Daniel Coats

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Energy Production and Regulation of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be granted permission to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 21, 1995, for purposes of conducting a subcommittee hearing which is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. The purpose of the hearing is to receive testimony on S. 92, a bill to provide for the reconstitution of outstanding repayment obligations of the Administrator of the Bonneville Power Administration for the appropriated capital investments in the Federal Colombia River Power System.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Aging of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources be authorized to meet for a hearing on bringing title III into the 21st century, during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 21, 1995 at 10 a.m.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Readiness of the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet at 2:30 p.m., on Tuesday, March 21, 1995, in open session, to receive a report on military capabilities and readiness.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Special Committee on Aging be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 21, 1995, at 9:30 a.m., to hold a hearing on the topic of health care fraud.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on International Finance of the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 21, 1995, to conduct a hearing on U.S. and Foreign Commercial Service.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Taxation and IRS Oversight of the Finance Committee be permitted to meet Tuesday, March 21, 1995, beginning at 10:30 a.m., in room SD-215, to conduct a hearing on the administration's proposal to impose capital gains tax on individuals who renounce their U.S. citizenship.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet on March 21, 1995, at 9:30 a.m., on telecommunications policy reform/cable rates, broadcast and foreign ownership.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry be allowed to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 21, at 9:30 a.m., in SDG-50, to discuss the confirmation of agriculture Secretary-designee Daniel Robert Glickman.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 21, 1995, at 2 p.m., to hold a hearing on S. 5 and H.R. 7.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 21, 1995, at 10 a.m., to hold a hearing on S. 5 and H.R. 7.

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Idaho for his comments, for his support, and for this effort. I appreciate the contributions that he has made over the past several years in attempting to deal with this. Mr. President, I note the Senator from West Virginia is on the floor. I certainly have no immediate requests for time at this point. I would be happy to yield the floor. Mr. BYRD addressed the Chair.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I appreciated the comments of the Senator from West Virginia. I have been anticipating his arrival on the floor to debate this issue. It is an important issue. It deserves full discussion and debate. We began this latest discussion, of course, on Thursday evening of last week. Senator McCain and I discussed our proposal at length and then, of course, we debated on Friday and all day Monday, and now it is Tuesday. Last evening, the majority leader offered an amendment to the original proposal, offered by Senator McCain and myself, which, in this Senator's opinion, substantially strengthens the effort which we are undertaking by expanding the scope of the line-item veto to include not just appropriations, but targeted tax expenditures, any new direct spending and new spending in entitlements that change the law which currently exists. It does not mean that new enrollees are not subject to the benefits of entitlements as they currently exist on the books. But it means that if attempts are made to expand those categories and to provide new spending, they are also incorporated. These were suggestions offered by Members of the Congress, in particular Senator Stevens of Alaska, Senator Domenici of New Mexico. We negotiated these changes. Many of these ideas originated in years past, some of them offered by Senators from the other party. I do not intend to take a great deal of time in responding to the comments of the Senator from West Virginia. However, there are several points I wish to make. The Senator from West Virginia began his presentation by citing--and I believe I am correctly quoting him--the ``frenetic efforts of Republicans'' to bring a measure to the floor. Yes, there was considerable negotiation, but it is negotiation upon a core and a base of discussion around a concept which has been very much a part of the history of this body. Recent history, of course, in the last decade or so has shown that a number of attempts have been made to bring line-item veto to a vote in this body. All of them have been unsuccessful. There have been a number of votes, all falling short of the necessary votes to either waive provisions of the Budget Act or to break an attempted filibuster of the effort. So we have not been able to achieve 60 votes to bring the matter to full debate and vote. But the concept of separate enrollment has been discussed before on this floor at length and voted on, at least in a procedural way. The underlying concepts of either enhanced rescission or a process described as line-item veto or a discussion of line-item veto, all of this has been very much a part of the debate and discussion that has been present on this floor during the past decade. But the concept of line-item veto goes back historically much further than that. In fact, it was in 1876 that then Representative Charles Faulkner of West Virginia introduced for the first time the line-item veto concept. It was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary where it there died, and since that time about 200 line-item veto bills have been introduced. In fact, in nearly every succeeding Congress a proposal has been offered in varying forms but all centered around the same basic premise, and that is will this legislative body cede to the President some semblance of authority to provide a check and balance against the spending power exercised by this body. Now, as the Senator from West Virginia has enumerated, we are all well aware of the provisions of the Constitution article I, section 7, which outlines the procedures by which the legislature passes legislation and by which the President approves it. And of course, article I, section 7 clearly grants to the President the power to reject what the Congress has proffered to him, or perhaps return is a better word. It says that ``If any bill shall not be returned by the President within 10 days after it shall have been presented to him, the same shall be a law, in like manner as if he had signed it.'' But it also says that the President may ask this body to reconsider what it has done and send back to us bills that we have forwarded to him and it will require two-thirds vote of each body, both the House and the Senate, So the constitutional authority for the President to veto or reject or return, however you want to phrase it, what this legislature has presented is obviously well established as a part of the Constitution. But the separate question is do we want to go one step further in allowing the President the right within the legislation sent to him to line item items back to this legislature, to look at the legislation that we send to him and give the President the opportunity to say I will accept this portion but not that portion. I will accept most of what you sent but I want you to reconsider that separate portion. That really is the question before us. As I said, there have been nearly 200 attempts to do that. Most of those have died in committee. Very few have been reported, and those that have were mostly reported with adverse recommendations. Our Founding Fathers discussed this issue. They were concerned about the balance of power between the respective branches. That is why I believe they wrote the veto power in the Constitution to the President. But they were concerned about the unchecked power, the unbalanced power of the legislative branch over the executive branch. In the Federalist Paper No. 73, it was Hamilton who had this to say about the executive veto. The first thing that offers itself to our observation is the qualified negative of the President upon the acts or resolutions of the two houses of the legislature; or, in other words, his power of returning all bills with objections to have the effect of preventing their becoming laws, unless they should afterwards be ratified by the two thirds of each of the component members of the legislative body.

Mr. COATS. I would like to be able to give my statement and then I will be happy at the end of that to yield. I know the Senator would have many questions. I do not want to spend an excessive amount of time because there are other Senators waiting to speak. If I could go through my statement and then address the question, I would prefer to do that.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, if the Senator from West Virginia will yield, first of all I apologize to the Senator for not yielding. I guess I got carried away with my own rhetoric and conclusion. I forget I promised the Senator from West Virginia that I would yield for a question. I trust he will accept my apology for that. The question the Senator from West Virginia has propounded to me is: Did I vote for the 1990 or the 1993 budget resolution? The answer to that is no. I would like to explain why I did not. Because this Senator believes that my constituents from Indiana have been taxed enough. And both of those resolutions contained substantial increases in taxes, as well as spending cuts. It was the philosophy of some who offered those resolutions that our deficit ought to be attacked by a combination of tax increases and spending cuts. It is this Senator's opinion that we have taxed the taxpayers enough, and that we ought to attack the deficit on the basis of spending cuts-- this Government has grown too large--and that our first priority ought to be to reduce the scope and size of Government and to reduce expenditures. Only then consider the possibility of an increase, if it is needed, to address the balanced budget amendment. So, if the vote was on a measure as we have had a number of votes, to just reduce spending, this Senator is more than happy to vote for it. But not if it includes raising taxes.

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, while the U.S. Senate discusses the most important issues facing our Nation, I rise today to talk about another issue that is near and dear to the hearts of the people in my State of Indiana. The Hoosier love for basketball has been captured on film and in folklore, and another chapter has been added to this rich Hoosier basketball history. Bethel College, located in Mishawaka, IN, captured the NAIA Division II Men's Basketball National Championship. And this was no ordinary title game. The Pilots truly have added another thrilling page to the State of Indiana's basketball tradition. The Bethel College Pilots played the championship game on the home court of their worthy opponent, Northwest Nazarene College. Just when it looked like the game was lost, Bethel senior Mark Galloway drilled a 3-point shot at the buzzer, sending the contest into overtime. Bethel then controlled the overtime, winning the national championship by a score of 103-95. Along with his exciting game-saving shot, Mark Galloway finished as Bethel College's all-time leading scorer with 2,622 points. Mr. President, the Bethel College Pilots, coached by Mike Lightfoot, finished the season with a 16-game winning streak and a record of 38-2, the best in school history. I know I speak for all basketball fans in Indiana when I salute the Pilots, and congratulate season.

