Suit on Line Item Veto Dismissed

The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit by dissident members of Congress that had challenged the new Line Item Veto Act and deferred a final ruling on its constitutionality until later.

The 7-2 decision had the effect of reviving the law and giving President Clinton the authority for the first time in the nation’s history to officially “cancel” a spending item approved by Congress.

Before, the chief executive had the power to delay spending and “impound” the funds for future use.

But the Line Item Veto Act, which won overwhelming approval in the House and Senate last year, would allow the president to remove specific spending items from large funding bills he had signed into law.

Hailing Thursday’s victory, even if it is just temporary, Clinton said he was looking forward to vetoing examples of wasteful spending.

“I intend to use it whenever appropriate, and I look forward to using it wisely,” he said.

With this new power, “the president will be able to prevent Congress from enacting special-interest provisions under the cloak of a 500- or 1,000-page bill,” Clinton said. “Special-interest provisions that do not serve the national interest will no longer escape proper scrutiny.”

Clinton could begin using the power in connection with tax breaks in the huge budget-balancing and tax-cut bills that are currently moving through Congress and, even more likely, when he starts getting the 13 regular appropriation bills for fiscal 1998 later this summer.

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The veto law took effect on Jan. 1, and Congress has yet to send a spending measure to the White House.

Having lost in Congress, however, three senators and three representatives filed a lawsuit in federal court contending the measure was unconstitutional. The group was led by Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) and included Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles).

They maintained that the Constitution gives the president only two choices when a spending bill reaches his desk. He can sign it or veto it, they said, but he cannot sign it and then veto a part of it.

Agreeing with that claim, U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson struck down the new law on April 10.

But the White House appealed, and the Supreme Court reinstated the bill Thursday on the grounds that lawmakers did not have standing to sue in the first place.

As a general matter, only persons who have suffered a “personal injury” can sue in federal court. For example, a person who loses money in a fraud can sue the perpetrator of the fraud.

Judges should not decide “abstract” questions of law, the court said.

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Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, writing for the court, said the members of Congress can assert only “a loss of political power. [They] have alleged no injury to themselves as individuals.”

“In the light of this overriding and time-honored concern about keeping the judiciary’s power within its proper constitutional sphere, we must put aside the natural urge to proceed to the merits of this important dispute and to ‘settle’ it for the sake of convenience and efficiency,” he wrote in Raines vs. Byrd, 96-1671.

This “standing” ruling may prove quite significant in the future. In the past, some members of Congress have gone to federal court to try to stop presidents from sending U.S. troops abroad without an official declaration of war. These suits have not reached the Supreme Court, and Thursday’s ruling suggests one never will.

It is also nearly certain, however, that a case will come back to test the constitutionality of the Line Item Veto Act.

If Clinton cancels a spending program passed by Congress, someone who loses the money will be entitled to sue and claim the measure is unconstitutional.

Dissenting, Justice John Paul Stevens said he would strike down the law now. Justice Stephen G. Breyer disagreed with the court’s view of standing, but he said he would not voice a view now on the merits of the issue.