John Spratt: “Mr. Chairman, I have actually sponsored legislation like this in the past. I have voted for it and argued for it on the…”

“Mr. Chairman, I have actually sponsored legislation like this in the past. I have voted for it and argued for it on the House floor. When we had the vote on the line item veto, I came over here and tried to offer an alternate amendment to it and argued to the House, the other side principally, that if they would adopt this, and the Supreme Court did what I predicted they would do and held it unconstitutional, then this would be in place as the alternative. We would have it by now if that had been attempted, the bill passed. And that was not put in it. There was a strong suspicion on my colleagues' side that if we put that in, the Senate would take out the line item veto and pass the rescission provisions. In truth, there are certain Senators who are probably laying in wait for this rescission provision already. We did add some features to it that I would recommend for your consideration. One is when it came through the Committee on Government Reform we added a provision that would not only allow spending to be treated this way, but also targeted tax cuts.”