Senate. He is doing it at some risk, 
politically. Certainly some risk to appropriation requests in his 
State. But he has not waivered. He has shown great conviction and 
courage in bringing this issue up because he believes in it. I respect 
him for that. I also happen to think he is right.
  I also wish to compliment Senator Coats from Indiana for his courage, 
as well. This issue is not easy. These two Senators have been bringing 
this issue to the forefront when it was most aggressively opposed by 
the former chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Byrd. I 
remember various times when other Senators would oppose an amendment by 
these two Senators just because of the line-item veto. They might even 
agree with them on the underlying amendment, but they would oppose it 
because of their position on line-item veto. I just wish to compliment 
Senator McCain and Senator Coats. I hope that this year that their 
efforts will finally bear fruit, and we will pass a line-item veto.
  I think it is vitally important that we pass this legislation. It 
will save money, and I think we need to save money. We are spending too 
much. Our budget process does not work very well. A line-item veto is 
not a panacea. It will not solve all the problems, and it will not 
balance the budget. But it will help.
  I think the first and most important reform would be passing a 
constitutional amendment to balance the budget. We tried. We fought 
that issue for a month. Unfortunately, we lost. It takes 67 votes. We 
had 66 votes. We had 98 percent of the Republicans vote with us on a 
balanced budget amendment. Unfortunately, six of our Democrat 
colleagues changed position from last year, and so we lost. Maybe we 
will win later this year. Maybe we will win next year. Maybe we will 
win 2 years from now. I expect that we will. No later than 2 years from 
now, I think we will pass a constitutional amendment to balance the 
budget.
  What we can we do in the meantime? What are some other much-needed 
budget reforms? I think the budget scholars say, first and foremost, 
pass a line-item veto. I think it is vitally important to do so.
  I might note that most people on the Appropriations Committee say 
they do not agree with it. I have served on the Appropriations 
Committee. That committee used to have 29 members, but I believe it was 
reduced to 27. They probably work as hard as any committee in the 
Senate, and they are responsible for spending a little over $500 
billion, about a third of what the Government spends right now. The 
members on that committee work long and hard hours.
  By and large, they do a pretty good job, and we usually pass about 15 
or 16 appropriations bills, including supplementals. Some of these 
bills are small, in the couple billion-dollar range, and some are quite 
large, in the $200 or $300 billion range.
  But I will tell you from my experience, every single appropriations 
bill has had items in it that we need, and every single appropriations 
bill has had items we do not need and we cannot afford. If we give the 
President the line-item veto, we will allow him to be able to knock out 
or kill or strike those items that we cannot afford. We may or may not 
agree with him. If we disagree with him, we can try to override his 
veto. That is a process called checks and balances.
  Right now, we do not have checks and balances. Congress is writing 
all the checks, and there are very few balances. A whole lot of those 
checks are hot, or are paid for by borrowed money, and the President is 
given two options. We send the President 15 or 16 appropriations bills 
in the course of a year and he is given two options: One, he signs the 
entire package or, two, he vetoes the entire package.
  Some of these appropriations bills are thick; hundreds of pages, and 
some have thousands of lines in them. The President is not able to kill 
a program if he does not like it. He has to sign the entire bill or 
veto the entire bill. There are no checks and balances.
  He submits a budget and it is often ignored. Congress passes 
appropriations bills. Congress knows and the President knows, we have 
to pay the Secret Service, we have to pay the armed services, we have 
to pay for many vital Government functions, so he is reluctant to use 
the veto pen.
  This will allow the President to use the veto pen. Every President 
has asked for it. Every Republican President I can think of has said, 
``Give me the line-item veto, I will use it to save billions of 
dollars.'' Now we have President Clinton saying, ``Give me the line-
item veto, I will save billions of dollars.'' And we have Republicans 
leading the effort saying, ``Give it to him, because we think the 
President should have it, whether Democrat or Republican.'' Most 
Republicans say every President should have it, even a strong line-item 
veto, one that takes two-thirds to override. That means he may be able 
to kill a pet program of ours, something we feel very strongly about.
