Lateefah Simon: “I want to have a line-item veto that I can vote for. I also agree with Senator Stevens that we ought to be looking not…”

“I want to have a line-item veto that I can vote for. I also agree with Senator Stevens that we ought to be looking not only at appropriations, we ought to be looking at tax breaks. I personally would like to give the President, in theory what I would like to do is maintain a good balance of power. But there are constitutional problems with doing that. I, in theory, would like to give the President authority to have a line-item veto or to reduce an appropriation, and that it would take a specific vote of a majority of the House and a majority of the Senate to override that. That forces a vote on our part. That way we cannot have some of these abuses that we hear about. But I think probably more significantly, the ability to reduce an appropriation would save more dollars, frankly, than just the ability to line-item veto something. Senator Stevens is correct. The majority of years Presidents request more money than we appropriate. The American public would be surprised to learn that.”