Heidi Alexander: “Over the last year and 5 months the White House has threatened 87 vetoes. That is about one every week and a half. If we…”

“Over the last year and 5 months the White House has threatened 87 vetoes. That is about one every week and a half. If we shut down the Senate and stopped our work every time the President threatened a veto, we would be here about 3 or 4 hours every Monday afternoon. When we say to the President: Your budget is dead on arrival, he sends us his budget anyway. The way to handle a veto threat is the way we did it with the national defense act, which is to say: All right, Mr. President, if you want to veto it, you may. We sent it to him, and he did. It came back, and the offending provision was taken out. A better way to do it might be that the President says: I will veto the education bill. We worked with him, and we sent him a version that he could sign. My plea with my friends on the Democratic side, as well as on the Republican side, is let's not let the White House lead us around by the nose and tell us we can't consider a bill just because there is a veto threat. We should consider the bill. We are a coequal branch of government. We should do what we think we ought to do--defeat it or pass it. Then, if the President chooses to veto it, that is his constitutional prerogative, and most of the time, if we know that is going to happen, the offending provision comes out. I ask for a ``yes'' vote. I hope that it succeeds. If it doesn't, we will be having the same exact vote a week from next Monday when we come back, and I will do my best to help that succeed.…”