  I will give one example. I happen to feel strongly that we should 
have defenses against incoming theater-based missiles, intercontinental 
ballistic missiles. I think we should have defenses to be able to stop 
those before they hit our country. We do not right now. We should 
develop those systems. I am afraid this President does not share that 
belief. If Republicans put in money in an appropriations bill for the 
strategic defense initiative, the President may disagree with us. He 
may veto us. We may not have the votes to override. I think it would be 
unfortunate, but I think the pluses outweigh the minuses, and we should 
give him line-item veto.
  The President should receive overwhelming support on this side of the 
aisle. It may not be unanimous. The question is can he give a few 
votes? We know there is going to be a filibuster. We know we have to 
have 60 votes. I hope all Republicans will vote in favor of cloture, 
but we are going to need at least six from the Democratic side to get 
to cloture to have a final vote.
  The President stated repeatedly he is in favor of the line-item veto. 
He needs to deliver 6 or 8 or 10 Democrats to make that happen. If he 
cannot deliver one-fifth of the number of Democrats, then we probably 
will not have the line-item veto. Some will say, ``The Senate was not 
able to deliver.'' I will 
 [[Page S4183]] say, ``It was President Clinton who was not able to 
deliver.''
  Maybe this is something we can work on in a bipartisan fashion. I 
would like to see that happen. Some people say Congress is too 
partisan. This is an issue on which most people agree with Clinton. We 
want to give him a line-item veto. We want his successor to have a 
line-item veto. We think we can save billions of dollars. Can we 
balance the budget with it? No. Can we take giant steps to eliminate 
wasteful spending? The answer is yes.
  Mr. President, again, I compliment my colleagues, particularly 
Senator McCain and Senator Coats, for their leadership. They have taken 
this issue on year after year, many times at considerable economic and 
political pain. I compliment them for their courage. I hope that this 
year they will be successful. I hope that this year we will make at 
least one really significant budget reform, and that is to give the 
President a line-item veto.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. McCAIN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Oklahoma for his 
very good remarks on this issue, and I appreciate his continued 
involvement and his leadership in our party.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there be an additional 30 
minutes allocated to the managers on this side.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is 
so ordered.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum, with 
the time being taken equally from both sides.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The clerk 
will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time 
between now and 5 p.m. today be equally divided. This has been cleared 
with the Democratic leader.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum, and I 
ask that the time be equally divided.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The clerk 
will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I yield the Senator from Tennessee such 
time as he may consume.
  Mr. FRIST addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I rise today in support of the line-item 
veto legislation that the Senate will consider. No single measure will 
do more to curb wasteful Government spending than the line-item veto. I 
wish to commend Senator McCain, Senator Coats, and Senator Domenici for 
their leadership on this issue.
  Last November, the American people spoke loudly; they spoke clearly 
when they demanded a smaller, more accountable Government. They 
demanded a radical departure from business as usual in Washington. They 
demanded an end to wasteful, unnecessary Government spending. The line-
item veto will give the President the power to eliminate unnecessary 
and wasteful spending items that are often hidden and tucked away in 
important pieces of legislation.
  As a heart surgeon, I have seen many cases where a new heart was the 
only hope for saving a patient's life. However, I would not prescribe a 
new heart, a heart transplantation, when a more specific operation 
would do. Why remove an otherwise healthy heart if the problems could 
be more easily corrected with a less drastic procedure?
  As the health of our Federal economy worsens, our President must be 
given the tools that he needs to make precise corrections in 
appropriations legislation. We must give him the power to strike 
discrete budget items when it is clear that those items do not serve 
the national interest. For too long, our system has allowed needless 
spending to go unchecked.
  Mr. President, according to the General Accounting Office, if a 
Presidential line-item veto had been in place between 1984 and 1989, we 
would have eliminated an estimated $70.7 billion in wasteful Government 
spending--$70.7 billion. Instead, our Nation is faced with exorbitant 
interest payments today on our $4.7 trillion debt, the result of 
excessive Federal spending on programs we could not afford.
  Not only is this a debate about cutting spending, it is a debate 
about the fundamental relationship between the Congress and the 
President. The 1974 Budget Act limited the discretion of the executive 
branch with respect to Federal spending. When the Budget Act was 
passed, the President was granted the power to request rescissions from 
the budget. In order for the rescissions to take effect, however, 
Congress must enact the recommended spending cuts within 45 days. 
