Joe Biden: “I have long supported an experiment with a line-item veto power for the President. Over a decade ago, I introduced my…”

“I have long supported an experiment with a line-item veto power for the President. Over a decade ago, I introduced my own plan for a line-item veto, with Senator Mattingly. Since then I have cosponsored several similar plans, in particular those offered by my distinguished colleagues Senator Hollings and Senator Bradley. I have held this position for all these years, Mr. President, not because I believe the line-item veto will solve our deficit problem. No single procedural change can do that. I support a line-item veto because it will, at the margins, shift the incentives now in our system to attach special-interest spending to our appropriations bills. To rein in that practice, Mr. President, we must expose it. The line-item veto will give the President a tool, if he chooses to use it, to raise the profile of wasteful, special-interest spending--to expose it to the light of public scrutiny. The need to track down and remove wasteful spending is not new, Mr. President, but it has never been more important than now.”