Monday, June 29, 1998

Congress needs restraint with no line-item veto

President Clinton, like his predecessors, thought the line-item veto was a good idea and included it in his campaign. Republicans thought so, too, and included it in the Contract With America. Congress agreed and in 1996 enacted the line-item veto into law.

Alas, the Supreme Court did not agree. By 6-3, the justices found the line-item veto an unwarranted, even dangerous, intrusion into the separation of powers.

The line-item veto allowed the president to attack pork barrel spending and tax loopholes by killing out individual items in bills passed by Congress. Previously, and now once again, the president had to veto a bill in its entirety to get at a handful of items. That worked well when Congress spent money one post office building at a time, so to speak, but now just 13 bills cover about $560 billion in spending.

Clinton used the line-item 82 times to veto $1 billion in spending of which Congress restored all but $355 million. That prompted a court challenge, from the state of New York and potato growers in Idaho, and six justices agreed that, barring a change in the Constitution, the president cannot, in effect, rewrite legislation once it has been passed by Congress.

The line-item veto should have passed constitutional muster. It was a delegated function that Congress could take back at any time by a simple majority vote. Although talking about it constantly, Congress has proved reluctant to abide by any kind of budgetary discipline. There may have been some slim hope that would change, but that hope is likely to be washed away by the coming budget surplus.

The line-item veto, acting mainly as a deterrent, brought a little order and discipline to the budget process. Now, Congress will have to discover those qualities on its own.