Congress is not even required to vote on the recommendations. Needless 
to say, most Presidential rescission requests have been ignored.
  Since 1974, Presidents have sent Congress 1,084 rescission requests. 
These requests would have cut $72.8 billion. Congress has enacted only 
399 of these requests, for a total savings of $22.9 billion, ignoring 
nearly $50 billion in Presidential rescission requests.
  It is important to point out, Mr. President, that the beginning of 
our chronic, exploding deficits coincides with this shift in spending 
power to Congress in 1974. The spending deficit for 1974 was $6.1 
billion. The very next year the deficit exploded to roughly nine times 
that, or $54 billion. Though, indeed, there have been peaks and valleys 
since that time, the deficit has continued to climb to the alarming 
levels we are experiencing today.
  It is clear to me that Congress shifted too much power to itself in 
1974. Congress clearly bit off more than it could chew. The unfortunate 
result has been 20 years of increasingly unchecked, unnecessary pork-
barrel spending with virtually no restraint from the executive branch. 
Future budget deficits will be even greater if this Congress fails to 
enact fundamental reform of the budget process, not to mention reform 
of programs themselves.
  Mr. President, a line-item veto would restore the President's 
appropriate role in the budget process. As it is, all discretionary 
spending is governed by the passage of 13 major appropriations bills. 
When an appropriations bill lands on the President's desk, he has but 
two choices: sign it into law, or veto the bill altogether.
  That is like telling me as a heart surgeon that I have but one choice 
with any heart patients, totally transplant the heart or nothing at 
all.
  Under the current system, Presidents must choose between retaining 
pork in spending bills or disrupting major programs and shutting down 
entire departments. Enacting line-item veto legislation will restore 
accountability. Members of Congress will know at the outset, up front, 
that spending bills will face greater scrutiny and exposure. They will 
be forced to look more critically at spending proposals at the 
beginning of the process. And, perhaps, some of the more egregious 
spending requests will never be made.
  No longer will a Member of Congress be able to insert, late at night 
in the back of a bill, hidden, where no one will see it, a piece of 
pork, recognizing at that time that nobody is likely to look. Perhaps 
constituents will then be told that the Government simply cannot afford 
certain projects any longer, and Members of Congress will then become 
better stewards of the American taxpayer dollars.
  Mr. President, I am so convinced that this is the right thing to do 
that I am willing to give this power to a President of the other 
political party. President Clinton, like his predecessors, President 
Reagan and Bush, knows he can save taxpayers' money--if only we give 
him the power to do so. As Governor of Arkansas, Clinton used the 
State's line-item veto 11 times. In fact, 43 of the Nation's Governors 
have some form of line-item veto. Governor William Weld of 
Massachusetts testified 
 [[Page S4184]] before Congress earlier this year that he has used the 
line-item veto in his State more than 1,000 times--mostly to cut pork-
barrel spending put into legislation to win someone's vote. 
Representative Mike Castle, former Governor of Delaware, wielded the 
line-item veto to stop the Delaware Legislature from increasing certain 
budget items fivefold.
  Most States are required to balance their budgets. Yet 43 of our 
Nation's Governors have found it necessary to use the line-item veto to 
cut wasteful spending. Mr. President, Members of Congress are not 
constrained by a balanced budget amendment--all the more reason why it 
is essential that we empower the President with a line-item veto 
provision.
  Mr. President, a review of past years' appropriations bills reveals 
page after page of extravagant spending items. Citizens Against 
Government Waste, a taxpayer watchdog group, estimates that more than 
$10 billion in pork is tucked away in last year's appropriations bills 
alone. This group defines pork as any project that: was requested by 
only one Chamber of Congress; was not specifically authorized; was not 
competitively awarded; was not requested by the President; greatly 
exceeds the President's budget request or the previous year's funding; 
was not the subject of congressional hearings; or serves only a local 
or special interest.
  Let me name just a few examples from recent years' appropriations 
bills: $58 million to bail out New York Yankee owner George 
Steinbrenner's American Ship Building Co.; $300,000 in the District of 
Columbia for the bicycle improvement project; $110 million for 
construction of corridor H in West Virginia; $19 million for the 
International Fund for Ireland. In the past, this program has used 
American taxpayer dollars for a golf video and pony trekking centers; 
and $34.7 million for screwworm research, even though the screwworm has 
been eradicated in the United States.
