In
governmentA government is the body within a community, political entity or organization which has the authority to make and enforce rules, laws and regulations.....
, the
line-item veto is the power of an
executive}}In the study of political science the executive branch of government has sole authority and responsibility for the daily administration of the state bureaucracy. The division of power into separate branches of government is central to the democratic idea of the separation of powers .In many...
to nullify or cancel specific provisions of a bill, usually budget appropriations, without vetoing the entire legislative package. The line-item vetoes are usually subject to the possibility of legislative override as are traditional vetoes.
This power is held by most state
governorsIn the United States, the title governor refers to the chief executive of each state or insular territory, not directly subordinate to the federal authorities, but the political and ceremonial head of the state.-Role and powers:...
in the United States of America. All but seven US states have some form of line-item veto.
In
governmentA government is the body within a community, political entity or organization which has the authority to make and enforce rules, laws and regulations.....
, the
line-item veto is the power of an
executive}}In the study of political science the executive branch of government has sole authority and responsibility for the daily administration of the state bureaucracy. The division of power into separate branches of government is central to the democratic idea of the separation of powers .In many...
to nullify or cancel specific provisions of a bill, usually budget appropriations, without vetoing the entire legislative package. The line-item vetoes are usually subject to the possibility of legislative override as are traditional vetoes.
Governors
This power is held by most state
governorsIn the United States, the title governor refers to the chief executive of each state or insular territory, not directly subordinate to the federal authorities, but the political and ceremonial head of the state.-Role and powers:...
in the United States of America. All but seven US states have some form of line-item veto. Those states without the line-item veto are
IndianaIndiana is a U.S. state, the 19
th admitted to the Union. It is located in the Great Lakes region, and with approximately 6.3 million residents, is ranked 16
th in population and 17
th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38
th in land area, and is the...
,
MarylandMaryland is a state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia to the south and west, Pennsylvania to the north, and Delaware to the east. It is comparable in size to the European country of Belgium. According to the U.S...
,
NevadaNevada is a state located in the western region of the United States. The capital is Carson City and the largest city is Las Vegas. The state's nickname is Silver State, due to the large number of silver deposits that were discovered and mined there...
,
New HampshireNew Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It borders Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian province of...
,
North CarolinaNorth Carolina is a state located on the Atlantic Seaboard in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties...
,
Rhode IslandRhode Island and Providence Plantations, more commonly referred to as Rhode Island , is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area...
, and
VermontThe State of Vermont is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state ranks 43rd by land area, , and 45th by total area. It has a population of 621,270, making it the second least-populated state...
.
Confederate States
While this power is not supported by the
United States ConstitutionThe Constitution of the United States of America is the supreme law of the United States. It is the foundation and source of the legal authority underlying the existence of the United States of America and the federal government of the United States...
, it was granted to the President of the Confederate States as the
American Civil WarThe American Civil War , also known as the War Between the States and several other names, was a civil war in the United States of America. Eleven Southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America...
broke out in 1861. Article 1, Section 7 of the
Confederate States ConstitutionThe Constitution of the Confederate States of America was the supreme law of the Confederate States of America, as adopted on March 11, 1861 and in effect through the conclusion of the American Civil War. The Confederacy also operated under a Provisional Constitution from February 8, 1861 to March...
, adopted March 11, 1861, allowed the Confederate president the ability to "approve any appropriation and disapprove any other appropriation in the same bill," with such disapprovals returned to the houses of congress for reconsideration and potentially for override.
Line Item Veto Act of 1996
Presidents have repeatedly asked Congress to give them a line item veto power. According to Louis Fisher in
The Politics of Shared Power,
Ronald ReaganRonald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States and the 33rd Governor of California .Born in Tampico, Illinois, Reagan moved to Los Angeles, California in the 1930s...
said to Congress in his 1986 State of the Union address, "Tonight I ask you to give me what forty-three governors have: Give me a line-item veto this year. Give me the authority to veto waste, and I'll take the responsibility, I'll make the cuts, I'll take the heat."
Bill ClintonWilliam Jefferson "Bill" Clinton was the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He was the third-youngest president; only Theodore Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy were younger when entering office...
echoed the request in his State of the Union address in 1995.
The president was briefly granted this power by the
Line Item Veto Act of 1996The Line Item Veto Act of 1996 enacted a line-item veto for the Federal government of the United States, but its effect was brief due to judicial review....
, passed by Congress to control "pork barrel spending" that favors a particular region rather than the nation as a whole. The line-item veto was used 82 times in 11 Bills from the federal budget by President
Bill ClintonWilliam Jefferson "Bill" Clinton was the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He was the third-youngest president; only Theodore Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy were younger when entering office...
.
However, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas F. Hogan ruled on February 12, 1998, that unilateral amendment or repeal of only parts of statutes violated the
U.S. ConstitutionThe Constitution of the United States of America is the supreme law of the United States. It is the foundation and source of the legal authority underlying the existence of the United States of America and the federal government of the United States...
. This ruling was subsequently affirmed on June 25, 1998, by a 6-3 decision of the
Supreme Court of the United StatesThe Supreme Court of the United States is the highest judicial body in the United States, and leads the federal judiciary. It consists of the Chief Justice of the United States and eight Associate Justices, who are nominated by the President and confirmed with the "advice and consent" of the Senate...
in the case
Clinton v. City of New YorkClinton v. City of New York, , is a legal case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the line-item veto as granted in the Line Item Veto Act of 1996 violated the Presentment Clause of the United States Constitution because it impermissibly gave the President of the United...
. The case was brought by the then
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment...
mayor
Rudy Giuliani| align="right"|Rudolph William Louis "Rudy" Giuliani is an American lawyer, businessman and politician from New York. He served as Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001....
