Posted on 01/03/2007 7:46:07 AM PST by KantianBurke
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush on Wednesday asked the Democratic-controlled Congress to give the White House line-item veto power to control spending.
As he prepares to deal with an opposition Congress for the first time, Bush is also asking lawmakers to extend tax cuts.
Bush made the requests in a Rose Garden statement and in an opinion column published in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal.
The line-item veto would allow the president to cut specific spending from legislation without vetoing the entire bill.
In the opinion piece, Bush warned that the Democrat-controlled Congress risks stalemate if it resorts to "politics as usual" and tries to "pass bills that are simply political statements."
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
What a hoot!
If he expects us to believe he's serious about controlling spending then he must think we've lost our's as well.
The line item veto is unconstitutional, but since this is nothing more than a comical political stunt, it doesn't matter.
Line item veto was pushed by Reagan when he was in office because democrats had so much pork and bad laws hidden in bills put on his desk. The GOP thought it a good idea and gave Klinton the power through law to use the line item veto, which he did. However, some liberal group sued and challenged the line item veto in court and the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional.
And why wasn't there a need for earmark reform over the last 6 years? Just curious.
Is it less expensive to fund medication that prevents hospitalization or not, and then fund the hospital stay? The total cost of the prescription drugs that are funded by the feds need to be weighed against the cost of hospital stays that are prevented.
You mean like the Bill to fund the military on the WOT where Congress slipped in all kinds of earmarks that had NOTHING to do with the military???
It's an old game Congress likes to play
A line-item veto would have saved the Bill but thrown out all the pork spending
He has been talking about reform and a line item veto .. no one has bothered to listen to him
I guess it's easier to bash him
Bush? Spending control? You have got to be kidding.
LOL, because it's not the 'right' party in control now he discovers fiscal responsibility. This is a joke
Ummm .. what are you doing trying to make sense? ;0)
In other words, the members of Bush's OWN PARTY who could not offer sufficient fiscal restraint on a war funding bill to knock off the earmark nonsense? If that isn't as good a reason as any why the public soured on the GOP, I don't know what is.
And the line-item veto has already been shot down by SCOTUS, so short of a Constitutional Amendment, I don't see what Bush is asking for here of having any chance of surviving SCOTUS muster.
With his actions in both calling for massive spending and refusing to veto bloated bills, he's handed folks the hammers to hit him with.
By the cratefull.
Ford vetoed something like 90 bills. You don't need a line-item veto - politics doesn't call for a stilleto, it calls for a chainsaw.
With the way things are "trending" now, I'd rather NOT have a dem with this power as the prez.
Correct
The new idea for the line item veto is to knock off the pork spending and then send it back for another vote before being passed into law
Since when is it the govt's responsibility to do such things? Ur copy of the Constitution have that "pay for medical care" part in it?
Forget it .. it's easier for y'all to just bash then to work on a solution
Have fun with the Dem Party
I agree. From 2001 to '04, spending for the Depts. of HUD, HHS, and Education increased at least 28% each. Bush is a hypocrite to say that we should decrease spending, unless he admits that he betrayed thousands of conservatives who voted for him.
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