  These examples represent only a small fraction of hundreds of such 
pork-barrel projects approved by Congress each year. I strongly urge 
this Congress to show the American people that we can turn our 
Government away from this crash course of out-of-control Federal 
spending.
  This legislation is sure to be opposed by members of the Senate's old 
guard Democrats. But the 11 freshmen were elected to bring the message 
of the American people to the Senate. We must change, or America may be 
irreparably harmed. The nation is suffocating under debt, and this 
Congress must take every step it can to stop the flow of red ink. Mr. 
President, the line-item veto is a tool that will help do that, and I 
urge the Senate to enact this important legislation.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Abraham). The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. McCAIN. I yield to the Senator from Minnesota as much time as he 
may consume.
  Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I rise today in support of legislation that 
will create a fundamental change in the way we do business in 
Washington. I want to lend my voice to the McCain line-item veto 
legislation.
  It is legislation Republicans are calling for. It is legislation 
Democrats are calling for. It is legislation that Americans called 
for--loudly--when they voted at the polls in November.
  The Framers of the Constitution could never have imagined the need 
for a line-item veto, but neither could they have imagined the garbage 
bills coming out of Congress that have made the line-item veto a 
Presidential necessity.
  The garbage bill is Washington's version of packsack stew--a place to 
dump leftover bills that could never have been swallowed by themselves, 
but become more palatable when they are stirred safely inside a massive 
spending bill.
  Too often, these extra morsels are million-dollar pieces of pork, 
dumped into the stew pot by a Member of Congress eager to please a 
special interest group back home.
  But that favor for a few comes at the expense of everyone else.
  Last year's package of disaster assistance following the California 
earthquake quickly became a garbage bill of the very worst kind.
  By the time the legislation passed, it included not only $10 billion 
in actual emergency relief, but an extra $10 million to design a new 
Amtrak station in New York City, $20 million to hire employees for the 
FBI's fingerprint laboratory in West Virginia, $1.4 million to fight a 
potato fungus in Maine, and $1 million for sugar cane growers in 
Hawaii.
  As stand-alone legislation, particularly when compared against the 
rest of the monstrous Federal budget, individual pork projects may not 
appear so ominous.
  Collectively, however, they account for billions of dollars in 
Federal spending every year.
  And by putting the legislative priorities of a few ahead of the 
fiscal priorities of an entire Nation, they set a dangerous precedent.
  Passage of the line-item veto would help stop the fiscal recklessness 
that has dragged this country $4.8 trillion into debt.
  Wielding a line-item veto, and without having to reject the entire 
bill, the President could comb through spending legislation line by 
line and eliminate the wasteful, pork-barrel projects when Congress 
does not have the courage.
  When Congress just can not say no, the line-item veto would let the 
President do it for them.
  It would also have a powerful impact on keeping wasteful spending out 
of appropriations bills in the first place.
  My colleagues might think twice about sponsoring some pork for back 
home, knowing they could be forced to argue its merits individually on 
the floor of the Senate if it were vetoed by the President.
  The American people have asked Congress to pass the line-item veto--
64 percent of them, in fact, consider it a high or top priority.
  The House overwhelmingly passed its line-item veto legislation on 
February 6 as a birthday tribute to Ronald Reagan, the President known 
as the bill's greatest champion.
  Governors in 43 States have line-item veto authority, and why should 
they not? It works.
  In my home State of Minnesota, Gov. Arne Carlson used the line-item 
veto 29 times during his first term to cut the fat out of State 
legislation--saving Minnesota taxpayers $164 million in wasteful 
government spending.
  In neighboring Wisconsin, Gov. Tommy Thompson has put his line-item 
veto to work 1,500 times during his 8 years in office.
  If the line-item veto existed on the Federal level, the Government 
Accounting Office says the President could have cut more than $70 
billion in Federal spending between 1984 and 1989.
  Last year, President Clinton could have saved the taxpayers millions 
by blue-penciling frivolous pork projects such as screwworm research, 
$35 million; honeybee research, $5 million; and chiropractic 
demonstrations in Iowa, $1 million.
  But unlike his counterparts on the State level, the President does 
not have the power of the line-item veto, or the power to rein in 
Federal spending that comes with it.
