Saturday, July 01, 2006

Boehner Saved the Line-Item Veto

Kudos to the Majority Leader, as well as to rising star Paul Ryan and Chairman Jerry Lewis:

SAVING THE VETO

House Majority Leader John Boehner is credited with cooling off opposition by Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis sufficiently to save the administration-backed line-item veto in the House June 22.

Lewis had been giving a run-around to Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, sponsor of the bill providing presidential authority to veto parts of a spending bill (subject to approval by both houses of Congress). Boehner reminded Lewis that President Bush and the congressional Republican leadership supported the Ryan bill. Consequently, the majority leader urged the chairman not to mobilize the 36 Republican Appropriations Committee members against the line-item veto.

As a result, Lewis e-mailed his committee members that he would vote against Ryan's bill but was not calling on his fellow appropriators to follow him. That ended the danger that monolithic opposition by the Appropriations Committee would turn enough other Republicans to kill the measure. The bill passed, 247 to 172, with Republican appropriators supporting it, 27 to nine.

Read the full article for news about Frist's concerns that Republicans could lose the Senate majority (which to me is no better than a one-in-five chance), and for federally-funded prosciutto.

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