« Ind. Law - Status of wine shipping in Indiana, and nationally | Main | Ind. Courts - Lake Superior Court race, with charges of unethical public conduct, political cronyism, electioneering at issue »

Sunday, March 12, 2006

Law - Lawmakers favor move to give president a limited line-item veto

The Louisville Courier Journal reports today, in James R. Carroll's "Notes from Washington," that "Lawmakers favor move to give president a limited line-item veto." Some quotes:

President Bush's wish for a limited line-item veto is getting a generally positive reception from members of both parties in Congress, and that includes in the Kentucky and Indiana delegations. * * *

Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., also support the idea.

"Senator Bayh supports giving the president a line-item veto to use as a tool to eliminate pork barrel spending," said spokeswoman Meghan Keck. "Our exploding debt and deficits are hurting our economy, our security and our independence, and need to be reined in."

The Bush proposal is intended to help curb the use of earmarks, the special spending items targeted by lawmakers for specific districts and states. * * *

Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-1st District, said he backed the line-item veto in 1996, when Democrat Bill Clinton was president. That law was struck down by the Supreme Court in 1998, with Justice John Paul Stevens writing for the majority that "there is no provision in the Constitution that authorizes the president to enact, to amend or to repeal statutes."

Under the more limited proposal now being discussed, Congress would have 10 days to approve, by a majority vote, a set of presidential cuts, or rescissions, in spending and tax bills.

Under a normal presidential veto, it takes a two-thirds vote of Congress to override.

Interesting. Here are some quotes from a report from the Washington Post of June 26, 1988:
The Supreme Court yesterday struck down the broad new line-item veto authority that Congress had given the president to cancel specific items in spending and tax bills.

Within a couple of hours of the ruling, the law's backers announced they will try again to find a constitutional way to expand the president's powers to cut pork-barrel expenditures.

In a 6 to 3 decision, the court held that the line-item veto law violates a constitutional requirement that legislation be passed by both houses of Congress and presented in its entirety to the president for signature or veto.

Passage of the legislation in 1996 and its implementation in 1997 climaxed more than a century of struggle by presidents for this new authority. It was a rare unilateral yielding of power by Congress to the chief executive, prompted by Congress's increasing concern over its own lack of fiscal discipline. President Clinton, who had line-item veto powers as governor of Arkansas, signed the bill with relish and moved quickly, although cautiously, to begin trimming spending bills.

But the judicial branch, looking to constitutional rather than political or fiscal priorities, took a far dimmer view of the power swap.

Unlike earlier laws giving the president discretionary spending authority, "this act gives the president the unilateral power to change the text of duly enacted statutes," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority.

Such line-item vetoes are "the functional equivalent of partial repeals of acts of Congress," he said. But "there is no provision in the Constitution that authorizes the president to enact, to amend or to repeal statutes," he added.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy cut to the political chase. "Failure of political will does not justify unconstitutional remedies," he said in a concurring opinion.

The decision comes as a blow both to Clinton, who used the new power 82 times over the past 18 months, and to GOP leaders, who made the line-item veto a marquee item in their 1994 "Contract With America." * * *

On Capitol Hill, Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.), who co-sponsored the law with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), said the decision "means a retreat to the practice of loading up otherwise necessary legislation with pork-barrel spending."

By contrast, the law's foes were ecstatic. Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) raised his arm in a salute and exclaimed, "God save this honorable court." Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) said that Congress "tried to bend the Constitution [but] the court said it will not allow this to happen."

In his opinion, Stevens said Congress could alter the president's role in determining the final text of a law only by constitutional amendment. But Coats and other line-item veto supporters acknowledged that mustering the two-thirds majority in each house needed to move the constitutional amendment process forward would be difficult.

Instead, Coats and McCain said they will introduce legislation immediately to get around the Supreme Court's objections by breaking each appropriations bill into individual items, passing each one separately and sending them to the president to be signed or vetoed as separate bills.

The House balked at such a Senate proposal before settling on the current line-item veto law, gagging at the prospect of passing what could be thousands of separate appropriations bills instead of the 13 that must now be passed every year. Computers have since eased the procedural problems, Coats said, making the "separate enrollment" approach more feasible.

But many lawmakers' love affair with the line-item veto has cooled since Clinton began zeroing out some of their favorite projects and recent government projections of surpluses for the next several years. Many Republicans, who had put off implementing the law for months in hopes it would fall into the hands of a GOP president, are not keen about empowering Clinton or a possible Democratic successor. Moreover, there is little time left in this session for such a controversial issue.

Under the line-item veto law, the president could sign bills and then cancel spending for specific projects, narrowly targeted tax breaks, or new or expanded entitlement programs.

Congress could reinstate the spending but would have to muster a two-thirds vote of both houses to override a veto. Congress overrode only one of Clinton's line-item vetoes, involving 38 projects worth $287 million in a military construction bill; the vetoes that stood reversed $869 million in spending and tax breaks.

The Supreme Court decision was the case of Clinton v. City of New York.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on March 12, 2006 10:18 AM
Posted to General Law Related