California Conservative

Unannounced Presidential hopeful Senator George Allen (R-VA) with Jim Talent (R-MO) introduced a constitutional amendment that would empower the President to use the line item veto to either eliminate or reduce appropriations in any bill passed by the Congress.

”One of the ways to help curb superfluous spending by Congress is by implementing, on a federal level the power I had as Governor of Virginia to line-item veto wasteful pork barrel projects, said Sen. George Allen.

”Given the challenges we face today in the War on Terror and the long tradition of Congress to lard appropriations with non-essential spending it’s important that the President finally have the ability and responsibility to eliminate some of the waste that Congress is so efficient in producing.”

With the threshold to pass so high, and both party’s fondness for spending, it’s unlikely a constitutional amendment will pass. But it strengthens the Senator’s credentials as a fiscal conservative. This will be important if he announces a run for President in 2008.

Put Senator Allen on your watch list for 2008.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 28th, 2005 at 6:59 pm and is filed under Author: SactoDan, Law, Washington, DC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.