Legislative Line Item Veto Act of 2006

LEGISLATIVE LINE ITEM VETO ACT OF 2006 -- (House of Representatives - June 22, 2006)

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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, for 5 1/2 years now the Republican Congress and the administration have pursued what I have said repeatedly is the most reckless fiscal policy in the history of our Nation. I believe that.

When George Bush took office, he inherited a projected 10-year budget surplus of $5.6 trillion. There is no dispute on that. George Bush said that on the floor of this House. In March of 2001, he promised the American people, ``We can proceed with tax relief without fear of budget deficits, even if the economy softens.''

Let's compare Republican rhetoric with reality. That projected deficit surplus has been turned into a projected budget deficit of some $4 trillion, a historical fiscal turnaround of more than $9 trillion.

Republicans have created the four largest budget deficits in American history. We Democrats have no power in this House or in the Senate or in the Presidency. It has been Republicans alone that have created these deficits.

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They have raised the debt limit four times, and House Republicans have voted to increase it by an additional $653 billion, to a total of $9.6 trillion. Let me repeat: we had a $5.6 trillion surplus in January of 2001, according to President Bush; we now have an authorized debt of $9.6 trillion.

They have spent every single nickel of Social Security money. It is no wonder that former Republican House majority leader Dick Armey of Texas told the Wall Street Journal in 2004, ``I'm sitting here, and I'm upset about the deficit, and I'm upset about spending. There's no way I can pin that on the Democrats. Republicans own the town now.''

Given their record, I think it takes some audacity, chutzpah perhaps would be a better word, for our Republican friends to come to this floor today with this so-called Legislative Line Item Veto Act and bemoan the growth in Federal spending and the dire fiscal condition, created by whom? Created by them. Republicans, after all, own the town, as I said Dick Armey noted.

Yet the President has failed to veto one bill. We are talking about a line item veto? This President has not vetoed a bill. This President has gone a longer period of time than any President in over 195 years in this Nation and he hasn't vetoed anything. All of the spending has been marked ``approved'' by George W. Bush, the President of the United States. He doesn't exercise vetoes.

This Republican majority refuses to embrace the one real method of restraining spending and restoring fiscal discipline, the pay-as-you-go budget rules that applied to both spending and taxes and were adopted, I tell my Republican friends, in bipartisan votes in 1990 and again in 1997.

But you jettisoned them. Why did you jettison them? You jettisoned those rules because you knew you couldn't fit your tax cuts into them. You didn't have the courage to cut spending to meet your tax cuts. That is a fair policy. If you don't want to spend, fine. If you want to cut taxes, fine. Cut spending. That is a fair policy. You haven't done that.

You cut revenues, and you increased very substantially revenues, period. And don't talk to me about the war. You included spending very radically on entitlement programs, the biggest increase in entitlement spending since 1965 on your watch, with very little help from Democrats, who overwhelmingly voted against those increases.

As the New York Times stated on Monday: ``The line item veto bill is an attempt to look tough while avoiding the tried-and-true, and truly tough, deficit fix: reinstating the original pay-as-you-go rules.''

Mr. Speaker, this bill is very different from versions introduced in the 1990s. It not only fails to include PAYGO rules, but also applies to mandatory programs, including Medicare and Social Security. It gives the President 45 days to send a rescission message and fails to give Congress the power to amend the rescission package.

We are the policymakers. Article I. This Congress is the most complacent, complicit Congress perhaps in history in terms of being a lap dog for the President of the United States. We are a coequal branch. We are not a branch to ask leave of the President to take action.

The majority, unfortunately, refused to allow us to consider the substitute John Spratt wanted to offer. Don't you have the courage to argue the merits of your case and let us argue the merits of our case and have a vote? Are you so afraid of the alternatives that you won't even allow the vote?

We ought to vote this down. It is a ruse, it is a fraud, it is a sham.

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