Political Quotes

“I spent most of my August break back in my district listening to my constituents, and many were pleased, in fact, when the President used for the first time the line-item veto. In fact, many wished that the President had had the authority for the disaster relief bill that we passed earlier this year, and so many other bills in recent years where so many things are tucked away in some of those bills that no one hears about them until after they are enacted. I support budget reform, and in fact, as part of the Contract with America, we included the line-item veto, which passed this House by a very large margin, to allow the President to have the line-item veto, as well as the 43 other Governors across the country. Lo and behold, we have discovered a loophole that causes the line-item veto to go away. I am proud of the bipartisan legislation that we passed here in this House that puts us on a solid fiscal footing and, in fact, balances the budget by the year 2002. We even have a surplus. But, lo and behold, that loophole that we have discovered prevents us from using the line-item veto despite having a $5 rac{1}{2} trillion national debt. We are introducing legislation to fix this, and I would urge my colleagues to support it.”