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, under the unanimous-consent agreement, it is my understanding that time is to be allocated between the two managers of the bill. I would like to ask the Chair what the current time situation is.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, while we have several speakers lined up today to speak on the line-item veto, none is here at this time. I think what I will do is take the occasion to delve into a little bit of the history of line-item veto so we could at least make that part of the record. On Friday, I spoke at length in response to the minority leader's presentation before the Senate, of his concerns and objections about the line-item veto and the direction he thought he should go. I do not know that I need to repeat those at this particular point. Let me reflect back a little bit on how we got to this particular point and why line-item veto was considered necessary by a number of our former to put it in the historical context, perhaps we can better understand the case for it today. history of the line-item veto Reflecting upon the experience of the U.S. Government, Confederate rebels met to draw up a new constitution. An individual by the name of Robert Smith--not the same Robert Smith who so ably represents the State of New Hampshire in the Senate today-- but Robert A. Smith, in addressing the people of Alabama, had this to say: ``We have followed with almost literal fidelity, the Constitution of the United States,'' reflecting on his drafting of a constitution for when they anticipated a new Confederate Government. We have followed with almost literal fidelity the Constitution of the United States, and departed from its text only so far as experience had clearly proved that additional checks were required for the preservation of the Nation's interest. Of this character is the power given the President to arrest corrupt or illegitimate expenditures, and at the same time approving other parts of the bill. There is hardly a more flagrant abuse of its power, by the Congress of the United States than the habitual practice of loading bills, which are necessary for governmental operations with reprehensible, not to say venal dispositions of the public money, and which only obtain favor by a system of combinations among Members interested in similar abuses upon the Treasury. That speech could have been given yesterday. That speech can be given today. Yet here we have Robert Smith more than 100 years ago in writing with his colleagues a new constitution, basing it upon the experience that this Nation had at that point with its then Constitution, the experience of granting to the legislative body a power that was not checked by the checks and balances of those powers given to the executive branch. As Robert Smith said, ``We basically are writing our new Constitution on the basis of the existing U.S. Constitution because that Constitution is a sound model for what any new Constitution ought to be made of.'' ``Yet,'' he said, ``based on our experience, that has clearly proven that there are some changes that need to be made, some additional checks,'' as he said, ``were required for the preservation of the Nation's interest, checks necessary to arrest corrupt or illegitimate expenditures on the part of the legislative branch.'' I go on to quote Robert Smith: Bills necessary for the support of the Government are loaded with items of the most exceptional character, and are thrown upon the President at the close of the session, for his sanction, as the only alternative for keeping the Government in motion. Even, however, under this salutary check, the evil might be but mitigated, not cured, in the case of a weak or highly partisan President, who would feel that the responsibility of such legislation rested but lightly on him, so long as the unrestrained power and duty of originating appropriations depended upon a corrupt or pliant Congress--hence the conventions of confederate States wisely determined that the Executive was the proper department to know and call for the moneys necessary for the support of Government, and that here the responsibility should rest. In closing, he said: * * * By giving the President the power to veto objectionable items in appropriation bills, we have, I trust, greatly purified our Government. America fought a painful and bloody war to save the Union. We are standing here today because that war was won. Millions of our fellow Americans won their freedom and put an end to one of the most disgraceful chapters in American history. And yet a germ of an idea was born in the Confederacy that took root across our country. The idea was enhanced accountability for the taxpayers money through the line-item veto. After the Civil War, line-item veto authority spread like wildfire in the States. Today, 43 Governors enjoy the same power we are fighting to give the President of the United States--the authority to veto wasteful spending items. Line-item veto became a reality in the U.S. possessions as well. Congress, though it failed to give the President line-item veto authority, gave this power to the Governors General of the possessions. The line-item veto was granted to the Governor General of the Philippines in 1916, and the Governors of the territories of Hawaii in 1900, Alaska in 1912, Puerto Rico in 1917, and the Virgin Islands in 1954. Thus Congresses recognized the need for and virtue of this authority which it has never given to the President of the United States and to the American people. States have been successfully using the line-item veto, many for over 100 years. Today, almost uniformly, the Governors endorse giving the President of the United States the same tool for controlling spending. A Cato Institute survey of 118 U.S. Governors and former Governors-- including Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Michael Dukakis, and Bill Clinton reveals a strong consensus that a line-item veto for the President would be an effective method of reducing the massive Federal deficit: 67 of respondents were Republicans, 50 Democrat; 19 were serving Governors when they responded; 92 percent of the Governors believe that a line-item veto for the President would help restrain Federal spending; 88 percent of the Democratic respondents supported the line-item veto; 55 percent of the Governors believe Congress has too much authority over the Federal budget, versus only 2 percent who think the President has too much authority. When asked ``Was the line-item veto a useful tool to you as Governor in balancing the State budget?'' 69 percent said the line-item veto was a very useful tool, 23 percent said it was a somewhat useful tool, 7 percent said it was not useful, 91 percent of Democratic Governors said the line-item veto was very useful or somewhat useful. The survey also asked, ``Do you think that a line-item veto for the President would help restrain Federal spending?'' Ninety-two percent of the respondents replied yes. Eighty-eight of Democrats agreed. Since the Budget Reform and Impoundment Act of 1974, every President has complained that Congress has usurped the executive branch's traditional powers over the budget process. The Governors agree. ``In your opinion, does Congress or the President have too much authority over the Federal budget today?'' The survey asked. The majority responded, ``Congress has too much power.'' Nine of ten Governors--regardless of party--support a line-item veto for the President as a way to restrain spending. A majority of Governors think that Congress has too much authority over the budget process. Here is what some Governors have actually said: The line-item veto is a useful tool that a Governor can use on occasion to eliminate blatantly `Port Barrell' expenditures that can strain the budget. At the same time he must answer to the voters if he (or she) uses the veto irresponsibly. It is a certain restraint on the legislative branch.--Keith H. Miller, Alaska, Republican (1969-70). I support the line-item veto because it is an executive function to identify budget plan excesses and wasteful items. It is an antidote for pork--Hugh L. Carey, New York, Democrat (1975-83). Congress's practice of passing enormous spending bills means that funding for everything from Lawrence Welk museum to a study of bovine flatulence slips through Congress. The President may be unable to veto a major bill that includes such spending abuses because the majority of the bill is desperately needed. A line-item veto would let the President control the irresponsible spending that Congress can't. A line-item veto already works at the State level. It not only allows a Governor to veto wasteful spending, it works as a deterrent to wasteful spending legislators know will be vetoed--Pete Wilson, California, Republican, (1991-?). Legislators love to be loved, so they love to spend money. Line-item veto is essential to enable Executive to hold down spending--William F. Weld, Massachusetts, Republican (1991- ?). When I was Governor in California, the Governor had the line-item veto, and so you could veto parts of a bill or even part of the spending in a bill. The President can't do that. I think--frankly of course, I'm prejudiced--Government would be far better off if the President had the right of the Line- item veto.--Ronald Reagan, California, Republican (1967-75). I believe it provides a check and balance which is helpful even if only because it requires legislators to consider the potential for veto and may thereby make them more accountable--Mike Sullivan, Democrat, Wyoming (1991-94). It can be a surgical tool to highlight foolishness, and thus help the Executive make his case.--Pete Du Pont, Delaware, Republican (1977-85). To the detriment of the Federal process, the President is not held accountable for a balanced budget. Congress takes control over budget development with its budget resolution, after which, the President may only approve or veto 13 appropriation bills. Without the line-item veto the President has minimal after it is passed--L. Douglas Wilder, Virginia, Democrat (1990-94). Almost every President since Ulysses S. Grant has made the same case as the Governors. Only one President in the 20th century has not requested the line-item veto. In a message to Congress on August 14, 1876, President Grant claimed ``discretionary authority'' over the items of appropriations bills. In signing the river and harbor bill he said: If it was obligatory upon the Executive to expend all the money appropriated by Congress, I should return the river and harbor bill with my objections * * * without enumerating, many appropriations are made for the works of purely private or local interest, in no sense national. I cannot give my sanction to these, and will take care that during my term of office no public money shall be expended upon them * * * under no circumstances will I allow expenditure upon works not clearly national. No objection was made to President Grant's interpretation. After deprecating the practice of combining appropriations for a great diversity of objects, widely separated in their nature and locality, in one river and harbor bill, President Arthur, in his second annual message to Congress, dated December 4, 1882, suggested two suggestions to this problem: First, enactment of separate appropriation bills for each internal improvement, or, alternately, and Second, a constitutional amendment empowering the Executive to veto items in appropriations bills. He then listed 14 States whose constitutions gave the item or specific veto authority to their Governors and declared: I commend to your careful consideration and the question whether an amendment of the Federal Constitution in the particular indicated would not afford the best remedy for what is often a grave embarrassment both to Members of Congress and the Executive, and is sometimes a serious public mischief. President Arthur repeated this recommendation in his third annual message, dated December 4, 1883, and in his fourth annual message, dated December 1, 1884. president franklin roosevelt In his budget message for fiscal year 1939, President Roosevelt, after calling attention to the use of the item veto ``in the majority of our States'' and remarking that ``the system meets with general approval in the many States which have adopted it,'' said: A respectable difference of opinion exists as to whether a similar item veto power could be given to the President by legislation or whether a constitutional amendment would be necessary. I strongly recommend that the present Congress adopt whichever course it may deem to be the correct one. president truman In the second volume of his memoirs, Harry S. Truman wrote: One important lack in the Presidential veto power, I believe, is authority to veto individual items in appropriation bills. The President must approve the bill in its entirety, or refuse to approve it, or let it become law without his approval * * * As a senator I tried to discourage the practice of adding riders deliberately contrived to neutralize otherwise positive legislation, because it is a form of legislative blackmail. president eisenhower In reply to a House request for recommendations on possible budget cuts, President Eisenhower addressed a letter to Speaker Rayburn, dated April 18, 1957, containing 10 recommendations including the following one: And, tenth, to help assure continuing economy on the part of the Congress as well as the executive branch, take action that will grant the President the power held by many State Governors to veto specific items in appropriation bills. The plea for a line-item veto was illustrated dramatically by President Reagan when he slammed down a 43 pound, 3,296 page spending bill. It was a bill that represented 1 trillion dollars' worth of spending--not one penny of which he had the power to veto, unless he rejected it all. Most recently, President Clinton has asked that this Congress send him the strongest line-item veto measure