Free Republic

Barack Obama’s smirk is wearing a bit thin. It’s tiresome to watch this man smile like the Cheshire Cat while lying to our face and treating us like children. Monday he signed a spending bill so crammed with earmarks even ABC News labeled it a $410 billion pork-laden spending bill.” As he signed this monstrosity Obama said “behind closed doors and away from the glare of the cameras.” The secrecy attached to Obama’s massive spending bills is something we have to live with. But if Congressional Republicans standup and fight for America’s future we might begin to slow this steamroller...

A bipartisan group is giving the line-item veto another go at it, albeit with some key tweaks, more than a decade after the Supreme Court struck down the procedure as unconstitutional. Sens. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and John McCain, R-Ariz., and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., on Wednesday will announce the introduction of a Line-Item Veto Act, which would enable the president to strike individual items like earmarks from a spending bill before signing it. The White House has signaled that it is open to the idea. Asked about being given that authority, spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters last week: "Well, I...

Two Wisconsin lawmakers from opposing parties are joining former GOP presidential nominee John McCain in pushing to give President Barack Obama line-item veto power. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Middleton, and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Janesville, are teaming up with the Arizona senator for what they say is a strategy to hold the line on federal spending and prevent wasteful earmarks. They plan to introduce the bill tomorrow.

It seems that White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, Sen. John McCain (R), and Sen. Russ Feingold (D) are on the same page. The issue: All three want a presidential line-item veto to curb earmarks and spending. A line-item veto gives the president the power to veto particular items of a bill without having to veto it in its entirety. During the Clinton administration, Congress gave the power to Clinton, but it was later revoked in 1998 when the Supreme Court ruled that the measure overreached presidential powers. Today, at the daily White House press conference, one of us asked...

Here's a little nugget from the past, a tale that may offer some insights into the next stage of the GOP presidential race, and the fortunes of front-runner Rudy Giuliani: The date is the mid-1990s, and Republicans have swept Congress with their Contract with America. A top promise is greater fiscal responsibility, and a crucial element of that is a vow to pass a line-item veto and give the president the power to weed out pork. In 1996 Republicans are as good as their word, and grant the opposition's Bill Clinton a broad new power to strip wasteful spending. Mr....

Mitt Romney is an intelligent man who sometimes seems eager to find bushel baskets under which to hide his light. Romney faults Rudy Giuliani for opposing the presidential line-item veto. But Giuliani doesn't, unfortunately. The facts -- not that they loom large in this skirmish -- are: When in 1997 Bill Clinton used the line-item veto, with which Congress had just armed him, to cancel $200 million for New York state, Giuliani harried Clinton all the way to the Supreme Court. It agreed with Giuliani that the line-item veto was an unconstitutional violation of the "presentment" clause. Today, Giuliani says,...

Tucked away on Seattle's Portage Bay, a sleek, 85-foot speedboat sat idle for years — save for an annual jaunt to maintain its engine. The Navy paid $4.5 million to build the boat. But months before the hull ever touched water, the Navy gave the boat to the University of Washington. The school never found a use for it, either. Why would the Navy waste taxpayer dollars on a boat that nobody wanted? Blame it on Sen. Patty Murray and Congressmen Norm Dicks and Brian Baird. All three exercised their political muscle to slip language into a 2002 spending bill...

The Republican presidential race has reached a boiling point. The top two contenders, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, have tussled over who has the better record on taxes. Giuliani and Romney removed their gloves during the debate in Michigan and started landing blows in the aftermath. But the winner coming out of this conflict could be the guy who hasn't been hit at all -- Fred Thompson. The Romney camp's apparent strategy is to turn this into a two-person race. On Tuesday, I touched on the Giuliani/Romney debate battle. Romney is attacking Giuliani on two fronts: taxes and the line-item...

Rudy Awakening Giuliani’s the-Constitution-made-me-do-it excuse just doesn’t wash. By Douglas W. Kmiec Tuesday night’s Michigan debate was very revealing. The debate revealed the significant executive-leadership differences between Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney. When it gets down to specific cases, Mayor Giuliani is dependent upon others for direction and guidance and is just as likely to fall into mistaken ideas as not. At the same time, the debate revealed how, despite his protestations to the contrary, Giuliani is not really a supporter of conservative legal thinking. The facts on who supports spending restraint and tax reduction are plain. Romney does. Giuliani...

