Chenoweth Claims Vote For Line Item A Mistake Says She Only Voted To Bring Measure Up For Debate

Apparently aggravated by her seemingly inadvertent vote for the line-item veto she vigorously opposes, Congressman Helen Chenoweth called in the number two Republican in the House to help her dispute the official record of the episode.

“I spoke with Majority Leader Dick Armey, and he assured me that my vote on the rule was not a vote in favor of final passage of line-item veto authority,” Chenoweth said in a statement sent to the Idaho media. “That’s the bottom line.”

The Congressional Record and its daily digest state the opposite.

The Idaho conservative distributed her statement in response to reports that within an hour of issuing a fiery denunciation of the line-item veto on Thursday morning she turned around and voted for it.

Passage of the compromise line-item veto was sent to President Clinton on a 232-177 vote that also adopted the rule for debating unrelated legislation raising the total amount of debt the federal government can carry. Chenoweth was among the 232 House members who voted for that rule.

“By voting for the rule, I was simply voting in favor of allowing the line-item veto and debt limit provisions to come to the floor for a fair debate and vote,” Chenoweth said in the statement. “Passage of the rule does nothing more than allow the enacting legislation to come up for a vote.”

But the Congressional Record’s daily digest specifically states that the line-item veto was approved on adoption of the debating rule.

And the Congressional Record itself includes an exchange between Speaker Pro Tem Doc Hastings of Washington and Utah Congressman Bill Orton making that very point.

“Is it correct that the rule which was adopted providing for debate on this bill did automatically adopt the conference report on the line-item veto as a separate bill and authorize that to be sent to the president for his signature?” Orton asked.

“The answer to that is yes,” replied Hastings, who was presiding over the debate.

Hastings followed that up with the statement that House action on the legislation involving the debt limit would have no effect on the fact that the line-item veto measure had already passed and been sent to Clinton.

Chenoweth specifically embraced the line item veto in signing the “Contract with America” during her 1994 campaign, saying public demands for it had been ignored by Democrats. But she has staunchly opposed it since taking office.

A number of House Democrats complained about the convoluted procedure used on the line item veto because they supported it but opposed the rule for among other reasons its prohibition on debating an increase in the minimum wage.

They criticized the convoluted procedure, and several acknowledged that they did not realize the vote amounted to final passage of the line item veto.

But Chenoweth refused to acknowledge that final vote was not a procedural one. She remained adamant that only adoption of the debt limit bill resulted in approval of the line item veto.

She did vote against the debt limit bill. But according to the Congressional Record, the debating rule also stripped the line item veto provision from that bill before it was put to a final vote so that Chenoweth did not vote against the line item veto at all on Thursday.