  Like every modern Chief Executive, however, President Clinton has 
supported Congress' efforts to grant him that tool of the line-item 
veto. ``For years, Congress concealed in the budget scores of pet 
spending projects,'' said President Clinton in his most recent State of 
the Union Address.

       Last year was no different. There was a million dollars to 
     study stress in plants and $12 million for a tick removal 
     program that didn't work. If you'll give me the line-item 
     veto, I'll remove some of that unnecessary spending.

  This year, Congress appears ready to deliver, and I, along with 
others, encourage President Clinton to demonstrate his commitment to 
this legislation by being an aggressive supporter.
  This is no time to sit on the sidelines.
  Even with the backing of President Clinton, however, the bill may 
face trouble here in the Senate. Opponents say it gives too much 
authority to the President; that is shifts the constitutional balance 
of powers.
  Others claim it could lead to influence trading, with Presidents 
trying to sway legislators by threatening to veto their pet projects.
  But those colleagues of mine who are the most outspoken opponents of 
the 
 [[Page S4185]] line-item veto are perhaps the most conspicuous example 
of why we need it.
  Congress itself has not been able to stop the big spenders. But a 
line-item veto could.
  If the Senate can pass the line-item veto, Democrat Bill Clinton will 
be the first President to use it, and it will be thanks to a Republican 
Congress.
  But this effort is not about politics, and the line-item veto is 
certainly not Republican legislation. It is simply the right thing to 
do.
  We need a line-item veto.
  If it can work in Minnesota, if it can work in Wisconsin where it has 
repeatedly protected taxpayer dollars, it can work here in Washington 
for the benefit of all taxpayers as well.
  Again, Mr. President, I lend my voice today in strong support of 
legislation for a line-item veto.
  I yield the floor. Thank you.
  Mr. McCAIN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. McCAIN. I yield to the Senator from Wyoming such time as he may 
consume.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I have risen over the past week several 
times to voice my support for a line-item veto. It seems to me it is 
one of the things that we need to change procedurally. We need a change 
procedurally to make a change in this country.
  This morning, however, I listened with great interest to one of our 
friends on the other side of the aisle who said these things that we 
are dealing with in the Senate over the last 2 months have been quick 
fixes, that we have been dealing with items that are simply short-term 
gimmicks. I simply cannot let that go by without some response.
  It seems to me that very clearly over the past number of years the 
product from this Government, the product from this Congress, the 
product from this Senate, has not been what almost anyone would want. 
And in November the voters said we want some change. If you are going 
to have change in the outcome, if you are going to have change in the 
product, you have to change the way you do things. That is what these 
past several months have been about. That is what the election was 
about, it seems to me, in November. It was about things like a balanced 
budget amendment and putting some discipline into the process so that 
the Congress could, in fact, balance income with outgo.
  It was about term limits, so that there could be some end to the 
amount of services that are carried on from one particular district 
when no one else in any other district can do anything about that. It 
was about a line-item veto where we seek to get some of the unnecessary 
pork-barrel kinds of things out of the huge budget that are presented 
to the President. These are not gimmicks. These are changes in process. 
These are changes that cause things to happen that cause a different 
result. The line-item veto is simply a reasonable response, it seems to 
me, to the idea that bills become so voluminous, so broad and so 
changed that there needs to be some way to reach into them and take out 
those things that are not relevant, that are not appropriate, that 
would not stand at all on their own merit. And there are a great many 
of those, particularly here in the Senate where the rules allow for 
amendments that are not necessarily consistent with the bill. In the 
House there are rules that are stricter, but here they are not. I 
understand that. I respect that. But it allows for things to be hidden 
in the highway bill that have nothing to do with highways, that would 
not stand for 5 minutes on their own merit.
  So we need a process to change that. That is what the line-item veto 
is all about. It is not a gimmick. It is not a short-term fix. In fact, 
it is a proven way of doing it. It is done in more than 40 States, and 
has been done for years, and successfully, in my State of Wyoming.
  Is the balanced budget amendment a short-term gimmick? Give me a 
break. It is not a short-term gimmick at all. What it is is a response 
to 25 years without a balanced budget; 50 years with something like 
five balanced budgets. It is a response to performance. It is a 
response to the question of, Do you think it is financially and morally 
responsible to balance the budget, to not spend more than you take in? 
