Cord Byrd: “I am not willing to assume that the President has a monopoly on wisdom. I have represented the people of West Virginia…”

“I am not willing to assume that the President has a monopoly on wisdom. I have represented the people of West Virginia now for 51 years in one office or another. I think I have a pretty good idea of what they need, what they want, and so on. But in this particular instance, the item that was vetoed for West Virginia was on the Department of Defense's 5-year plan. He vetoed the item that would have been in West Virginia, and I say, let's give it right back to him by his own criteria. He made a mistake in vetoing it. I say let's put it right back on the President's desk, let him exercise his constitutional veto, and then let the Congress exercise its constitutional option of either overriding that veto or sustaining it. I have sat right here and listened to three former Governors talk about the line-item veto. What is beyond my comprehension is how Senators can confuse the so-called line-item veto at the State level with the line-item veto at the Federal level. They are two different spheres of action. The distinguished Senator from Florida, the distinguished Senator from Virginia, and the distinguished Senator from Arkansas, all three of whom are former Governors, came from States that have the line-item veto. Well, so what? As Governors, they were acting under the constitutions of the State of Virginia, the State of Florida, and the State of Arkansas. But now they are operating under the aegis of the United States Constitution. They are two different things.…”