Word: vetoes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...other hand, normally would vote against a bill that the President did not like, while Democrats would feel free to push it. But Byrd took a position opposite that of House Democrats, arguing that it would be futile to pass the bill without the votes to override a veto. Republican Senators, also differing with their House counterparts, decided to approve the compromise, just so Reagan could wield his dramatic veto...
Reagan's Monday-morning veto was almost anticlimactic. "By refusing to make even this small saving to protect the American people against overspending," the President said, as he rejected the bill, "the Congress has paved the way for higher interest rates and inflation, and the continued loss of investment, jobs and economic growth...
...What the veto would do to the Government became a more immediate question. Reagan announced that all "nonessential" Government services would have to stop. The result was capricious. As a midday exodus of some 200,000 federal workers began, the Pentagon lost not a single man-hour of work. The National Zoo in Washington also remained open. But the President's press office stopped functioning, and 262 of 344 people who work for the White House went home. Outsiders trying to express an opinion on the President's action heard a recording that ended, "No one is here...
...figures that underestimated how much would be spent on food stamps and supplemental security income for the disabled. The resolution that came out of the Senate-House conference, said the OMB computer, would push spending $2 billion higher than Reagan would accept; the President agreed and cast his first veto...
...performance did not please everybody. Congressional Democrats and even some Republicans charged that Stockman had led them to believe that the President would accept the emergency fiscal 1982 funding measure hammered out by a Senate-House conference, even though Stockman was one of those who successfully urged Reagan to veto it. Said G.O.P. Senator Mark Andrews of North Dakota: "We all thought we had done the job. But Stockman found that he was using the wrong mirror, so he got himself another mirror...