Start making sense

In the moment of today's press conference that has scripted the late-night comedians for at least a week, George Bush was asked about his non-attempts to keep the federal budget under control. He got on to the topic of the line-item veto, an almost certainly unconstitutional mechanism that would allow him to strike particular items in budget bills sent by Congress without having to veto the whole thing:

Now, sometimes I didn't -- I like the size of the pie, sometimes I didn't particularly like the slices within the pie.

But if he likes the overall size of the pie i.e. total spending (assuming he's not being literal), how does choice over slices help keep total spending under control?