Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush said during the first GOP debate he was called “Veto Corleone” – a reference to Godfather character Don Vito Corleone – when he was governor of Florida because he vetoed 2,500 separate line items totaling $2 billion over his eight years in office.
Bush, the son of President George H.W. Bush and brother of George W. Bush, was responding to the question of whether another Bush should be in the Oval Office.
“Maybe the bar is even higher for me, and that’s fine,” Jeb Bush responded. “I have a record in Florida, I’m proud of my dad, and I’m certainly proud of my brother. In Florida they called me Jeb, because I earned it. I cut taxes every year, totaling $19 billion. We balanced every budget, we went from $1 billion of reserves to $9 billion of reserves … They called me ‘Veto Corleone'”