For the Line-Item Veto

Progressing (or regressing) in the direction of the Dodo bird are congressional legislators who responsibly administer the nation’s finances and exercise fiscal prioritization with the federal government’s abundant, but not unlimited resources. In the unending effort to garner public support and political advantage for the next election, legislators spend excessively for short-term political gain, to the detriment of the nation’s long-term financial health.

Of this both parties are guilty, and there is little will within the prevailing political culture in congress to desist the profligate spending so many of it’s members indulge in, largely for their own political and parochial self-interest. The most recent illustration of this is a $1 billion subsidy for home-heating bills, energetically but ultimately ineffectively opposed by Sen. Tom Coburn, who in his opposition acutely stated "there is very limited authorization in the constitution for us to be paying the heating bills of people in this country." That may be so Sen. Coburn, but it sure is politically advantageous with the folks back home in an election year.

With no apparent legislative recourse to curbing excessive spending, and the prospect of presidentially vetoing entire bills because of exorbitant pork located on it’s fringes unappealing, the only viable tool left is the creation of the line-item veto.

The president briefly possessed this tool in the mid-nineties, but the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional shortly thereafter. That nullified version allowed the president to veto certain portions of spending bills and not others. Congress could override these vetoes, individually, with a two-thirds vote in each house (as has always been the case under the constitution with every presidential veto). This version essentially extended the president’s power from the ability to veto a congressionally-enacted bill in it’s entirety to the ability to veto particular aspects of a spending bill without having to reject the whole.

The new version proposed by President Bush gives the president the ability to designate certain provisions of a spending bill for congressional reconsideration. Both houses, within a timely manner, must then uphold or rescind said provisions by a majority vote without the ability to amend. It is not a "line-item veto" so much as a presidential directive to congress to reconsider.

Though I don’t agree with the Supreme Court that the previous version was unconstitutional (see Section III of Justice Scalia’s opinion in Clinton v. City of New York 524 U.S. 417 {998}), and I would prefer that version over President Bush’s, I see the president’s proposal as one of the only viable means possible in checking the irresponsible culture of profligacy in Washington.

I am by no means suggesting the line-item veto will be a magical silver bullet. For it to be effective there must be 1) a president willing to single out needless and wasteful spending provisions and 2) a congress willing to follow the president’s lead and rescind spending it had recently approved. Satisfying one of these requirements, let alone both, will be tough, for the same perpetrators and creators of any fiscal waste will be the ones charged with rescinding it.

But with all that said, the unitary power of the presidency is probably the only efficacious tool in slashing the various pet projects individual legislators smuggle into legislation (neither house itself has any means at it’s disposal to discard earmarks for legislation without rejecting the entire piece of legislation). In this light, presidential singling-out of certain spending provisions for congressional reconsideration will bring to the public forefront gratuitous earmarks which would have previously gone through literally unnoticed. The line-item veto will, as The Washington Post stated, "spotlight earmarks and the corruption that can come with them." Hopefully anonymous and virtually invisible earmarks will disintegrate under the sheer embarrassment of public exposure.

If we are to drastically overhaul the budget however, an action long overdue, congress is going to have to alter the very culture it operates in. The line-item veto is only a treatment to all that ills congress and Washington, not a cure. Either the current stewards of congress must put the nation’s long-term interests above all else or Americans must elect ones who will. There is only so much minor procedural remedies can accomplish.

Hat Tip: John Hinderaker