March 06, 2006
President Bush plans to send proposed legislation to Congress on Monday that would allow him to control spending by vetoing specific items in larger bills, a Bush administration official said.The president, who has not vetoed any legislation during five years in office, asked Congress in his State of the Union address to give him line-item veto power.
Bush plans to announce that the proposed bill is headed to Congress during his remarks at the morning swearing-in ceremony for the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the announcement has not been made.
Both Republican and Democratic presidents have sought the power to eliminate a single item in a spending or tax bill without killing the entire measure.
And I fully support giving the line-item veto to the president. But it cannot be done via legislation.
Afte all, as this article itself points out, the SUpreme Court has spoken on the matter.
President Clinton got that wish in 1996, when the new reform-minded Republican majority in the House helped pass a line-item veto law.Two years later, the Supreme Court declared the law unconstitutional because it violated the principle that Congress, and not the executive branch, holds the power of the purse.
Sorry folks, you need to do this via an amendment, not via statute. It really is that simple.
Follow the Constitution.
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Posted by: Greg at
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Posted by: wesawthat at Mon Mar 6 12:03:42 2006 (qGP3r)
Are you truly so deranged as to see the line-item veto as despotism?
Well, since you start your compelling "argument" with such a nice ad hominem, I guess I must respond. Yes, I think that this instance of line-item veto is despotic for a variety of reasons, to wit:
1) Specifically with regard to Bush, this is merely one more power grab. He creates his own personal law ex nihilo when he sees fit, as in the ludicrous "signing statements", the FISA violations, etc. Granting him a line-item veto is just one more abdication of power by Congress in their zeal to bolster an imperial presidency.
2) As I noted, I don't want any president to have this capability. Yes, Congress can override, but it's simply one more power concentrated in the Executive, which is inherently less-representative than the Legislature. There is no need to tinker with Congress' will at such a granular: sign or veto, or use your "political capital" to get Congress to put together spending bills more in line with your budgetary vision. Hell, with single-party rule, it's rather funny to think that Bush cannot already do that.
3) Any attempt to do this by statute, as you yourself observe reasonably at your site, is un-Constitutional. In my mind any attempt to so blatantly subvert the Constitution is fundamentally despotic.
And as far as it being despotic, do you really believe that we have 43 despots in the US?
As I said in comments, the States and Federal government are different animals. State legislatures don't necessarily meet as often or as long as Congress, generally put together a single budget as opposed to over a dozen regular spending bills (not to mention emergency and other additional appropriations) throughout the year, and what they do does not happen to control an almost $3T budget that includes vast military spending and impacts the entire nation.
BTW, there's no compelling evidence to suggest that giving the President a line-item power will control spending. I'm rather against legislation and Constitutional amendments that muck with the workings of the government rather than providing for more civil rights. The structure of the Constitution is such that we implicitly limit the power of all three branches, explicitly grant them very particular powers, and reserve everything else to the People. The notion of a line-item veto at the Federal level violates those simple principles.
Posted by: NTodd at Tue Mar 7 06:29:07 2006 (OSdLT)
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