Giuliani’s the-Constitution-made-me-do-it excuse just doesn’t wash. Tuesday night’s Michigan debate was very revealing. The debate revealed the significant executive-leadership differences between Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney. When it gets down to specific cases, Mayor Giuliani is dependent upon others for direction and guidance and is just as likely to fall into mistaken ideas as not. At the same time, the debate revealed how, despite his protestations to the contrary, Giuliani is not really a supporter of conservative legal thinking. The facts on who supports spending restraint and tax reduction are plain. Romney does. Giuliani doesn’t. Giuliani’s lame excuse that “the-Constitution-made-him-spend...

MANCHESTER, N.H. - Mitt Romney criticized GOP presidential rival Rudy Giuliani Thursday for fighting as New York's mayor to eliminate a presidential line-item veto

DEMOCRATS made earmark reform a campaign issue in 2006 — and a reality in 2007 — because earmarks were at the heart of corruption scandals in Washington. Democrats never promised to eliminate earmarks. Putting all earmarks in the same boat, as critics often do, distorts the debate and does a disservice to the public. Not all earmarks are equal. We pledged to clean up the abuses in the earmark process, and we kept that promise. Our reforms do not deserve a kick in the pants. To ignore our reforms as if they never occurred and to criticize us for not...

For Immediate ReleaseOffice of the Press SecretaryFebruary 3, 2007 President's Radio Address       Audio      In Focus: Jobs & Economy      THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. This week was filled with more good news about America's economy. We learned that our economy grew at an annual rate of 3.5 percent in the fourth quarter of last year. Overall, our economy grew 3.4 percent in 2006 -- up from 3.1 percent in 2005. The Dow Jones reached an all-time high this week for the 27th time in the past four months. And we learned that America created 111,000 new jobs in January, which...

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...

September 14, 2006 Congressional Pork and the Animal Farm By: Rick Reiss Many who look back on their high school days remember studying the works of George Orwell in literature class. Orwell's novella Animal Farm, an allegory about the rise and corruption of Soviet communism, holds important lessons for today's politicians. Animal Farm centers on a group of pigs who organize a revolution against their cruel farmer, Mr. Jones. The pigs, led by Napoleon, proclaim their new farm as a workers' paradise in which all farm animals are equal. In the end, Napoleon and his pigs become so corrupt with...

WASHINGTON -- Despite the House of Representatives' disappointing performance on Rep. Jeff Flake's Pork-busting amendments, there are some stirrings in Congress about getting serious on spending. The most notable is Senator Judd Gregg's Stop Over Spending (SOS) Act. Although it has its shortcomings, it incorporates enough good ideas that it represents considerable improvement over the current system. Here are some highlights:

The Office of Public Liaison is pleased to invite you to attend a discussion on the Legislative Line Item Veto Act of 2006 with Rob Portman, Director of the Office of Management and Budget Friday, July 28, 2006 If you are unable to attend, please participate via conference call, starting at 11:30 EST. Toll free call in number: 866-216-6835 Participant Access Code: 259546

Bush Fighting Long Odds on Line-Item Veto By ANDREW TAYLOR ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush may be pushing hard for Congress to give him line-item veto power to remove wasteful spending from the bills it passes, but the idea seems to be sinking on Capitol Hill. Even though lawmakers are increasingly sheepish about the "pork barrel" projects the line-item veto is designed to fight, Democrats and some old-school Republicans in the Senate are so resistant to the idea that legislation to grant Bush this authority may not even get a Senate vote. The House passed the measure a...

The spending plan is the first completed on time in six years. Criticism of his trimming was muted as Democrats got most of what they had sought. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the state's first on-time budget in six years Friday, after using his veto power to scale back the expansion of environmental enforcement and healthcare programs approved by the Legislature earlier this week. The $131-billion spending plan signed by the governor will use a surge of unanticipated revenue that filled California's coffers this year to pay back billions the state borrowed from schools in recent years as well as to...

For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary June 27, 2006 President Discusses Line-Item Veto JW Marriott Hotel Washington, D.C.       Fact Sheet: The Legislative Line-Item Veto: Constitutional, Effective, and Bipartisan 10:58 A.M. EDT THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Thanks for letting me come by to say a few words. Larry, thanks for the introduction. I do want to congratulate the Manhattan Institute for being a think tank for new ideas and better ways for our nation to handle some of the problems we face. I appreciate your thoughts, I appreciate your works. For those of you who...