Arlen Specter: “I think the arguments by the Senator from North Dakota require some response. If I could have the attention of the…”

“I think the arguments by the Senator from North Dakota require some response. If I could have the attention of the Senator from North Dakota? I know the number of the White House. I called it last night in an effort to try to resolve the outstanding differences on the appropriations bill for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, the subcommittee of appropriations which I chair. When the Senator from North Dakota talks about insufficient money for discretionary spending, that is not necessarily true. In our subcommittee, on those three Departments we met the President's figure, $106.2 billion. We have structured our priorities somewhat differently. He wanted $2.7 billion for school construction and for more teachers. We gave that to him. But we added a very appropriate proviso, and that is, if the local boards decide they have sufficient of those items, they can use it for something else. The grave difficulty here has been, since the Government was closed, there has been a radical shift in power between the Congress and the President. Now the President expects everything on the threat of a veto. If he is going to veto something, that means the Congress has to cave to him and knuckle to him. We are proceeding in a nonconstitutional way. We have the executive branch in our legislative discussions before we arrive at our bills, and then we have a situation where the President has to have his way. There is no such thing as compromise.”