Willie Hefner: “The balanced budget is not what we are voting on. The gentleman is saying to the President, If you will do what we want…”

“The balanced budget is not what we are voting on. The gentleman is saying to the President, If you will do what we want to do, we'll give you the line-item veto this year, but everything else extending the debt limit and everything else will go into effect as soon as he signs it, with the exception of the line-item veto which we passed well over a year ago, in the first year of this new administration. Why? I do not understand why the gentleman would object to giving the President the line-item veto when he has got all these bills that are coming up for all the appropriations for everything that we authorized this year. Why would the gentleman want to wait until 1997, because we can save a lot of money? Would it have been possible until you make it effective as soon as the bill is signed? Mr. Speaker, just as among friends here, we are just friends here, would it not have been possible to put into this legislation that as soon as the President signs it, he will have the line-item veto? It is just that simple. Yes or no; could the gentleman have done it that way?”