Senate Rejects Gregg’s Line-Item Veto Amendment
Cloture
New Hampshire Union Leader
Greg Hellman
Boston University Washington News Service
1/24/07
WASHINGTON, Jan. 24- Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) failed to add an amendment to the minimum wage bill Wednesday that would give presidents a line-item veto. He then joined in helping block the wage bill from immediately moving to a floor vote.
Senate Republicans failed to get the 60 votes needed to limit debate on Gregg’s amendment and move to a vote on the amendment itself. The vote effectively killed the measure..
The Senate, meanwhile, blocked a floor vote on the minimum wage bill, with supporters coming up with only 54 votes to end debate, six short of the required number. That failure will almost surely force Democrats to compromise with Senate Republicans over inclusion in the bill of tax breaks for small businesses that Republicans say would suffer as a result of a raise in the minimum wage to $7.25 over the next 26 months.
The House-passed version of the bill does not provide any such tax breaks.
Gregg threatened last week to tack on his line-item veto amendment to ethics reform legislation but agreed to wait for the minimum wage bill and allow the ethics measures to pass. The addition of the line-item veto would allow a president to veto individual spending items without vetoing an entire appropriations bill.
That would give the president the opportunity to eliminate wasteful spending, Gregg said.
“What this amendment essentially does is it allows the Congress to fulfill its obligation to make sure that money, which we are sent by our taxpayers, is spent effectively, honestly and appropriately without waste,” Gregg said during debate on the floor of the Senate.
Congress passed a similar measure in 1996 proposed by former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) to give President Clinton the line-item veto, only to have it struck down by the Supreme Court two years later as unconstitutional. Senate Republicans argued that Gregg’s measure would be constitutional and blamed partisanship for standing in the way of the amendment.
“[The amendment] has now been rejected by other side of the aisle,” Gregg said. “It’s especially ironic, and maybe even a touch hypocritical, in light of the fact that at least 20 members of the other side of the aisle voted for essentially the same amendment when it was offered by Senator Daschle.”
Democratic opponents of the amendment said it would unnecessarily delay a long-overdue pay raise for Americans earning the minimum wage.
“Minimum-wage workers have been waiting for a raise for 10 long years,” Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) said. “Year after year this Congress has turned its back on working families. We have the opportunity today to take one bold step.”
Other opponents of the amendment warned that giving a president the line-item veto would weaken Congress and violate the Constitution no matter what revisions Gregg made.
“I believe this amendment is dangerous,” Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said. “It transfers power in a way the Founding Fathers did not envision and would not have supported.”
Senate Republicans backed Gregg’s amendment, however, in a vote splitting almost exactly down party lines.
“If it was good policy [a decade ago] I would hope [Democrats] would think it’s good policy in 2007,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said. “We cannot continue to spend in a way that harms our greatest programs – Social Security and Medicare.”
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