Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin made the case Sunday for President Donald Trump's call for authority to impose a "line-item veto" for spending bills, saying "there's different ways of doing this."
In an interview on "Fox News Sunday," Mnuchin was asked about Trump’s lament last week about the massive $1.3 trillion spending bill passed by Congress — and was reminded a line-item veto for tax and spending provisions was ruled unconstitutional in 1998.
"I'm not going to comment on what the president will do, but as you heard him say he's not planning on doing this again," Mnuchin said. "I think [Congress] should give the president a line-item veto."
"We don't need to get into a debate in terms of" whether it would need a constitutional amendment, he added.
"There's different ways of doing this. My comment is [that] it's clear what happened: The Democrats, in order to get us military spending, demanded a massive increase in non-military spending, and the president made the decision this time that that was worth it . . . We need to make sure we have a military that has the necessary resources."
Mnuchin also pushed back on speculation on the economic fallout from Trump's move to order tariffs on all range of Chinese goods.
"I don't expect to see a big impact on the economy, we've been very careful on how we're doing this and what we're doing," he said. "I think it's long-term very good for the economy."
In addition, he countered estimations that workers are estimated to get $5 billion while shareholders will bet $150 billion as a result of newly passed tax cuts.
"It's not an equivalent comparison," Mnuchin said. "That $150 billion that's going back to shareholders gets recycled into the economy. The $5 billion that's going to workers is an enormous amount of money. We didn't even expect to see it right away . . . I think you are seeing absolutely the impact that we thought."
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