That is a pretty reasonable question. The answer is almost invariably 
yes, that is immoral; yes, that is irresponsible; yes, we do need to 
change it. We have not changed it. There is no sign of changing it 
unless there is some discipline. Some discipline applies to the 
process. That is what the balanced budget is about.
  Are term limits short-term gimmicks? I do not think so. This place is 
built on seniority. It is built on how long you have been here. That is 
fine. The problem is, people say, ``Well, you have an election every 2 
years. You have an election every 4 years. You can change that.'' 
People in Wyoming cannot do anything about it, nor in Colorado or 
Massachusetts or somewhere else.
  So you have an extraordinary amount of authority lying in someone who 
happens to be there for 40 years and is not going to be exchanged by 
his people at home because of that authority. Term limits make some 
sense. These are not short-term gimmicks. Unfortunately, we have seen 
over the last month the sort of rapid response team of those who are 
opposed to change. Every time there is an idea that we ought to change 
something, suddenly there is this great aroused response that, no, we 
cannot do that because it is a short-term gimmick.
  Mr. President, the real test, it seems to me, of responsive 
government, the real test of good government, is if there is indeed a 
response in Government from the requests and demands of voters. That is 
not a new concept contrary to something that should happen in 
democracy. It is something that has happened in this country for years. 
In the 1800's, even up to the 1930's, in every generation, there was a 
response from voters and a change in government--as there should be.
  In the beginning, however, in the 1930's when Government became 
larger and a greater part of our lives, the change becomes more 
difficult. As I remember the numbers of President Roosevelt in the 
1930's, there was something like 75,000 people who worked for the 
Federal Government. Now there is something like 3 million. So there is 
great resistance to change in the bureaucracy. There is probably even a 
higher percentage of resistance to change by the number of lawyers in 
Washington. That is great resistance to change.
  In addition, of course, as Government gets larger, it develops a sort 
of a dependency on Government and voters become more resistant to 
really take a look at the notion of what the Federal Government ought 
to be. What should we expect from the Federal Government? The message, 
I believe, was clearly we have too much Government and it costs too 
much. It is not easy to change that. It is a painful experience to 
change that. It is much easier to continue to do what we have been 
doing. Lots of good people come to Washington who are uneasy about the 
future, who really do not have strong feelings about change, but it is 
easier to go forward the way it is. Change is not easy. But that is 
what we are asked to do. That is what is necessary to do.
  The White House liaison people were by this morning, and I was 
delighted to meet with them. I asked them if the White House was for a 
line-item veto. ``Yes, sir. The President is very much for line-item 
veto. He has made that clear.'' That ought to have some impact. I hope 
that is communicated wholly to our friends on the other side of the 
aisle.
  So, clearly, we need to change the way we do things if we are going 
to expect the change in the results.
  Things we have been doing--the procedural things--are not nearly as 
much Republicans versus Democrats as those who are willing to make some 
changes and those who are for the status quo. We simply cannot continue 
to do that.
  This is a time when we need change. And for those who resist it, I 
say, come on, get over it; we have to make changes, do some things 
right. We have to balance the budget, we have to have line-item veto to 
do something about pork barrel. We can do it. We simply have to come to 
the post and get after it. Now is the time.
  Thank you.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I have just received a statement by the 
President of the United States that has been 
 [[Page S4186]] released today, March 20, 1995. I would like to quote 
that statement by the President of the United States for the Record. I 
am very encouraged by it and also very appreciative.
  It says:

       The Senate is now debating the line-item veto legislation 
     which passed last month in the House. I urge the Senate to 
     pass the strongest possible line-item veto, and to make it 
     effective immediately. If the Members of Congress from both 
     parties are serious about cutting the deficit, give me this 
     line-item veto, and I will get started right away. This is 
     one area where both parties can, and should, come together.
       I have advocated the line-item veto for a very long time. 
     When I was a governor, I had a line-item veto and I balanced 
     12 budgets in a row. I advocated the line-item veto when I 
     ran for President, and I have pushed for it since becoming 
     President because it is a very effective tool for cutting 
     wasteful government spending and bringing down the deficit.
