Jerry Moran: “Mr. Chairman, we have had a constructive debate, and many of the points that our colleague from California emphasized…”

“Mr. Chairman, we have had a constructive debate, and many of the points that our colleague from California emphasized have been brought up in the course of amendments. This side is disappointed that many of those, all of those amendments really were defeated. Many of them were not even fully considered by most of this body. We just killed an amendment, the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spratt] and I had to apply the line item veto to tax bills as well as appropriation bills because those Members who have been around for any period of time, particularly in the last two terms, are aware that anything that is in an appropriations bill that could be considered pork gets subjected not only to the scrutiny of the Committee on Appropriations, but invariably we have to debate it and vote on it on this floor. Not so with tax bills. Tax bills are replete with special provisions. Newsweek this week pointed out the fact that this is the biggest loophole, and yet a provision to subject tax bills to the same kind of scrutiny was killed in committee, and just this morning killed on the floor. I offered an amendment to try to protect the separation of powers, reminding our colleagues that the people that served in this body in 1939, and it was an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress and obviously a Democratic President, passed a law designed to protect the judiciary. This line item veto essentially repeals that law.”