What is line-item veto
The line-item veto is a power granted to a chief executive to selectively veto certain parts of a bill without vetoing the entire bill. Many governors have this power but the Supreme Court declared line items vetoes for the president unconstitutional in 1998.
Many supporters of the line-item veto believe its chief virtue is that it allows the president to eliminate wasteful spending provisions like earmarks from legislation.
There is an initiative in progress for a “line-item veto with a twist”
The initiative supported by the No Labels group supports giving the president the power of rescission – in which the president has to send each individual provision that he’d like to strip from a bill back to Congress for an expedited, up or down vote.
Expedited presidential rescission authority already has broad bipartisan support in Congress from members who want more transparency and accountability in the legislative process. No Labels wants the same thing.
Line item veto history
While 44 state governors have line-item veto power, Congress has often refused to grant this power to the president out of fear that it will be used as a political tool to punish certain congressmen who refuse to go along with the president’s agenda.
Bill Clinton was briefly able to use a straight line-item veto, but the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in Clinton v. City of New York in 1998.
Why the straight line-item veto was considered unconstitutional
In Clinton v. City of New York, the Supreme Court found that the line-item veto violated the Presentment Clause of the Constitution, which says that the president does not have the power to unilaterally amend or repeal legislation passed by Congress.
How is what No Labels proposing constitutional
By sending the rescinded part of the bill back to Congress for an expedited up or down vote, their “line-item veto with a twist” complies with the Presentment Clause of the Constitution and the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Why “line-item-veto with a twist” is a good idea
As stated earlier, it allows the president to eliminate wasteful spending provisions like earmarks from legislation. More importantly, this eliminates the underlying corruption inherent in omnibus bills. Omnibus bills cluster what usually would be many bills into one cluster to piggy back special interest and wasteful earmark legislation onto larger critical legislation that needs to pass Congress and get signed by the president for the best interests our country. The line-item veto eliminates future omnibus bills by giving the president the power to rescind the special interest and earmark portions back to Congress so that those items require an up or down vote on their own merits.
This would have eliminated the recent 2200 page, $1.3 trillion dollar budget omnibus sending the US debt over the $21 trillion mark. This would also eliminate the current farm bill omnibus in Congress and force all the legislation under the farm bill omnibus to be passed on the individual merits of each bill. Line-item veto significantly limits the corrupt “quid pro quo” political practices that run rampant in Congress.