possible. He has called the line-item veto ``one of the most powerful weapons we could use in our fight against out-of-control deficit spending.'' He also said: I am strongly in favor of a line-item veto. I have it. I've used a bunch as Governor. And, interestingly enough, in my last legislative session, I didn't have to use it one time because I had it. See? . . . I keep telling my friends in Congress, they would be better off. They think they have got to pass some piece of pork barrel for the folks back home. Let me take the heat. Interestingly, many Presidents argued for the line-item veto while they still had considerable leverage over spending. Until the Budget and Impoundment Act of 1974, Presidents exercised their authority to rescind money, and thus control spending they felt was wasteful. This was a practice that had its origins with our first President. In his article, ``The Line-Item Veto: Provided in the Constitution and Traditionally Applied,'' Stephen Glazier wrote: At the beginning of our Government under the Constitution, during the administrations of Washington and Adams, Congress passed very general appropriations bills that permitted the President not to spend appropriated funds . . . . In Washington's day the practice was called ``impoundment. Perhaps the most significant early impoundment was during Jefferson's Presidency, when he refused to spend $50,000 appropriated by Congress for gunboats. He also refused to spend money on two new fortifications. This instance and other early instances were mostly attributed to the fact that, unlike today, appropriations bills were Quite general in their terms and by obvious . . . intent, left to the President . . . the power for . . . determining in what particular manner the funds were spent (1971 hearings, testimony of Assistant Attorney General Rehnquist). Under the Grant administration, we saw more significant withholding of funds. Upon signing a measure which appropriated funds for harbor and river improvements, Grant sent a message to Congress saying that he did not plan to spend the total amount because some appropriations were for ``works of purely private or local interest, in no sense national.'' Grant asserted that no expenditures might be made except for ``works already done and paid for'' (Congressional Record 5628 1876). Grant's Secretary of War also refused to spend $2.7 million of the $5 million which had been appropriated by Congress. The House asked the President to respond with legal authority for impounding of funds. The Secretary of War replied that this act was in no way mandatory and that it was not fiscally practical or legally appropriate for the President's discretion to be limited than by the interests of the public service. Most of Congress agreed with the President. President Roosevelt impounded funds in the 1930's to cope with the emergencies of economic depression and war. In the 1940's Budget Director Smith ordered impoundment of amounts ranging from $1.6 to $95 million which had been appropriated for the Civilian Conservation Corps' surplus labor force, civilian pilot training projects, surplus marketing corporation among others, because the projects did not have priority ratings to obtain the scarce resources. The Truman Presidency impounded funds appropriated for a 70-group Air Force and giant aircraft carriers. Eisenhower impounded funds appropriated for various defense projects, most notably funds for strategic airlift aircraft, $140 million, and procurement of Nike-Zeus--$135 million--hardware; in 1956, $46.4 million to increase Marine Corps personnel strength was impounded. In 1959, $48 million for hound dog missiles, $90 million for Minuteman Program funds, $55.6 million for KC-135 tankers. In 1960, $35 million for nuclear-powered carriers. Kennedy's administration was responsible for a controversial impoundment of funds for the RS-70 long range bomber. Congress appropriated nearly two times the amount that Kennedy had requested. Secretary of Defense McNamara refused to release the excess funds. Later, Congress voted to direct a lesser amount for the RS-70. President Johnson felt impoundments for domestic programs were legally sanctioned. Attorney General Clark said that the impoundment of highway trust funds was lawful. The Budget Director said that it was the general power of the President to operate for the welfare of the economy and the Nation in terms of combating inflationary pressures. The most controversial of Presidential impoundments were during the Nixon Presidency. Each year since first assuming office, President Nixon had appropriated by Congress. Nearly $12 billion appropriated for the building of highways--funds impounded of a cross-Florida barge canal, on which $50 million had been spent and which was already one-third completed--and pollution control projects had been withheld. Hundreds of millions of dollars appropriated for medical research, higher education--$18 million of the Indian Education Act, rural electrification, rural environmental assistance, public housing--over $70 million of HUD's 312 housing rehabilitation, loan programs, urban renewal and myriad other programs were impounded. In 1973, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit became the highest court to ever decide a case dealing with Executive impoundments. In Missouri Highway Commission versus Volpe, the issue of whether the Secretary of Transportation could refuse to obligate highway funds which had been apportioned to Missouri, because of the status of the economy and the control of inflation. The court ruled that the highway funds could not be lawfully impounded for the reasons asserted. This case did not, however, settle the constitutional question pending before the White House and Congress. Because of the sweeping nature of the Nixon impoundments, Congress responded. On October 27, 1972, Congress passed the Federal Impoundment and Information Act, which requires the President to submit reports to the Congress and Comptroller General detailing certain information concerning funds which are appropriated and partially or completely impounded. The act essentially forbade the President from impounding funds, unless Congress acted to approve that impoundment. But, the act did not force Congress' hand. By simple inaction, the funds would automatically be released. Under current law, the President sends up his recommended cuts, and if Congress does not act to approve them, they become meaningless. The cuts simply die on the vine as Congress spends more and more and accuses everyone but themselves of fearing tough spending choices. Over the years, the congressional attitude toward Presidential rescissions has become one of nearly total neglect. In 1991 President Bush proposed 47 rescissions for a possible savings of $5.55 billion. Only one rescission was approved by Congress. We saved $2.1 million--a drop in the bucket. Since 1974, Congress has approved a mere 30 percent of the President's rescissions. We have chosen to ignore more than $41 billion which the President identified as unnecessary spending. In 1974, Congress ignored all the President's rescissions, a 100 percent failure rate. In 1975, 56 percent were ignored. In 1976, we failed to enact 86 percent. More recently, in 1983, 100 percent of the President's rescissions were ignored. In 1984, we failed to enact 67 percent and in 1985 we failed to enact 60 percent. By 1986 and 1987, we failed to enact 95 percent and 97 percent of those rescissions. Since 1974, we have acted on only 31 percent of the President's rescissions. In the meantime, our debt has more than quadrupled. Clearly, Congress has found the new impoundment procedures a bit too convenient. When I first came to the Senate in 1989, Senator McCain and I worked together to craft a legislative line-item veto to reverse these trends and restore some equilibrium between the Congress and the President. We have offered that bill every Congress, and we have forced the Senate to vote on it. But our bill has always been subject to a filibuster or to a budget point of order. In November 1989, I first offered my legislation as an amendment to another bill because the Senate would not even consider it on its own merits. That effort failed by a vote of 40 to 51. In June 1990, Senator McCain and I tried again. This time we went down by a vote of 43 to 50. Progress, though not much. But each time I'd brought the line-item veto to the floor I was subject to a chorus of advice. Address pork spending, I was told, while an appropriations bill is actually on the floor. Do not worry so much about giving the President line-item veto authority. Just offer an amendment to strike wasteful spending. So I tried it. Right after Desert Storm, the Congress was called on to pass a dire emergency supplemental to defray the costs of the war. It was legislation which came after noble sacrifice and unprecedented victory. And yet even this bill was a target of wasteful spending. It contained $1 million for the Maine Department of Agriculture to study potato virus. It included $609,000 for poultry inspection; $351,000 for new furnishings for the Library of Congress; $100,000 for the United States-Canada Salmon Commission. All this in a dire emergency supplemental to pay for the war costs of Desert Storm. But perhaps most disturbing, the bill required that the Navy overhaul and upgrade the U.S.S. Kennedy at the Philadelphia Navy Shipyard, giving it a Service Life Extension Program [SLEP]. This was a classic case where special interests went far beyond what was actually needed or requested. The Navy strongly opposed the work for two compelling reasons. First was cost. While the SLEP at Philadelphia would cost the taxpayer $1 billion, the Navy felt that a simple overhaul--at half the price--was all the work that was required. In addition, the Navy had downsized its fleet, so extensive service to older carriers was not needed. The Navy could simply deactivate the older carriers. So the issue was $1 billion of spending that the Department of Defense said was unnecessary. I decided that this would be a good candidate for an amendment on the floor. I would take the advice of those who said that Congress can provide its own form of line-item veto by simply amending bills. That experience taught me a lot about the business-as-usual pork practices that are now so common in this distinguished body. When I offered my reasons for opposing this spending, a good number of my colleagues agreed. My amendment passed with a healthy majority of 56 votes. Yet when the doors closed on the conference committee, the funding was quietly restored to the bill without debate. What was won on the Senate floor after a lengthy floor debate, was quietly easily restored behind closed doors. Since that time, Senator McCain has gone to heroic lengths to scrutinize appropriations bills and help save the taxpayer money. He and his staff have been on the floor during debate on most appropriations bills to ensure that last minute deals funding unauthorized projects are not cut to slip spending into bills. But those efforts alone are not enough. We have learned that they simply do not work. We need true reform. We need the line-item veto. So we have pursued our efforts in each Congress. But we have not been the first in Congress to try. The line-item veto was first introduced on January 18, 1876, by Congressman Charles Faulkner of West Virginia. It was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary where it died. About 200 line-item veto bills have since been introduced. In nearly every succeeding Congress the proposal has been reoffered in varying forms. The proposed amendment has for the most part been buried in the Judiciary Committees. Very few have been reported, and those which have, were reported adversely. In 1883 on a motion to suspend the rules so that the House Judiciary Committee might be discharged and House Resolution 267 passed, the motion was defeated: This has been one of the few occasions in which the item-veto principle has been subjected to a vote in either House. On April 21, 1884, for the first time, the Senate Judiciary Committee favorably reported a Resolution--S. Res. 18 by Mr. Lapham of New York-- proposing to amend the Constitution so as to confer on the President the power to veto items in appropriation bills. By unanimous consent on December 9, 1884, Senate Joint Resolution 18 was made special order of business for December 17. But on that date and again in February the resolution was passed over in the Senate indefinitely. In this century, the line-item veto continued to be actively considered. In 1938, the line-item veto passed the House of Representatives, but failed to be considered in the Senate. In 1957, Congressman Stewart Udall had this to say: The tendency in the Congress naturally is that the local interest is predominant. Each of us have projects, we have Federal programs we feel are vital to our districts. In to me a good argument can be made that it is good and it is wise to have someone outside the legislative, namely the executive, also weigh and particular proposal against the national interest, and I think that is essentially what the item veto would do. Congressman Charles Bennett added: As far as I can ascertain, our Constitution and practices in the early days of our country contemplate that the President would find the means readily available to him to veto an appropriation. This is no longer possible for a President in 1957, not because of any change in the Constitution, but because of the practice of Congress in bringing in very large bills from the standpoint of money and from the standpoint of number of items and diversity of items covered. The evil is not so great in authorizations, because in authorizations there is no emergency generally involved. There is an emergency in having adequate funds to carry on the Government, and when you have a large sum of money in an appropriations bill involving many employees and may facets of