       We have made great headway in cutting wasteful spending. We 
     have already cut the federal bureaucracy by 102,000 
     positions, on the way to cutting a quarter million. We are 
     bringing the deficit down by more than $600 billion. My new 
     budget calls for another $81 billion in deficit reduction.
       But there is still too much waste in the Federal budget. 
     This year I have proposed eliminating 131 programs altogether 
     and consolidating 270 others. I proposed many of these 
     spending cuts last year and the year before, only to have 
     Congress tell me I couldn't cut their pet projects.
       I tried to cut $16 million for the Small Business 
     Administration's tree planting program. But Congress put it 
     back in the budget.
       Congress even spent $12 million for a Cattle Tick 
     Eradication Project.
       Well, this year, if the Congress gives me the line-item 
     veto, I will cut each one of these programs, and a whole lot 
     more. I also think the line-item veto should be applied to 
     the revenue as well as the spending sides of the budget, so I 
     can curb wasteful tax and spending provisions.
       This is really about closing the door on business as usual 
     in Washington. If Congress is serious about changing the way 
     Washington works and getting a handle on wasteful spending, 
     they will put politics aside, stand up to the special 
     interests, and pass this bill.
       The President, no matter what party, needs the line-item 
     veto to bring discipline to the budget process. I urge the 
     Senate to pass it, and make it effective right now.

  Mr. President, I applaud the statement of the President of the United 
States. I appreciate it. I hope that now he can start some personal 
lobbying on that side of the aisle.
  As I have said before, the crux of this issue will lie in whether we 
obtain 60 votes to cut off debate. We have 54 votes on this side of the 
aisle. Now we need 6 votes on that side of the aisle--6 out of 46. I 
hope that the President of the United States can prevail upon six 
Members on that side of the aisle to achieve that. As he says, ``I urge 
the Senate to pass the strongest possible line-item veto.'' There can 
be no mistake about what that means, Mr. President. It means a two-
thirds majority to override a President's veto in both Houses, not the 
sham and fraud and deception being perpetrated by calling a veto a 
simple majority vote in one House in order to override a President's 
veto. That is what this debate will be all about. It will be all about 
the fact that, finally, after 8 years of being prevented from bringing 
up the line-item veto, we are now about to move to the bill for the 
first time. It has been blocked every time on a parliamentary 
procedure, a budget point of order. Now we are about to reach it. Now 
the President of the United States says he wants the strongest possible 
line-item veto enacted. Fifty-four Members on this side will at least 
vote for cloture. That is what this debate is about. I hope we can get 
six votes on the other side.
  I want to comment on the President's statement about, ``I think the 
line-item veto should be applied to the revenue as well as the spending 
sides of the budget so I can curb wasteful tax and spending 
provisions.''
  I agree with him there, also. Too many times, mammoth tax bills have 
been passed with so-called transition rules and little tax breaks for 
individuals or groups tucked into massive tax bills. I am all for it, 
but I am concerned about the language, Mr. President. We have to make 
sure the language does what it says. I am not interested in giving the 
President of the United States--either Republican or Democrat--the 
right to veto a capital gains tax cut. I am not interested in having 
that kind of management of the tax reform or tax bills impacted by a 
veto. But I am interested and committed--and I believe we can shape the 
proper language that specifically targets individual or special tax 
benefits so that we can do away with those abuses, as well.
  In addition, I say to the President of the United States, not only 
that, sir, but we are willing to give you the authority to veto new 
entitlements or expansion of entitlement programs. Often we will hear 
in this debate that the real budget problems--and they are right--exist 
as far as expansive growth of entitlement programs are concerned, and 
new entitlement programs, which seem to come down quite often. We are 
willing to shape a compromise that gives the President of the United 
States the authority not to veto existing entitlement programs--Social 
Security will not be touched--but the authority to veto expanded or new 
entitlement programs.
  I want to say again, Mr. President, that I have urged the President 
of the United States to get involved in this issue. I am glad he is 
engaged. I appreciate this very strong and, I think, important 
statement where he even cites examples of the problems that any chief 
executive has with trying to balance the budget. He mentions, ``I tried 
to cut $16 million for the Small Business Administration's tree 
planting program, but Congress put it back in the budget. Congress even 
spent $12 million for a cattle tick eradication project.''
