Obama's One Major Gaffe

During the first presidential debate Obama did a good job not letting McCain roll over him, however he made one major gaffe which really scared me, and brought up an issue which every American citizen regardless of political party, race, class, or anything else should know about. Obama made the statement that if elected president he would go “line by line” to cut unnecessary spending, like the example which keeps getting floated around of testing the DNA of bears (was it a paternal or criminal case, it was funnier the first time). There is only one problem; he is not allowed to do that. The president is not allowed to cut out parts of a bill, he has to approve it all or none. This is the one major reason America has a $2 trillion budget deficit. To explain what happens in our political system I’m going to give an example;
Let’s say someone proposes a bill to make children’s healthcare more affordable for the poor for let’s say $28 million. Everyone agrees that is great and should be done. Then a senator decides to cash in a favor that one of the other senators who worked on the bill owed him. He’s up for election and the highways in his state need some work. So he asks his friend to add on a line at the end that gives $8 million to his state for road construction. Another Senator decides to turn in a favor after that. He wants to halt global warming and scientists in his state want to study the effects of cow farts on the atmosphere (this really was studied). It will only cost $2 million, so it’s added on. This keeps happening and some of the most insane things are passed under the ruse of important items. What happens if the president vetoes the bill because of the crazy things added on? Well, the news reports that the president doesn’t care about poor children, and the veto goes down in the records.
It has been proposed that something called a “line item veto” be put into place, it is a veto that allows the president to metaphorically take a pen and cross out the highway construction, DNA tests of bears, and cow fart studies and just pass the children’s healthcare part. Now I know what you’re saying. Why wasn’t this put in place before? Guess who the only people who can put this into affect (alright if this isn’t irony I don’t know what is) The Senate and the House. So needless to say it probably never will be passed, but I encourage you to let everyone know about this, and perhaps maybe one day the will of the people can one day drown out the greed of politicians.