Government, there is an emergency in passing such a bill; so that the President has an almost impossible situation confronting him if he desires to see any economies made in these bills that are so multiplicitous in material and detail and in dollars. In 1957, the Nation ran a budget surplus of $3.4 billion, and our country's debt was $272 billion. In other words, the total debt our Nation accumulated in the first 181 years of our history was approximately equal to our annual operating deficits today. And in 1957, our Nation's books showed no red ink. Yet Members of Congress were arguing for a significant change in the name of the national interest and in the name of good government. They were arguing for the line-item veto. Today, the situation has changed radically. The Nation's total Federal debt has increased 1,665 percent to $4.8 trillion. We will borrow more in 4 days this year than we borrowed in the entire year of 1958. The arguments of 1957 still stand. Line-item veto helps to balance the parochial interest with the national interest; it enables a President to rationally deal with omnibus spending bills. Nothing has changed but the urgency of our circumstances. According to CBO: Failure to reverse [current] trends in fiscal policy and the composition of Federal spending will doom future generations to a stagnating standard of living, damage U.S. competitiveness and influence in the world, and hamper our ability to address pressing national trends. And when we proceed to S. 4 on Monday, it will be the first time in the history of the U.S. Senate that the legislative line-item veto will be actually considered as a free standing bill in its own right. Last November, anger against Congress burnt white hot. With their votes, the American people decisively demonstrated their deep frustration with the status quo. Last week, the U.S. Senate fueled that anger and betrayed their trust. By failing to pass a balanced budget amendment, we clearly demonstrated that we as an institution are more concerned with preserving our power than with protecting our Nation's posterity. Let us show the American people that we are serious about radically changing the way Congress does business. Let's show them that we intend to present appropriations bills without embarrassment. Let's send the message to taxpayers that, under our guidance, their dollars will not be wasted. Let us act to boldly eliminate the dual deficits of public funds and of public trust. Let us resist the urge to continue business as usual. Let us finally pass the line-item veto. The time has come. As I said, this is a speech that could be given today, a time- honored--``honored'' is the wrong word--a time-abused practice of the legislative branch of submitting to the executive, to the President a bill which, as Smith says, is necessary for the support of Government but loaded with illegitimate expenditures, knowing that the President's only choice is to accept the entire bill or reject the entire bill, because he does not have the power to line-item veto, or to reject a part of that bill that is not necessary to the future of this country or not deemed a wise expenditure. That is what we are all about. Nothing has changed. Nothing has changed in over 130 years. Nothing has changed since the formation of this country and the adoption of this Constitution because, as Smith says, we are doing this based on our experience, what the legislature has accomplished and what the country has experienced in terms of the inability to check, check, as he said, an illegitimate or corrupt expenditure, the flagrant abuse of the power by the Congress through its habitual practice of loading bills necessary for governmental appropriations. Subsequent to that, America fought a painful and bloody war to preserve the Union, to keep us one Nation, united. Millions of our fellow Americans won their freedom and put an end to one of the most, if not the most, tragic chapters in American history. Yet, at the time, the germ of an idea was born in the Union that took root across the country. The idea has enhanced accountability for the taxpayers' money through the line-item veto. After the Civil War, line-item veto authority spread like wildfire throughout the States. Today, 43 Governors enjoy the same power that we are fighting to give the President of the United States: The authority to veto wasteful spending items. Line-item veto became a reality in the United States possessions as well, not just the States but the possessions. Congress, though it failed to give the President line-item veto authority, gave this power to the Governors General of the possessions. The line-item veto was granted to the Governor General of the Philippines in 1916 and the Governors of the territories of Hawaii in 1900, Alaska in 1912, Puerto Rico in 1917, and the Virgin Islands in 1954. Thus, Congress recognized the need for and the virtue of this authority which it had never given to the President of the United States and to the American people. States have been successfully using line-item veto since, many for over 100 years. Today, almost uniformly the Governors endorse giving the President of the United States the same tool for controlling spending that they enjoy. As someone on this floor--it may have been the Senator from Missouri who is presiding in the chair--said on Friday, we are not aware of any rush in any State legislatures across the country in these 43 States to take away their Governor's authority under line-item veto. If that is happening in any of the legislatures across this land, we are not aware of it. It seems to have worked very well, this check and balance system, the power to appropriate, the power to say, ``Yes, but not 100 percent of what you have sent we think is in the national interest, we in the executive branch think is in the national interest. We will take 97 percent of it, but this 3 percent just does not go to expenditures in the national interest,'' and then to turn that back to the Congress, and the Congress, if it wants, can override that decision, but it takes a two-thirds vote to do so. A Cato Institute survey of 118 former Governors and current Governors, including Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Michael Dukakis, and Bill Clinton, reveals a strong consensus that a line-item veto for the President would be an effective method of reducing the massive Federal deficit. One hundred eighteen former or current U.S. Governors, bipartisan--Jimmy Carter, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan--reveals a consensus and a support for a line-item veto. That survey showed that 67 of the respondents were Republicans, 50 were Democrats, 19 were serving Governors when they responded. Ninety-two percent of the Governors--92 percent--believe that a line- item veto for the President would help restrain Federal spending; 88 percent of the Democratic respondents supported the line-item veto; 55 percent of the Governors believe Congress has too much authority over the Federal budget, and only 2 percent think the President has too much authority. Let me repeat that: 55 percent of the Governors believe that Congress has too much authority over the Federal budget, and only 2 percent think the President has too much authority. When they were asked, ``Was the line-item veto a useful tool to you as Governor in balancing the State budget,'' 69 percent said the line- item veto was a very useful tool, and 23 percent said it was a somewhat useful tool. Only 7 percent said it was not useful. Ninety-one percent of the Democratic Governors said that the line-item veto The survey also asked, ``Do you think that a line-item veto for the President would help restrain Federal spending?'' Ninety-two percent said yes; 88 percent of the Democrats agreed. Since the Budget Reform and Impoundment Act of 1974, every President has complained that Congress has usurped the executive branch's traditional powersover the budget process. The Governors agree. ``In your opinion,'' the survey went on to ask, ``does Congress or the President have too much authority over the Federal budget today?'' The survey said and the majority responded, Congress has too much power. Let me quote from what some of the Governors have actually said: Line-item veto is a useful tool that a Governor can use on occasion to eliminate blatantly pork-barrel expenditures that can strain the budget. At the same time, he must answer to the voters if he or she uses the veto irresponsibly. It is a certain restraint on the legislative branch. Gov. Keith Miller, of Alaska, Republican Governor, 1969. I support the line-item veto because it is an executive function to identify budget plan excesses and wasteful items. It is an antidote for pork. Gov. Hugh Carey, of New York, a Democrat, who served from 1975 to 1983. Congress' practice of passing enormous spending bills means that funding the Lawrence Welk Museum to the study of bovine flatulence slips through Congress. The President may be unable to veto a major bill that includes such spending abuses because the majority of the bill is desperately needed. The line-item veto would let the President control the irresponsible spending that Congress can't. The line-item veto already works at the State level. It not only allows the Governor to veto wasteful spending, it works as a deterrent to wasteful spending because legislators know it will be vetoed. That is a statement by current Gov. Pete Wilson, of California, Republican. I believe it provides the checks and balance, even if it requires legislators to consider the potential for veto and thereby makes them more accountable. Gov. Mike Sullivan, a Democrat from Wyoming. Legislators love to be loved, so they love to spend money. Line-item veto is essential to enable the executive to hold down spending. That was spoken by William Weld, the current Governor of Massachusetts. When I was Governor of California, the Governor had the line-item veto, so you could veto parts of a bill or even part of the spending in a bill. The President can't do that. I think, frankly--of course, I'm prejudiced--Government would be far better off if the President had the right of the line- item veto. Ronald Reagan, former California Governor. It can be a surgical tool to highlight foolishness and thus help the executive make his case. Said Pete DuPont, Republican Governor of Delaware from 1977 to 1985: To the detriment of the Federal process, the President is not held accountable for a balanced budget. Congress takes control over budget development within its budget resolution after which the President may only approve or veto 13 appropriation bills. Without the line-item veto, the President has minimal flexibility to manage the Federal budget after it is passed. So said Douglas Wilder, Democrat Governor of Virginia from 1990 to 1994. Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives, moderates, current, past, historical, virtually all have said the line-item veto works in their States. It worked for them. It worked in their relations with their legislators. It ought to apply to the Congress. Senator Ashcroft, now presiding in the chair, eloquently spoke on Friday of the line-item veto and what it meant to him when he was Governor of Missouri and how the interaction between the executive and the legislature worked to eliminate unnecessary, unneeded spending of hard-earned, scarce taxpayers' dollars. And he had a terrific chart illustrating that it not only works when you are Governor of the State of Missouri, but it works when you are head of household or father of a household and you sit down around the kitchen table with the family and say, ``Let's plan out next month's or next year's budget, the things we have to do, the things that we would like to do. Let's check our revenues and see what funds might be available, everybody submit their request and let's go down the line and see what works.'' There might be an item that you have to line out and in many cases substitute something for that. Instead of the trip to Disney World that everybody would like to take every year and stay at the hotel right on the grounds and not have to worry about being down the road or across the street and driving in and parking but just get on the tram in the lobby of the hotel and go to the next exhibit, which we would all like to do but which most of us cannot afford to do once in a lifetime, let alone once every year, you might have to adjust. You might have to go to Sea World instead or you might have to, as Senator Ashcroft said, go to the State park for a vacation. You line out some items. You substitute some others. You reduce it. You negotiate. That is the process that takes place under line-item veto, and that is the process that would take place if the President would have that line-item veto. Almost every President since Ulysses Grant has made the same case as the Governors made. Only one President in the 20th century has not requested the line-item veto, only one. In his message to Congress on August 14, 1876, President Grant claimed discretionary authority of the items of appropriations bills. In signing the river and harbor bill he said, and I quote: If it was obligatory upon the executive to expend all the money appropriated by Congress, I would return the river and harbor bill with my objections. Without enumerating, many appropriations are made for the works of purely private or local interests and in no sense national. I cannot give my sanction to these and will take care that during my term of office no public money shall be expended upon them. Under no circumstances will I allow expenditure upon works not clearly national. No objection was made to President Grant's interpretation of that. Congress knew that it had been caught with its hand in the cookie jar. Does that mean expenditures on rivers and harbors are not necessary? Of course not. Some of those are very necessary. But in some years you cannot do as much as you would like to do in other years. And at