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OVER THE LINE?
Is the Line-Item Veto constitutional? May 5, 1998 |
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Questions asked
in this forum:
Is the line-item veto that big a shift in power? What will be the impact of the Court's ruling? Is the veto giving the president more control over something he is held accountable for? Isn't the line-tem a half-step up from the regular veto authority? Will the line-item veto streamline government, or just backlog it even more? 
A question from Shane Smuin of San Francisco, CA: Will the line-item veto streamline government, or just backlog it even more?
Alan Morrison, head of the Public Citizen Litigation Group, responds:
No one knows for sure what will happen if the line item veto is upheld, except that it will give the President an upper hand, not only for spending matters, but over other issues on which he can use the veto (or the threat of using it) to bargain with members of Congress. In all likelihood that will also complicate the process of legislation and will have an impact on other matters coming before the Senate, such as treaties and executive and judicial appointments. The results last year are far from conclusive since neither side has yet fully adopted to the new regime (and may never get the chance if the Court strikes down the line item veto).
John Cooney, former OMB deputy counsel, responds:
The Line Item Veto will neither streamline government nor make it more complicated. If sustained by the Supreme Court, this power would serve the extremely limited function of providing the President a mechanism for rescinding (refusing to spend money on) items of pork barrel spending that (1) are several standard deviations removed from the mean in terms of their inefficiency, and (2) are not supported by any defensible public policy rationale, when these items are put in the spotlight and are forced to stand or fall on their own merits, and are no longer hidden in the middle of a spending bill with many thousands of spending items.
What the Line Item Veto is not is a tool that can have a significant deficit reduction effect. President Clinton was subjected to substantial Congressional criticism for exercising this power in 1997 to eliminate less than $2 billion (.02%) of Federal spending. If the President tried to use this power to make a meaningful dent in the $100 billion plus deficits that the country has faced over the last 15 years, the President would create so many opponents in Congress that they would quickly strip him of this power by repealing this standing recission authority.
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