AUGUSTA, Maine - The line item vetoes Gov. Paul LePage issued Thursday were supposed to frustrate and divide Republicans and Democrats in the Maine House and Senate. Instead, legislative leaders say they had exactly the opposite effect.
Following similar votes taken last night by the House, the Maine Senate today quickly overrode all 64 budget line item vetoes. Lawmakers in both bodies then went on to reject LePage's vetoes in the highway budget. Both houses of the Legislature have never been so unified.
For those keeping score, it's Maine Legislature, 2; Gov. Paul LePage, 0, in what could become a sweep for lawmakers engaged in a struggle with the chief executive to pass a two-year state budget.
After LePage's $6.7 billion budget proposal was scrapped, legislative leaders crafted one of their own and enacted it this week with veto-proof, two-thirds majorities in the House and Senate.
LePage still had the option of using line item budget vetoes to target separate lines of spending. He exercised that option 64 times on the basis of some simple logic: "For five months they've wasted our time, and it's time I'm going to waste some of their time," LePage said.
And he managed to do that Thursday night in the House, where the members gathered to cast the simple majority votes to override budget vetoes on a wide variety of spending lines that LePage rejected. Some of them included vetoes for issues the governor supports, like expanded drug enforcement and improving programs that help domestic violence victims.
Delayed because of some technical difficulties, House members accomplished their goal in about four hours. Friday, it was the Senate's turn. The Senate overrode all of the vetoes in a little more than 45 minutes, dispelling speculation from some quarters that the GOP-led Senate could potentially blow up the budget -- something that couldn't happen in the House.
Republicans hold 20 of the Senate's 35 seats, and if LePage were able to convince 18 of them to sustain a few of the line item vetos it could have forced a new round of discussions in the budget battle. But there were only four senators who remained loyal to LePage who had hoped to drive a wedge between Democrats and Republicans in the Senate.
"If anything, it united us and united us to work with our brethren on the other side of the aisles," said GOP Sen. Thomas Saviello. A social moderate and fiscal conservative, Saviello, of Wilton, says it's hard to believe that the Senate is as united as it is against the party's top state office holder, Gov. Paul LePage.
The idea that a GOP-controlled Senate could not reach a collaborative agreement with a GOP governor on the second floor of the State House confounded many members of the Republican caucus, but Saviello said Republicans didn't waste a lot of time thinking about it.
"This is kind of silly but that's the choice of the second floor that they've decided to make," he says. "And we sat down and made the best of it and did it in a very methodical, quick manner," Saviello said.
Meanwhile, in the House Friday morning, lawmakers took up another round of LePage line item vetoes - this batch eliminating money to repair Maine's highways. Assistant House Majority Leader Sara Gideon says fixing Maine roads is something that just about everyone agrees on at the State House. So the House overrode those too.
"I think we have almost become used to being surprised by these things, so we just deal with them in a very calm manner as we did with the continued line item vetoes on the highway fund this morning," Gideon says.
Dealing with the budget still has another round for lawmakers. LePage has vowed that he will next veto the entire budget document, an action he must take by June 29. Lawmakers are expected to be back in session after July Fourth to override that veto as well.