Sean Patrick Maloney: “Mr. Chairman, I rise very strongly in support of the amendment offered by my distinguished colleagues from the great…”

“Mr. Chairman, I rise very strongly in support of the amendment offered by my distinguished colleagues from the great States of New York and Wisconsin. The line item veto bill addresses the deficit by giving the President the power to cut pork-barrel projects out of appropriations bills. It gives the President broad authority to line item veto any spending, regardless of the amount, from the entire spending to only one dollar of spending. Yet the authors on the other side of the aisle of this legislation have left the job half done. It gives the President very narrow authority to line item veto tax provisions, only those which benefit 100 or fewer people. Mr. Chairman, if we are going to be tough on spending, should we not likewise be tough on a tax giveaways? In the committee, and I was a member of the committee, in the original text of H.R. 2, we addressed the problem of targeted tax benefits only in the most limited way. It allowed the President to rescind these sweetheart tax deals, but defined them as provisions which benefited five or fewer people.”