  Mr. President, I have a list that would stretch from here out to the 
steps of the Capitol of programs like that which have been put into the 
appropriations bills over the past 10 or 15 years--actually, since 
1974. The problem is epidemic in proportion, and I am very encouraged 
by the President's statement. I look forward to working with him and 
the White House personnel as we try to corral enough votes in order to 
get this done, get it behind us, and move on to the other important 
issues of the day, such as, for example, the rescission package which 
will be pending before this body.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum and ask unanimous 
consent that the time be equally divided.
  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. COVERDELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be given 
up to 5 minutes to speak on the measure before the Senate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, I rise in support of the adoption of 
the line-item veto, and I would like to share with the Senate a 
perspective that comes from having spent 19 years in the State 
legislature of Georgia as a member of the Senate.
  Georgia, like 49 other States, had a line-item veto. While I debated 
back and forth various budgets and the fiscal condition of the State of 
Georgia, I think it is safe to say that it is in a much better state 
than the United States Government.
  The line-item veto, along with a balanced budget amendment, are among 
the reasons for that healthier condition. The fact that so many of our 
State executives have the authority to line item and, therefore, be 
another force, if you would, to intervene and bring about fiscal 
discipline is a very healthy thing.
  I think the American people know it, if the people in Washington do 
not, that we need many new rules of the road in order to bring fiscal 
order to the affairs of the United States. This is but one of many. We 
should have passed the balanced budget amendment.
  We should probably have a spending reduction commission. We need a 
line-item veto. We need to redesign the process by which we manage our 
fiscal affairs, and we need but look at the $5 trillion of debt that we 
have.
  The United States has spent every dime it has and $5 trillion it does 
not have, and it stays on a spending spree. Look at the President's 
budget--$200 billion in deficits as far as the eye can 
 [[Page S4187]] see. It is obvious we have to do things like the line-
item veto.
  Some people on the other side of the aisle allege that the line-item 
veto destabilizes the balance between the executive and legislative 
branches, but so many States have it. They are great laboratories to 
review. I do not believe anybody in our country remembers waking up and 
reading about any State of the Union becoming unglued or destabilized 
or taken to the brink of ruin over the contest between an executive and 
legislative branch over the authority to have a line-item veto.
  This is a very sensible process that will help establish fiscal 
order.
  I remember years ago when I was running for the U.S. Senate, in fact 
on other occasions, people said, ``Well, you only want the line-item 
veto because over the recent generations, the Presidents have been 
Republican.'' I said at the time, ``I am going to support the line-item 
veto no matter who the Chief Executive is because it is sensible and 
reasonable.''
  I find a certain irony that I would be in this capital city watching 
a new Republican majority fighting the Democrat minority to give a 
Democrat President the line-item veto. What an irony. I would think 
both sides of the aisle would be embracing this idea. It is their 
President. He is a Democrat, and I am just absolutely baffled that we 
find the other side of the aisle throwing barriers and tacks in the 
road as we try to put in place this very sensible rule that President 
Clinton campaigned on and said he was going to fight for.
  I think I just heard Senator McCain read a letter from the President 
indicating his support for the strongest version. You would think, Mr. 
President, we could end this debate in about a day given the fact that 
a majority of the Congress supports it and the President supports it 
and the American people support it 70 to 80 percent. But not in this 
city. No, sir, not in this city. In this city, the disconnect is so 
great, and in the light of the new majority going forth, the President 
of the United States asking for it, and the American people wanting it, 
we still have to fight our way through, just as we did on the balanced 
budget amendment, to try to bring this to fruition.
  The Presiding Officer just came from the elections. I was there just 
24 months ago. I think the Presiding Officer, like myself, recognizes 
that we are in the midst of a revolution, and the American people want 
to see some change in the capital city. They are tired of business 
being run as usual. Mr. President, they expect change to begin to 
happen here, and one of the cornerstones of this change is the line-
item veto.
  I hope that the other side of the aisle can somehow make a connection 
with what is going on in the country and it will register on them that 
our President, the titular head of their party, the majority, and the 
American people have said now is the time for there to be a line-item 
veto.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Will the Senator be making the request that 
the time of the quorum call be equally divided between the two sides?
  Mr. COVERDELL. I so request.
  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. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________