.
A constitutional amendment to give the president line item veto power has been considered periodically since the Court ruled the 1996 act unconstitutional.
Subsequent developments
Though the Supreme Court struck down the Line Item Veto Act in 1998, President George W. Bush asked Congress to enact legislation that would return the line item veto power to the Executive. First announcing his intent to seek such legislation in his January 31, 2006 State of the Union address, President Bush sent a legislative proposal Legislative Line Item Veto Act of 2006 to Congress on March 6, 2006, urging its prompt passage.[17] Senator Bill Frist, Senator John McCain, and Republican Whip Senator Mitch McConnell jointly introduced this proposal.
On that same day, Joshua Bolten, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, gave a press conference on the president’s line-item veto proposal. Bolten explained that the proposed Act would give the president the ability to single out “wasteful” spending and to put such spending on hold. While the spending line-item is on hold, the president can send legislation to Congress to rescind the particular line-item. The proposal would then be considered in both houses within ten days on an up or down basis, and could be passed by a simple majority. Additionally, such proposals could not be filibustered.
When asked how this proposed legislation was different from the 1996 Line Item Veto Act that was found unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court, Bolten said that whereas the former act granted unilateral authority to the Executive to disallow specific spending line items, the new proposal would seek Congressional approval of such line-item vetoes. Thus, for the president to successfully rescind previously enacted spending, a simple majority of Congress is required to agree to specific legislation to that effect.
Though the current line-item veto proposal is much weaker than the 1996 version, it has nevertheless failed to find strong support in Congress. Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia called it "an offensive slap at Congress," asserting that the legislation would enable the president to intimidate individual members of Congress by targeting the projects of his political opponents. He also complained that the line-item veto as proposed would take away Congress’s constitutional "power of the purse" and give it to the executive branch.
On June 8, 2006, Viet D. Dinh, Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, and Nathan A. Sales, John M. Olin Fellow at Georgetown University Law Center, testified by written statement before the House Committee on the Budget on the constitutional issues in connection with the proposed legislation.[18] Dinh and Sales argued that the Legislative Line Item Veto Act of 2006 satisfies the Constitution’s Bicameralism and Presentment Clause, and therefore avoids the constitutional issues raised in the 1996 Act struck down by the Supreme Court. They also stated that the proposed Act is consistent with the basic principle that grants Congress broad discretion to establish procedures to govern its internal operations.
The proposed Act was approved by the House Budget Committee on June 14, 2006 by a vote of 24-9. [19] It was approved in the full House on June 22. A similar bill was submitted in the Senate, but failed to win approval. The Legislative Line Item Veto Act has therefore not become law.
Line Item Veto Re-enactment Activity of 2009
Senator
Russ FeingoldRussell Dana "Russ" Feingold is an American politician from the U.S. state of Wisconsin. He has served as a Democratic member of the U.S. Senate and the junior Senator from Wisconsin since 1993. A recipient of the John F...
(D-WI) and Senator
John McCainJohn Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....
(R-AZ) started legislation to enact a limited version of the line-item veto. This would give the president the power to rescind
earmarksIn United States politics an earmark is a congressional provision that directs approved funds to be spent on specific projects or that directs specific exemptions from taxes or mandated fees. Earmarks do not create new government spending, but allocate existing spending for specific purposes...
of new bills by sending the bill back to Congress minus line-item vetoed earmark. Congress would then vote on the line-item vetoed bill with a
majorityA majority, also known as a simple majority in the U.S., is a subset of a group that is more than half of the entire group. This should not be confused with a plurality, which is a subset having the largest number of parts. A plurality is not necessarily a majority, as the largest subset may be...
vote under
fast trackFast track may refer to:* Fast track for trade agreements in the United States* FDA Fast Track Development Program...
rules to make any deadlines the bill had.
Debate
Some scholars, such as
Louis FisherLouis Fischer was the Socialist Labor Party of America candidate for United States President in the 1972 Presidential election and he was "the party's top vote-getting presidential candidate." His Vice Presidential candidate was Genevieve Gundersen.Fischer also ran for Governor of Illinois twice...
, believe the line-item veto would give presidents too much power over government spending compared with the power of Congress. Some argue that it could even give the president de-facto legislative authority in altering the law which could violate the principles and perhaps the letter of the
ConstitutionThe Constitution of the United States of America is the supreme law of the United States. It is the foundation and source of the legal authority underlying the existence of the United States of America and the federal government of the United States...
.
Supporters of the line-item veto argue that the provision would make the President more accountable for federal spending. Also, the line-item veto can be used to prevent the enactment of controversial
riderIn legislative practice, a rider is an additional provision annexed to a bill under the consideration of a legislature, having little connection with the subject matter of the bill. Riders are usually created as a tactic to pass a controversial provision which would not pass as its own bill...
amendments that powerful legislators have sometimes inserted into important bills, or at least it can be used to ensure that someone elected at the national level is accountable for the enactment of such amendments. Without the line-item veto Presidents have often felt compelled to sign controversial riders into law even if they did not support them.
See also
- Clinton v. City of New York
Clinton v. City of New York, , is a legal case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the line-item veto as granted in the Line Item Veto Act of 1996 violated the Presentment Clause of the United States Constitution because it impermissibly gave the President of the United...
, 524 U.S. 417 (1998)
- Raines v. Byrd, 521 U.S. 811 (1997)
- Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Chadha
Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919 , was a United States Supreme Court case ruling that the one-house legislative veto violated the constitutional separation of powers.-Parties:...
, 462 U.S. 919 (1983)
External links