other times there are higher priorities. Of course, the natural thing to do for Congress is to want to spend that money because, as Governor Weld said, ``Legislators love to be loved and so they love to spend money.'' Nothing brings a smile to the face of your constituents or special interest group more than the word ``yes.'' ``Yes, we will fund your request.'' ``Yes, we will give you everything you ask for.'' Boy, does that make life easy as a legislator. It is fun to go home and say, ``You know that request you asked me about 6 months ago? Done. I slipped it in the--such and such--appropriations bill. The President signed it just the other day.'' You are a hero. They hold a dinner in your honor. They give you a little plaque and you put it on the wall, ``Legislator of the year.'' Of course, we love to be loved. Of course, we love to go home and say ``yes'' to people. However, under the process that we have operating today at the Federal level, we have a very convenient excuse to say ``yes,'' that allows us to say ``yes'' that is not available to most legislators. Most legislators are operating under either a balanced budget constitutional prohibition, a constitutional mandate to require a balanced budget or they are operating under line-item veto or both. Do you know what that means? One of two things. It means that when those interest groups come and say, ``Can you get this money for us?'' you have to look them back in the eye and say, ``That may be a worthy project and in fact I even support it, but here's my dilemma. Right now we are running really close on the amount of revenues coming in and the amount of expenditures going out. And there's only one of two ways that I can really address your request this year. The first is to look at some other program and cut that out and substitute your program, take the money from that and use it to pay for yours.'' Of course, that is not the preferred method today because nobody wants to go over to the other group and say, ``By the way, we are going to eliminate your program, cut your program so we can give it to the new program over here,'' because everybody wants to please everybody. taxes, to go to the public and say, ``We've got a new idea, a new program we would like to increase funding for. We are not willing to take the heat to cut out any existing program and so we are going to have to raise your taxes to generate more money.'' Not too many legislators like to do that, like to run home and tell people they are going to raise their taxes. Now, the Federal legislators have a third option. Here is the problem. The third option is to say ``yes'' to everybody and then borrow the money to cover the expenditure, float some more debt so you do not have to go to the constituents and say, ``We are going to raise your taxes to pay for this.'' You do not have to go to some other program and say, ``We are going to have to cut your expenditures to pay for this.'' You say ``yes'' to everybody. And you produce an unbalanced budget--deficit spending--borrowing the money to pay for it, and we will let some future Congressman worry about the implications of that. Well, the future is now. The future is here. That time-honored practice has now led us to a nearly $5 trillion debt. Line-item veto is one of the tools which we will use, if it is passed, to adjust significantly the way that Congress spends the taxpayers' dollars. I deeply regret we did not pass a balanced budget amendment--it failed by one vote--because it is a much more significant change in the way we would do business. That would force us, year after year after year after year, in support of the Constitution of the United States, to not spend more money than we take in. That would make honest legislators out of all of us. That would bring integrity back to the halls of the Congress, in terms of the way we address the people's interests and the people's wishes and the way in which we handle the people's money. That having failed, the only other real game in town that will bring change in the way we make decisions about how to spend money is line- item veto. Will it balance the budget? Absolutely not. I wish it would, but it will not. But will it fundamentally change the way in which we look at how we spend taxpayers' dollars? Yes, it will. And it will help. It will add up to some real significant savings. It will change the way we do our business. I contend, with all the promises, all the rhetoric, all the wonderful, ``Oh, we just need to summon up the will we need to get this job done,'' it just has not happened. Year after year, one decade after another, for one reason or another, Congress has not summoned up the will to get the job done. There is the human temptation of saying we will do it after the next election--and then comes the next election, and then the next election, and before you know it, it is the next decade, and before you know it we have a $5 trillion debt and, ``Yes, it is terrible, it is horrible, it impacts the next generation, but not yet; we are not quite there yet. See, we have these problems, those problems, et cetera.'' So we are talking about fundamental structural change in the way Congress does it business. Line-item veto is the second best way I can think of to do it. A balanced budget amendment is first. That failed. Line-item veto is a distant second, but frankly it is the only other game in town. It is the only game we are talking about. If somebody has a better structural way to change things around here, I am all for it. Listen to the words of President Franklin Roosevelt. In his budget message for fiscal year 1939, President Roosevelt, after calling attention to the use of the line-item veto in the majority of our States and remarking that the system meets with general approval in the many States which have adopted it, said: A respectable difference of opinion exists as to whether a similar line-item veto could be given the President by legislation or whether a constitutional amendment would be necessary. I strongly recommend that the present Congress adopt whichever course it may deem to be the correct one. The bottom line is, even though some of us would like to amend the Constitution and give the President the constitutional line-item veto authority, we do not have the votes to do that. We came one vote short on balanced budget, and we do not have the votes to accomplish that on line-item veto. But we do have the votes to do it legislatively. As Franklin Roosevelt said, ``* * * whichever course Congress may deem to be the correct one.'' I do not know if it is the correct one, but it is the doable one. We have a doable one. We have one that can pass, and can be enacted into law. And, frankly--frankly--the way it is structured, if it does not work, Congress can repeal it. I would regret that. That is the problem with a statutory fix. But we can do it this Congress; we can do it this week. President Truman said--and I think this is the most telling statement of all--in the second volume of his memoirs, Harry S. Truman wrote the following: One important lack in the Presidential veto power, I believe, is the authority to veto individual items in appropriation bills. The President must approve the bill in its entirety or refuse to approve it or let it become law without his approval. As a Senator, I tried to discourage the practice of adding riders deliberately contrived to neutralize otherwise positive legislation [Truman said] because it is a form of legislative blackmail. I quoted that last week. Legislative blackmail, that is what it is. I do not care what sugar-coating we put on it. I do not care what justification we raise. A lot of this pork-barrel stuff is legislative blackmail. We may have a defense emergency bill to pay for operations in Haiti, Rwanda, or Somalia that have already taken place, and the Defense Department accounts are drained. Or we may have a hurricane in Florida and we need emergency money to be appropriated to deal with those who are homeless and those who need health care and those who need emergency rations. Or we may have floods and earthquakes in California or floods in the Midwest, we have pressing national needs, and we construct a bill to take care of those needs. And at that point legislators say, ``Aha, there is one the President has to sign. I mean, this is an emergency. We have to get this money out in a hurry. That is going to have to go through the Congress. That is the one I will attach this little item I have been carrying for the folks back home. That is the one where I can get my, not national interest item, but parochial interest item attached to. We will just attach that in committee, and we will put it on the floor and we will send it to the President of the United States.'' It will be buried in there and the President will say, as every President in this century except one has said, ``If I only had the line-item veto, I could do what I have to do to accept that appropriations bill, but I could take out that unnecessary piece of spending that I know was attached on there just because they saw this train rolling through and this was a great vehicle to attach it to.'' Of course, let us understand if Congress wants to overturn that decision of the President, it can do so. It has to come down here and debate the item. Members have to cast their yea or nay on it so the folks back home understand what they voted for and have the right to say, ``What in the world? I did not send you to Washington, DC, to vote for that item. What are you doing that for?'' Right now they do not have that because legislators have a very convenient excuse. ``Oh, I don't support that either. But, you see, we had this emergency, this bill came through, and Senator so-and-so from such-and-such a place snuck that devil in here and, boy, my dilemma was either deny the health payments to veterans or emergency funds for homeless victims or money to take care of the farmers in the flooded Midwest, or reject all that in order to take care of Senator such-and- such's little item.'' The voters scratch their heads and say, ``Is there not a solution to that?'' The solution is line-item veto. Mr. President, I am going to skip some items here. My colleague from Mississippi is on the floor. I am going to try to get to a point where I can wrap up. But, there is a great history of abuses of the spending power by the Congress. It is a natural human tendency. I am not here pointing fingers at any of my colleagues. The only right I have is to point a finger at myself. I am a legislator. As the Scriptures say, we have all Scriptures here--come short of what our obligations are. We are all guilty. We all know this is an abuse of power by the legislative branch, by the spenders. So what we are saying here is let us institute a structural reform that really liberates all of us from this insidious practice of adding pork-barrel spending to otherwise needed appropriations bills. Let us make a structural change so we, as a legislature, can restore some credibility and integrity to our work here. It is easy to read down the lists, Senator so-and-so did such-and- such. Look at this item. Look at that item. But I am not going to do that. I am not going to do that because we are all guilty. We all need the liberation of doing what I think in our hearts we know is right. Mr. President, as has been stated often, this adds up to some pretty big money. Senator McCain and I have been offering this alternately over the past many years. We have not been able to break through the filibuster or we have not been able to break through the budget points of order to get the 60 votes necessary to get to a vote on the bill. We trust there will not be a filibuster attempt on this issue. I guess we will find out this evening at 5 o'clock when we go to the bill. We are appreciative of the fact that the Senator from West Virginia has consented to allow us to not have a filibuster on the motion to proceed so we are going to go to the bill at 5 o'clock today. We will find out soon whether or not the Congress is willing to go forward with this in serious debate and serious study. There is going to be an alternative version, apparently, presented to the version now on the floor. It will be, we believe, substituted for a version that Senator McCain and I and others, Senator Domenici and others have worked with Senator Dole on which we think is a stronger version. We expand the scope of line-item vetoes to not only include appropriations but also target tax expenditures and new entitlements-- not existing entitlements but new entitlements. But there is going to be a mild alternative presented, apparently, according to the minority leader--a mild alternative. We considered that, but we rejected it because it is not line-item veto. The same 51 votes that were collected to pass the appropriation in the first place can be used to thwart the President's efforts to stop that spending. Veto means veto. Veto means two-thirds. Technically, the Constitution does not use the word ``veto.'' But it does call for a two-thirds override by the Congress for bills not accepted by the President, or returned to the Congress by the President. We are applying that same principle, that same rule, to the practice that the President is granted that authority of taking out by line-item pieces of those bills rather than rejecting the whole. So, if there is going to be a measure which fundamentally alters the way in which this Congress operates, it has to be a two-thirds vote. Anything short of that is a mild version that will have little, if any, significant effect on the way we do business. I think that has been pretty well decided among at least Republicans. And I think it is supported by a number of Democrats who have supported line-item veto authority before, some of them former Governors, others who believe that we could need some structural changes in the way that this Congress operates. And we welcome and appreciate their support. Members have been told, ``Just