line-item veto

Authority, as of a government executive, to reject provisions of a bill individually. Also called item veto.

An item veto gives the governor in most US states the power to strike out specific sections of an appropriations bill, while signing the remainder into law. Item vetoes allow the executive to keep a close control over financial legislation, cutting out riders, and reducing pork barrel legislation. The US President does not posses an item veto, although it has been frequently proposed.

Unlike most state governors, the President does not have the line-item veto. This means that the President must approve or veto an entire appropriations bill and may not veto any single part of the bill. Presidents Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and Bill Clinton all called for a constitutional amendment to give them such a partial veto as a means of controlling federal spending and reducing the deficit. With this power they could disapprove of what they considered wasteful “pork barrel” spending without having to reject the many more worthy projects in the rest of an appropriations bill. Lacking the two-thirds vote needed for a constitutional amendment, Congress in 1996 passed a law giving the President the line-item veto. The line-item veto constituted a major part of the “Contract with America” that had helped the Republicans recapture the majority in Congress.

President Clinton exercised this power sparingly, but many in Congress—including some who had supported the line-item veto—protested when he used it to veto their projects. In 1998 the Supreme Court ruled the line-item veto unconstitutional on the grounds that it violated the constitutional requirement that legislation be passed by both houses of Congress and presented in its entirety to the President for his signature or veto. On hearing this news, Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia exclaimed, “God save this honorable Court!”

See also Pork barrel politics; Veto power

In 1996 President Bill Clinton received what presidents had wanted for many years, the "line-item veto." This gave the president the power to select out undesirable items in appropriations bills, in bills granting certain tax breaks, and in bills creating or augmenting entitlements to prevent those items from becoming law while approving the portions of the bill to his or her liking. The constitutions of the majority of the states give their governors some form of line-item veto, but the U.S. Constitution has no comparable provision.

Lawmakers agreed that a statute that purported to allow the president to literally strike some items from a bill would be unconstitutional since the Constitution clearly requires that the president either sign a whole bill or veto it, not pick and choose among its parts. Congress sought to circumvent this prohibition by allowing the president to sign the whole bill and within ten days choose not to spend the money allocated for disfavored projects or programs. Congress then had thirty days to reject the president's decisions. But to prevail Congress needed two thirds of both houses, since the president could veto any bill and a two-thirds vote is required to override a veto.

Congress was aware that the bill had serious constitutional problems, so it included a special provision allowing an immediate and expedited challenge by members of Congress. Members recognized that giving the president line-item veto authority undermined their powers as legislators. A lawsuit was filed, and the district judge agreed that the law was unconstitutional. The case, Raines v. Byrd (1997), went directly to the Supreme Court, which dismissed it without reaching the merits. The Court found that the members of Congress lacked standing, effectively holding the special standing provision unconstitutional. According to the opinion, written by Chief Justice William Rehnquist with only Justices John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer dissenting, the plaintiffs suffered no personal injury, and any harm to them in their legislative capacities was not the kind of injury that is a proper basis for a constitutional challenge in the federal courts. Although only a procedural ruling, it was an important victory for the executive branch because it had the effect of sharply limiting if not completely eliminating cases in which members of Congress can sue agencies or the president for violations of statues or the Constitution.

The president's victory was short-lived. A year later, in Clinton v. City of New York (1998), the Court agreed, by a vote of 6 to 3, that the constitutional mandate that the president either sign an entire bill or veto it could not be evaded in this fashion. Although the constitutional clause can be seen as merely a formal procedural requirement, the majority opinion, written by Justice Stevens, recognized the major shift in the balance of power between the president and Congress that would result from sustaining this law. One of the most interesting aspects of this decision is that the usual divisions on the Court did not hold. Two conservatives, Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas, were in the majority and one, Justice Antonin Scalia, who is often considered the most formalistic justice, was in dissent. The two justices often characterized as being in the center of the Court, Justices Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O'Connor, did not agree, and only Kennedy joined the majority. Justice O'Connor is rarely in dissent in major cases. Liberals were also divided. Justice Breyer, who is viewed as among the most pragmatic, was the sole dissenter among that group.

