David Skaggs: “as an appropriator and opponent of the Line- Item Veto Act, my comments will be somewhat counterintuitive. You bet there…”

“as an appropriator and opponent of the Line- Item Veto Act, my comments will be somewhat counterintuitive. You bet there is a mistake that needs to be corrected here. It was our mistake in passing the Line-Item Veto Act. You bet we should be concerned for the prerogatives of the legislative branch; we gave them away. Until we suffer the consequences of our profoundly foolish act in passing the line-item veto bill to begin with, it will be a continuing invitation for just the kind of abuse of executive power that the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Obey] and others have pointed to. We did this to ourselves. The only way we are going to come to our senses about our mistake is to have to suffer the consequences of that mistake. We should vote no on this bill to force ourselves to live with what we did until we realize that we have it in our power to restore our constitutional rights. We gave them away. We cannot blame the President for taking advantage of that mistake.”