offer these amendments. If you do not like something in a bill, offer an amendment.'' Senator McCain in particular has gone to heroic lengths to scrutinize appropriations bills. But they always run up against budget points of order. They always run up against reasons why it really cannot happen. Then the aggregate, in the end, very little change is made and somehow these things keep slipping through. Everybody scratches their head, and, says, ``I don't know how that got in there. It is kind of embarrassing. But I do not know how that got in there.'' For more than 100 years Members have been trying to strike unnecessary pork-barrel spending from appropriations, and the results are not all that good. In 1957 Congressman Stewart Udall said: The tendency in Congress naturally is that the local interest is predominant. Each of us have projects. We have Federal programs we fell vital to our districts. In our system of checks and balances, it seems to me a good argument can be made that it is good and it is wise to have someone outside the legislature, namely, the executive, also weigh any particular proposal against the national interest, and I think that is essentially what the line-item veto would do. Mr. President, in 1957 this Nation ran a budget surplus of $3.4 billion, and our country's debt at the time was $272 billion. The total debt of our Nation accumulated in the first 181 years of our history was approximately equal to this year's current operating deficit; 181 years of effort, of spending the people's money by this legislature is equal today to 1 year of deficit spending. In 1957 our Nation's books showed no red ink. Yet, even then Members of Congress were arguing for a change in the name of the national interest and in the name of good government. Even when we did not have a significant deficit, even when we were, the last time we operated at a balanced budget on a current year, Members were arguing for a line- item veto because they knew that it would stop a practice of, as Harry Truman said, ``blackmailing the President.'' Today however, the situation as we know has changed radically. The Nation's total Federal debt has increased 1,665 percent; 1,665 percent to $4.8 trillion. Let us go back over that. One-hundred and eighty years it took to get to $272 billion. That was in 1957. And since then it has increased. The debt has increased from $272 billion to $4.8 trillion, a number I cannot begin to comprehend--1,665 percent increase. Maybe this puts it in better perspective. We will borrow more in 4 days in 1995 than we borrowed in the entire year of 1958. We will borrow more in 4 days of this year, 1995, than we borrowed in the entire year of 1958. That is how far we have gone. The arguments of 1957 still stand. Line-item veto helps balance the parochial interest with the national interest. It enables the President to rationally deal with omnibus spending bills. Nothing has changed but the urgency. According to the CBO, failure to reverse current trends in fiscal policy in the composition of the Federal spending will doom future generations--doom future generations. Every one of us knows that in our heart we will be dooming the future generations by what we are doing here with the taxpayer dollars, and creating a debt which we will not be able to pay as a Nation, which our children and grandchildren will not be able to pay. They will not be able to buy a house at a reasonable interest rate. They will not be able to finance an education for their children. We are dooming future generations. That is the Congressional Budget Office conclusion. We will doom them to a stagnating standard of living, they said. We will damage U.S. competitiveness and influence in the world, and we will hamper our ability to address pressing national trends. If there is time to do something, it is now, not next Congress, and not next century; now. So when we proceed on this bill today at 5 o'clock, it will be the first time in the history of the U.S. Senate that the legislative line- item veto will actually be considered as the freestanding bill in its own right. Last November anger against this Congress burned white hot. With their votes the American people decisively demonstrated their deep frustration with the status quo. Last week the U.S. Senate fueled that anger, and betrayed their trust 2 weeks ago by failing to pass a balanced budget amendment. We demonstrated that we as an institution are more concerned with preserving our power than with protecting our Nation's prosperity. Let us show the American people that we are serious about changing the way this Congress does business. Let us show them that we intend to present appropriations bills without embarrassment. Let us send the message to taxpayers that under our guidance their dollars will not be wasted, and let us act to boldly eliminate the dual deficits of public funds and of public trust. Let us resist the urge to continue business as usual. Let us finally pass the line-item veto. Mr. President, the time is now. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I might just note to my colleagues that we are getting kind a time imbalance situation here. It is our thought the time would be allocated back and forth, and we would be roughly equal when we moved to the hour of 5 o'clock. That is not happening. line-item veto that wished to speak. I am concerned about the allocation of time and not having an opportunity to speak. I would just state to my colleagues that those who are interested in speaking today, if they could notify me, we will try to ensure that they have the opportunity to speak. Those who are speaking in opposition to this, this is a good time to come to the floor in order to state their opposition. Otherwise, we may be in a situation where we have a lot more speakers for a line-item veto than against a line-item veto, and run out of time for those who are for, unless the minority is willing to yield some of their time, which they generously did on Friday. I just give that notice to my fellow Senators. I would now like to yield whatever time he may consume to the Senator from Missouri. Mr. ASHCROFT addressed the Chair.

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, it is probably a little premature to be offering congratulations since we are just taking up the bill. But let me say that there has been an extraordinary amount of hard work, effort, and negotiation that has gone into this product that the majority leader, Senator Dole, just proposed. Individuals have held strong feelings and strong convictions about what line-item veto means and how it ought to be defined. It is the product of many, many years of involvement of the various individuals in attempting to find ways to deal with a budget that almost seems intractable, to deal with a structural change in the way that the Congress does business, and in attempting to come up with a piece of legislation which is bringing divergent interests--by the way all of those interests trying to reach the same goal but just by different means. To bring easy. But because the individuals involved are committed to the final goal, because they are committed to the principle that we have to be stewards of the taxpayer dollars, wise stewards, and that we have to make every possible effort on behalf of the constituents we represent and the taxpayers who get up every Monday morning, who haul off to work and put in an honest day's work for an honest day's pay, because we have a commitment to make sure that they do not have to send $1 more than is necessary to Washington to perform the functions of the Federal Government as defined by the Constitution, as defined by what we determine are our vital national interests, we set aside some of our reservations and some of our concerns, and said, despite our ideas about which path we should take, let us make sure we get to the goal line on this. There are a lot of people that deserve a lot of credit, starting with the majority leader, who has pulled us together on a number of occasions, keeps us in the same room around the same table, refuses to give up, and keeps providing leadership that we need to function as a party to bring legislation forward that has the support of our party. Credit goes to Senator McCain who has been tireless. Anybody who knows Senator McCain knows that word ``tireless'' as defined in the dictionary has a new meaning. He has a dogged persistence, has had a dogged persistence and has one now, to pursue this effort, who will not take no for an answer. He has been a great support and great help and inspiration to me as I have engaged in this process as I have been in the Senate. It has been a pleasure to be a partner with him. As I said, I believe, on Friday, sometimes you define character, and I use the foxhole test. If I am surrounded by the enemy and need somebody with me in the foxhole, Senator McCain is someone I would like to go shoulder to shoulder with. So I appreciate his efforts. Senator Domenici has been tireless in his efforts to work with us and to try to achieve a final solution to this question of whether or not we can put a bill together that can enjoy broad Republican support. He has done that. He has made available his expert staff, Bill Hoagland, and others. I hate to start giving staff too much credit because their work is just starting and there is a long road to go. But Senator McCain's staff and my staff, Senator Stevens', Senator Domenici's, and Senator Dole's staffs, and others who have worked on this have just put an extraordinary amount of time and effort into it. Senator Domenici has worked with us in defining some of the ways in which this would impact the way we spend money, the way we apply taxes, new programs, how new direct spending and entitlement spending takes place. He has provided an expertise to us. It has been invaluable. Senator Stevens was a catalyst for expanding this legislation to make sure that the line-item veto did not just apply to the narrow little slice of the budget, but applied to a broader part of the budget. It is fairer to do it that way, but it also accomplishes more of our purpose and our goal. We are able to apply the principle of the line-item veto to how we make decisions about spending the taxpayer dollars and what the checks and balances will be as we move through the process. We will apply that principle to a much broader range of spending, whether they be tax expenditures or whether they be appropriations. The Dole substitute adopts a structure for line-item veto which has bipartisan support. It requires that each item of spending and each targeted tax be separately enrolled. The President may approve or veto these items. But it utilizes two important principles: First, the key principle, for which Senator McCain and I have fought so long, that is a real veto requiring two-thirds of the Congress to override, to make it tough to pork-barrel spend, whether it is tax pork or spending pork, appropriations pork; Second, it embodies principles which have been advocated by key leaders on the Democrat side of the aisle, individuals like Senator Hollings, Senator Bradley, and Senator Biden, who have championed the very idea and principle embodied in the concept and content of the bill we are offering. So we are not dropping something new, as the minority leader intimated. We are taking something that has been debated and discussed for a considerable amount of time by key Democrat leaders, and we are embodying in that the principle of the bill we introduced. I think that is important because it provides for key bipartisanship and, hopefully, support. This Dole substitute has the enthusiastic support of Republicans. There are already 50 cosponsors of the bill, and we had a chance to talk to the other four Republicans to have them look at the bill. But already 50 of the 54 Republicans have signed up as cosponsors of this legislation. We hope we will get even more support from the Republicans, and we trust that we will get solid support from our friends and colleagues across the aisle. I am enthusiastic about the opportunity that we have to bring real fiscal discipline to the budget process. We are going to be able to go after tax pork. We are going to be able to go after spending pork. We will be able to go after and define those programs. We are bringing accountability to the work that we do. We are going to have to come down here and do what the taxpayer expects us to do, state right up front what we are doing, what it is going to cost, where the money is going to be so we can make a judgment in terms of where we stand and in terms of spending dollars. This will be the case until this is adopted. But previous to this, it has been easy to hide items in the massive bills. I am not pointing fingers at anybody. We are all guilty. We all know we need to change the way we do business. So, Mr. President, I am pleased to join in this effort, to be a part of this effort. I look forward to debating this effort. Hopefully, before too long, we will be able to send a piece of legislation to the President after more than 130-some years which the Presidents have been calling for, Members have been striving for, and something that I think whose time has come. It is only five pages and one line long. As the majority leader indicated, it is not going to take a whole lot of time to read and understand this bill. It is not like a 1,500-page health bill that the President dropped and then changed on a number of occasions. It is only five pages and one line long. It embodies the principles and ideas that have been debated on this floor over and over and over. They have been offered by Republicans and by Democrats. Truly, it is now supported by the President of the United States, who is calling for the toughest possible measure. I think, on that basis, we can go forward and adopt something truly meaningful and make a real structural change that will make a difference in the way this Congress does business. I yield the floor.