Bibliography

Watson, Richard Abernathy. Presidential Vetoes and Public Policy. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993.

The authority of an executive to veto a specific appropriation in a budget passed by a legislature. Viewing the line-item veto as an effective tactic against pork-barrel legislation, presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush unsuccessfully sought this authority, which many state governors possess, from Congress. Under current law the president must choose between signing or vetoing the entire budget rather than parts (items on budget lines) of it.

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In government, the line-item veto is the power of an executive to nullify or "cancel" specific provisions of a bill, usually budget appropriations, without vetoing the entire legislative package. The line-item vetoes are usually subject to the possibility of legislative override as are traditional vetoes.

Use in the United States

Governors

This power is held by many state governors in the United States of America. All but seven US states have some form of line-item veto. Those states without the line-item veto are Indiana, Maryland, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Vermont.[1]

Confederate States

While this power is not supported by the United States Constitution, it was granted to the President of the Confederate States as the American Civil War broke out in 1861. Article 1, Section 7^[1] of the Confederate States Constitution, adopted March 11, 1861, allowed the Confederate president the ability to "approve any appropriation and disapprove any other appropriation in the same bill," with such disapprovals returned to the houses of congress for reconsideration and potentially for override.

Line Item Veto Act of 1996

The President of the United States was briefly granted this power by the Line Item Veto Act of 1996, passed by Congress in order to control "pork barrel spending" that favors a particular region rather than the nation as a whole. The line-item veto was used 11 times to strike 82 items from the federal budget by President Bill Clinton. ^{[2] [3]}

However, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas F. Hogan decided on February 12, 1998, that unilateral amendment or repeal of only parts of statutes violated the U.S. Constitution. This ruling was subsequently affirmed on June 25, 1998, by a 6-3 decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case Clinton v. City of New York.

A constitutional amendment to give the President line item veto power has been considered periodically since the Court ruled the 1996 act unconstitutional.

Presidents have asked Congress to give them a line item veto power. According to Louis Fisher in The Politics of Shared Power, Ronald Reagan said to Congress in his 1986 State of the Union address, "Tonight I ask you to give me what forty-three governors have: Give me a line-item veto this year. Give me the authority to veto waste, and I'll take the responsibility, I'll make the cuts, I'll take the heat." Bill Clinton echoed the request in his State of the Union address in 1995.

In 1996, Congress passed the Line Item Veto Act. The Act allowed the president to strike specific dollar amounts and tax benefits from appropriations bills passed by Congress. Congress could override the line item veto only by passing another bill containing the portions the president had stricken. The new bill would be subject to the normal veto and veto override provisions of the Constitution.

The Line Item Veto Act was shifted power over the annual federal budget from Congress to the President. According to the authors of The Challenge of Democracy, Senator Dan Coats of Indiana said of the Act, "It's Congress's way of saying, 'We've lost control of the spending process.'"

The line item veto, however, did not last long. In the case of Clinton v. City of New York in 1998, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the act. The Court said the act violated the Constitution because under the Constitution, the only way for a president to use the veto power is to veto an entire bill. In order to give the president line item veto power, the nation would have to adopt a constitutional amendment. Many scholars, including Louis Fisher, believe the line item veto would give presidents too much power over government spending compared with the power of Congress.

References

1. ^ Constitution of the Confederate States, Article 1Yale.edu
2. ^ CNN
3. ^ Office of the Federal Register

External links

• Bush calls for line-item veto - THE WASHINGTON TIMES - March 7, 2006
• TESTIMONY of Stephen Moore Director of Fiscal Policy Studies The Cato Institute before the Committee on Judiciary U.S. House of Representatives - THE CATO INSTITUTE - March 23, 2000
• Summary and text of Bush's proposal
• AboutGovernmentStates.com

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