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OUT OF LINE?
April 27, 1998The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Transcript |
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The Supreme Court heard constitutional arguments surrounding the line-item veto today. Since Congress granted the Executive Branch the power in 1996, President Clinton has used the line-item veto 82 times. The current challenge before the High Court was brought by New York City and a group of Idaho potato growers. After a background report, Jim Lehrer discusses the details with a reporter covering the case.
KWAME HOLMAN: This is hardly the first time the judicial branch has been asked to resolve a separation of powers dispute between the executive and legislative branches. But in the case of the line-ltem veto the President and the Congress are on the same side. President Clinton s
A RealAudio version of this segment is available.
NEWSHOUR LINKS:
April 27, 1998
The line-item veto debate.
August 11, 1997
President Clinton uses the line-item veto.
August 11, 1997
Paul Gigot and Tom Oliphant discuss the line-item veto's impact on politics.
Online Forum
Congressional Freshman debate the line-item veto.
Browse the NewsHour's coverage of the White House, Congress and legal issues.
OUTSIDE LINKS:
The White House.
U.S. Senate.
U.S. House of Representatives.
igned the line-ltem veto into law in 1996 only after it was approved by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in both houses of Congress.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: For years, presidents of both parties have pounded this very desk in frustration at having to sign necessary legislation that contains special interest boondoggles, tax loopholes, and pure pork.
KWAME HOLMAN: The line-ltem veto gives the President
greater authority to cut specific spending proposals from a bill without having to reject the entire bill. But even as Congress was designing the legislation opponents were warning the line-ltem veto violated the Constitution. Article I, Section One of the Constitution reads ..."all legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States." Section Seven reads..."every bill which shall have been passed...shall...before it become law...be presented to the President of the United States. If he approve he shall sign, but if not he shall return it with his objection."
CARDIS COLLINS: The Constitution didn't say only some legislative powers shall be exercised by the Congress. It does not say the Congress has to share its legislative responsibility with any other branch. Perhaps, most importantly, from the standpoint of this debate, the Constitution does not give the Congress the power to delegate its legislative powers to the President or to anyone else.
The only way for the president to test the line-item veto was to use it.
KWAME HOLMAN: The President held off using his new executive authority while legal challengers pursued the line-ltem veto all the way to the Supreme Court. Last summer, however, the justices said the new law couldn't be challenged until the President used it. And so he did.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: The actions I take today will save American people hundreds of millions of dollars over the next 10 years.
KWAME HOLMAN: Last August, President Clinton exercised his line-item veto authority for the first time, stripping from the new balanced budget agreement several narrowly drawn tax and spending provisions. One would have helped New York State, and especially New York City, by allowing the state to raise taxes on health care providers to finance its Medicaid program.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: No other state in our nation would be given this provision, and it is unfair to the rest of our nation's taxpayers to ask them to subsidize it.
Clinton denies large agri-businesses benefits.
KWAME HOLMAN: The other vetoed provision would have allowed agri-businesses to defer the capital gains taxes they would pay on the sale of food processing plants to farmer-owned cooperatives.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: It could have benefited not only traditional farm coops but giant organizations, which do not need and should not trigger the law's benefits.
KWAME HOLMAN: Soon after those vetoes, New York City filed a lawsuit against President Clinton, and the Snake River Potato Growers of Idaho sued Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, each believing the President's actions had, indeed, violated the Constitution. In February, Federal District Court Judge Thomas Hogan ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and struck down the line-ltem veto, saying it "violates the procedural requirement ordained in Article I of the United States Constitution and impermissibly upsets the balance of powers so carefully prescribed by its Framers. The Line Item Veto Act therefore is unconstitutional." Today, on behalf of President Clinton, Solicitor General Seth Waxman appealed Judge Hogan's decision before the Supreme Court. Lawyers for New York City and the Snake River Potato Growers argued in favor of throwing out the line-ltem veto. Meanwhile, several interested members of Congress made the short walk across the street from the Capitol to watch the proceedings.
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