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Wyoming for his statement and his support and contributions as a new Member of the Senate. He certainly brings a perspective from the grassroots, having just spent a great deal of time in the cafes, marching in the parades, and talking with the people where they live and work. He brings that perspective, and we certainly appreciate his support. Mr. President, I inquire how much time is remaining.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I appreciate the remarks of the minority leader. I would like to take this opportunity to respond to those remarks. First of all, let me say it is very welcome news to those of us who have been advocating the line-item veto and attempting to get it passed for the last decade--it is very welcome news that the minority leader comes to the floor and says he supports a line-item veto, the concept, anyway. It is very welcome news he announces on behalf of the Democrats that, as he said, most Democrats, including himself, support line-item veto. That is welcome news because that has not been the case in the past. The minority leader stated that the overwhelming majority of the Democrat members of the Budget Committee, the committees that considered the line-item veto, supported the line-item veto efforts. That is not true either. S. 4, the bill we are debating now, offered by Senator McCain and myself, received the support of only one Democrat on that committee and that was to report the bill out without recommendation. It was not an endorsement of the bill. It simply said we do not feel so strongly about it that we want to endorse the bill, but neither do we want to hold it up, so it was reported to the Senate floor without recommendation, either for or against it. It is the only way Republicans could get the bill out of committee. So we had to provide Republican support in order to get that accomplished because only one Democrat supported that. On S. 14, that is also news to us. It has just been recent news that the Democrats now support that, because only two members of the committee voted to report that bill out without recommendation. It is also ironic that for the past several years, as this Senator and Senator McCain have time and time and time again offered the line- item veto to the Senate--and we had to offer it as amendments to other legislation because the then-Democrat majority leader refused to bring it up, and the then Democrat-controlled committees refused to report it out--we, time and time and time again offered it as an amendment for consideration by this Senate. And of course it failed time and time and time again because we were unable to secure the necessary votes--not from Republicans but from Democrats. In 1993, on March 10, on Senate vote No. 27, the McCain amendment which Senator McCain and I offered, only five members of the Democrat Party voted with us. And we lost that vote by a vote of 45 for and 52 against. Senator Feinstein, Senator Graham of Florida, Senator Kohl, and Senator Robb voted with Republicans. Senator Shelby voted with Republicans. He was then a Democrat. We have since welcomed him to the Republican Party. So, to make the assertion that the Democrats have always been for this and surely we can get together and come up with something just flies in the face of the facts, not only with regard to past history but also with regard to this current attempt to achieve a line-item veto. It is only just in the last couple of days that we have seen a renewed interest in the line-item veto on the part of our friends across the aisle. We welcome that, and we trust and we hope that it will lead to the passage of a line-item veto that truly changes the way that this Senate and this Congress do business. As the majority leader said just a few moments ago, the House of Representatives, in bipartisan fashion, overwhelmingly passed the version that Senator McCain and I have offered with modest modifications. Overwhelmingly they passed it, achieving 290 votes for and only 135 against, and that obviously included a significant number of Democrats that supported that effort. So all we are really asking our Senate colleagues, the Democrats, to do, is to join their colleagues in the House of Representatives in giving us the necessary votes to achieve line-item veto. I think equally telling here is the fact that some of the most vocal opponents of line-item veto have been absent from this debate. We were promised a vigorous filibuster. It has not occurred yet. We hope it does not. We hope we have a genuine debate on this issue. I think the Senate deserves that. But there really has been very little, and so far only token, opposition to the attempts by this Senator and by Senator McCain and others to debate this issue. There has been very little opposition to that effort. We hope that this is a positive signal that we are truly forming a consensus in support of the line- item veto. Mr. President, the minority leader also said that he hears that Republicans are trying to put together some new concoction. Having expressed his concerns about our current proposal, things he does not like about it, he says now they are trying to put something new together. He called it a ``new concoction.'' It makes me ask the question. What does the minority leader want? He does not like our old concoction, the one that has been before this body and debated. He listed his reasons why he does not like it. So while we are attempting to put together a new proposal, he says now suddenly behind closed doors the Republicans are trying to put together a new proposal. My question is, Where does he want us to go? Does he want us to stay with the old one, or does he want us to go to the new one? Let me tell you why we are proposing a new one. Because some of our Members have suggested, I think rightly so, that we take the basic heart and core of the McCain-Coats proposal and we expand it so that its coverage includes more areas of spending and more areas of past congressional abuse of the spending process and puts more elements of the budget under the scrutiny and under the authority given to the President under this line-item veto proposal. That is good. The more we can bring in and the more we can highlight the abuses of the process, whether it is appropriations or whether it is tax expenditures, the better off we are. In almost the same paragraph, the minority leader says that the enrollment process--which is taking the appropriations bills and separately turning each line-item, so to speak, into a separate bill, is something that should own party are the ones who have proposed this, and there is a historical record for that. The Senator from South Carolina, Senator Hollings, has been a proponent of this new concoction. He has been so for more than a decade. Senator Bradley in the last Congress offered the separate enrollment procedure. It was supported by Republicans, and by a number of Democrats under Senator Bradley's leadership. Senator Biden, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has offered it. So this new concoction is not a new concoction. It is a method used to try to attempt to give the President line-item veto authority to curb the excessive spending of Congress that has been proposed by some of the most prominent members of the minority leader's own party. It has been talked about and discussed since 1985. So there really is not a whole lot new about it. The minority leader's suggestion that the substitute that we are looking at does little to restore the President's authority to withhold spending, which he enjoyed prior to 1974, needs to be discussed. At that time, Congress decisively grabbed the absolute power of the purse. They were reacting to then-President Nixon's impoundment power. They said under the Budget Act the President no longer could impound funds. He now may only propose rescissions. That is exactly where the minority leader wants to take us back to. The so-called Democrat alternative that the minority leader says the Democrats will introduce, and that ought to be the bill we put on the President's desk, has very little teeth and cannot be in the same breath called a line-item veto because it is not a line-item veto. A veto is two-thirds. A veto requires more than normal to override the President's decision. It requires a two-thirds vote to override the President's decision. We want to make it tougher to spend the taxpayer dollars, not easier. We do not want to just keep the same level of requirement necessary to pass legislation. But what the minority leader proposes is that we simply endorse--require the same number of votes to continue the spending habits of Congress as the spending measure received in the first place. How does that make spending any tougher? Under the current process that is used by this Congress, we have a dismal record. The President sends up his rescissions, but they are never enacted, or very few are enacted. In 1976, 86 percent of the President's suggestions to rescind moneys that Congress appropriated but he did not think was necessary to spend--86 percent--was rejected. In 1983, 100 percent of President Reagan's suggestions about unnecessary spending were rejected by the Congress. In 1986 and 1987, 95 percent and 97 percent respectively. So the minority leader's suggestion that we are somehow going to eliminate pork barrel spending, that we are somehow going to dramatically change the way the Congress now does business--a process that so upsets the American taxpayer--that will not happen under the minority leader's bill. The truth is that that proposal is endorsed by those who basically want to continue the status quo. It has very little change in it. As history shows, very little will change under that procedure. If we want to get at the egregious abuse of the spending power that Congress now currently has, we need to make it harder to spend. We need to give the President some authority to highlight and to spotlight the abuses of Congress. We need to do something that will give us fiscal discipline. It was Harry Truman, a Democrat President, who wrote that, ``One important fact in the Presidential veto power, I believe, is the authority to veto individual items in appropriations bills. The President must approve the bill in its entirety or refuse to approve it. It is a form of legislative blackmail.'' That is exactly the issue we are dealing with here on the line-item veto. The legislature which has the power of the purse blackmails the President. It blackmails the President because it sends to him massive appropriations bills, massive pieces of legislation in the form of continuing resolutions, which contain important have-to-pass items in order to continue the functions of government, in order to provide flood relief, as in the case of California, or hurricane relief for Florida, or to provide needed defense spending to cover contingency operations, or to provide for the efforts such as those we undertook in Desert Storm and Desert Shield, things that Congress knows the President has to sign. Those are the bills which receive all the little goodies, all the stuff that appears later in Reader's Digest and on the nightly news. And the taxpayers not only scratch their heads in bewilderment saying, ``How in the world do you think that is an appropriate expenditure of my hard-earned dollars?'' But they shake their fist in rage at this institution, and thankfully went to the polls on November 8, 1994, and said, ``Enough. We are tired of the rhetoric. We are tired of the promises. We are tired of the same old `same old'. We want a change in the way you do business. We want something that has teeth in it. We want something that will make a difference. We do not want some fine little tuning of the way you have been doing business for the past few decades that we know will not result in any dramatic difference. We want action. We want bold action. We want dramatic action.'' And that is the line-item veto. That is why we are proposing the line-item veto. The minority leader also talked about the complexity of the enrollment process. He put up the fancy charts. This is the age of the fancy charts. The Republicans have used them also. That was a concern of ours, frankly; take a piece of legislation, and you say, ``Now you will have to break this down into separate pieces of legislation for each item that the bill itself specifies for an expenditure.'' How is that process going to work? Is not that going to just complicate the process beyond imagination? Is it not going to just require hundreds of hours of the work of dozens of clerks to begin to keep up with the process? We were concerned about that. So I called up the enrolling clerk of the Senate and asked if I could go down and speak with him about it. I asked if he could show me what was involved. The minority leader, I believe this morning in his news conference, said we are going to have to drive Mack trucks up to the White House in order to carry the paperwork created by the complexity of the enrollment process. So I went down and talked to the attending enrolling clerk and asked him about it. He smiled and said, ``That is what it would have been in the past.'' He said, ``Because we would have had to probably detail some people over from the Government Printing Office and we would have to sort of set up a back room operation.'' It was a mechanical process. But he said, ``You know, this is not the age in which we have to do things by hand any more.'' All the Senators have these quill pens at their desks. It is a kind of anachronism. Nobody ever uses them. But it is a reminder of the way the Senate used to do business. We have an inkwell here and a little powder to dry the ink. It is just one of those holdovers from the past. But, lo and behold, the computer age has also reached the U.S. Senate and the U.S. Congress. So the enrolling clerk pointed to a machine about 18 inches high and about 24 inches wide, a computer sitting at his desk. It was a Microcomp printer. Then he pulled out a little disk called the Xywrite software package. He said, ``This is especially designed for the enrollment process. All I do is take this disk and put it in the computer.'' He said, ``What used to take days and days and days and days and dozens and dozens of people now is done in a matter of minutes or a matter of hours.'' That is something that some of our generation have a hard time understanding. Our kids understand it. They start learning that in elementary school. My kids are as familiar with the computer and as unintimidated by the computer as I am by the telephone or sitting down and writing a letter. It is just second nature to them. And so the Senate is caught up with the information age and the Senate enrolling clerk and the House enrolling clerk, which also has the same system. It has a Pentium hard drive, by the way. We did not buy the defective Pentium chips. Ours work beautifully. 1,000 times faster than the old system. It is state of the art. They can now do in an hour or 2 what used to take days.'' ``In fact,'' he said, ``it will be easier and faster to separately enroll an appropriations bill with today's technology than it was to enroll a single appropriations bill 5 years ago.'' Then I asked him to do a trial run. ``Yes,'' I said, ``OK, good. Mechanically we can do that. But isn't it just going to pour out reams and reams and reams of paper? Aren't we going to have to back a truck up to the Senate in order to cart it down to the White House? Isn't the President just going to be overwhelmed with what we dump on his doorstep?'' So I said, ``Would you take the largest bill that we passed in the last Congress''--which was the Commerce, Justice, State, and judiciary, and related agencies appropriations. Here it is. It is about maybe an inch thick. This is the most comprehensive bill that we passed. I said, ``If we had to take this and separately enroll it''--now, if you look at the minority leader's chart, you would come away with the conclusion that this was going to be an absolute nightmare, and it would, as he said this morning, take a Mack truck to cart it down to the White House. So here is what it ended up being if it is separate enrollments. It is a pile of paper. But it would fit in my grandson's Mack truck. He has a little Mack truck, a little miniature Mack truck, and it would easily fit in the back of that. So visions of massive 18-wheelers backing up to the enrolling clerk's office and detailees from the Government Printing Office shoveling bushel baskets full of paper on the back and dumping them on the front lawn of the White House are slightly exaggerated. This is what we are going to send the President instead of this. But, in doing so, guess what is going to happen? All the little pork- barrel stuff, all the stuff we discover months later--half a million dollars for the Lawrence Welk boyhood home restoration, money for the grant that went to study the well-being of America's middle-class lawyers. Boy, that one went over well with my constituents. They were really interested in the well-being of America's lawyers. They thought that was a terrific expenditure of their tax dollars. All the studies for the reproduction of the South American bullfrogs, the money that went to fund a school in France--all the little stuff that adds up to billions and billions of dollars, sometimes tens of billions of dollars, all the stuff we hear about months later that are tucked into these bills, they are each going to have their own separate page. The President is going to be able to say: ``That looks like something someone slipped in in the dark of the night, thinking that I have to pass this bill and so I will sign it and it will slip through. I think I will just take this red veto stamp''-- ``veto''--``and send it back.'' And here is another one, a funding memorial or a tribute for maybe a former Member of Congress or somebody that needs a special favor back home. ``I think I will veto that one.'' What is going to happen is that the light of exposure is going to be shined on the darkroom, the backroom, late-at-night practices of the Congress, which slips this stuff through in all these bills that they know the President has to sign. Then it is going to be sent back to the Congress. And when it is sent back to the Congress, if the Member that slipped that in there wants it for his district, he is going to have to bring it to the floor and he is going to have to stand up and talk about it. He is going to have to convince two-thirds of the Congress that the President made a mistake or that the President was wrong in vetoing his particular item. The press is going to be able to write about it. Each Member who votes on it is going to have their vote recorded on that item. No longer will we be able to go home and say, ``Well, that was for funding of the judiciary and for the Commerce Department and for the State Department. As you know, there is a crisis in `Xcelania' right now and, by gosh, if we cut off their funds, we might not be able to solve that problem.'' Or, ``I had to vote for that. I did not realize that one of my colleagues slipped something in there. I certainly would not have done that had I known that.'' Or, ``Even though I knew there might be some stuff in this, it was so important that we get that funding for this emergency''--as we just passed the emergency supplemental. That was another one of those trains. That was funds for our military expenditures in Haiti, Rwanda, and Somalia. A lot of us here did not necessarily support those decisions of the President, but once our troops were there, the money was spent, and we had to pay for it somehow. So that was an emergency. And so Members go home and say, ``Well, I could not jeopardize that funding. I could not shut down functions of the military.'' And that is what you have to accept if that is what you are going to do. That practice ends because the emergency funding can go forward, the essential funding can go forward. The funding for needed functions of Government can go forward, but the little line-item stuff that adds up to billions of dollars gets kicked out, and the President does not have to accept or reject the entire bill. That will do two things: One, it will give the President a check and balance against the abuses of spending by this Congress. It is a practice everybody here worth their salt knows how to do. We are probably all guilty of it. It is time it stopped. We ought to do this to save ourselves, if nothing else. It is time to stop. Now is the time to stop, and to stop real legislation, not with the same number of votes it took to pass it in the first place, but a veto, a real veto, that has teeth in it, a veto that will make a difference. So, we are going to save billions of dollars because the President will be able to veto that stuff out. But the other thing is, what we will save is an amount of money nobody can calculate because it will change the spending habits of Congress. Members are no longer going to say, ``I will carry this list around and when I see a popular bill go through I will slip it in and get something for the special interest folks,'' or do a favor for a friend, or do a favor for a lobbyist, or do a favor for a special interest. We will never know the amount of money we save for items that will not be put in these new bills for fear of exposure. Because the President has the line-item veto, it will change the way we put the bills together in the first place. Members will say, ``I will not slip that one in because I do not want to suffer the potential embarrassment of the President vetoing that particular item.'' Mr. President, we have a lot to debate today and Monday and next week. The minority leader says, ``Why do we want to put the power in the hands of the minority--one third?'' I think it is the other way around. I think it is the other way around. I think we want to put some power in the hands of the two-thirds that will require two-thirds to overturn a check and balance against the spending abuses of this Congress. In answer to why, why do we need to do this? A $4.8 trillion deficit--that is why; a Congress that refuses to make structural changes in how it does business. We rejected, to my great dismay, the balanced budget amendment, which I think was a change in the status quo and a change in the way we do business. It was absolutely essential to our ability to get control of spending. This is the second tool. Will this balance the budget? No. There is not one Member who supports the line-item veto who contends that it will balance the budget. We keep hearing that argument. People still think it balances the budget. No. It is a poor second to the constitutional amendment, but at least it is a second. It is a second way, a second tool. I cannot imagine why Members would want to first defeat a balanced budget amendment, then second say, well, we are not going to do anything else except we will summon up the will. We have not summoned up the will in 40 years for this budget. And we have seen all kinds of promises and commitments to do that. It just did not happen. The debt mounts and the interest mounts and now we are at $4.8 trillion and growing. We will show how the enrollment bill that we will present is constitutional. veto. They were not afraid of our having to bring a bigger bill down. Recent Presidents have all asked for it, and this President has asked for it. We are tired of having to pass bills that hold the President hostage. It is not Congress that is held hostage to the minority, it is the President that is held hostage to the Congress, as Harry Truman said, blackmailing him, take it all or nothing. It is clear that under article I, section 5, each House of Congress has unilateral authority to make and amend rules governing its procedures. Separate enrollment speaks to the question of what constitutes a bill. It does not erode the prerogatives of the President as the bill is presented. Under the rulemaking clause, our procedures in defining and enrolling a bill are ours to determine alone. Mr. President, I know others are waiting to speak. I will save some of my arguments relative to the constitutionality of this for a time when there is a break in the process. I note that the Senator from Wyoming is on the floor. I am happy to suspend at this point. If we have additional time, I will pick up from there. The Senator from Alabama is waiting to speak. Mr. President, let me first ask the clerk how much time remains on each side?

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Wyoming.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I yield 7 of those 11 minutes--I believe we have one other speaker coming to the floor--to the Senator from New Hampshire, and I believe the minority side on this issue has agreed to allow him an additional 10 minutes of their time.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I was going to inquire if there were any other speakers waiting to speak. I see the Senator from Pennsylvania has arrived. I might inform the Senator from Pennsylvania there are only 4 minutes left under the time controlled by the proponents of the line-item veto. The minority has consented to allow 10 minutes of speaking time to Senator Smith. Since they do not have a speaker on the floor, they may do so for the Senator from Pennsylvania under a unanimous-consent request. Other than that, because we are under a unanimous-consent agreement to quit at 3 p.m., in accordance with the majority and minority leaders' wishes, I regret that is the only time I have available for the Senator.

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, will the Senator from Arizona yield?