Line-Item Veto: The Ball Bounces to the Judiciary

The U.S. Constitution says that once Congress passes a bill, the president must approve it or veto it. Can there be something in between, or some way around that? This is the sort of question that delights constitutional scholars and bedevils politicians.

The U.S. Supreme Court will have an opportunity to decide the question now that President Clinton has exercised the limited line-item veto power approved by Congress last year. With Clinton’s action, the balance of powers so delicately crafted by the authors of the Constitution 210 years ago shifted toward the presidency and away from Congress.

But was it just a modest nudge? Did it merely enhance the president’s authority to not spend certain funds appropriated by Congress? Or did it alter the fundamental relationship between the executive and legislative branches of government?

That judgment will be left to the third branch, the judiciary, as Clinton’s use of the new veto power is challenged in the courts. In fact, the presidential line-item veto already has been rejected in one federal district court, but that ruling was voided by the Supreme Court on a procedural question without consideration of the basic constitutional issue involved.

Ever since Ulysses S. Grant, presidents have sought such veto power, but the movement gained real impetus when Ronald Reagan occupied the White House. Democratic congresses would not go along. Finally, a version of the veto was enacted by the Republican-dominated Congress last year. But it is not a pure line-item veto. That would have required an amendment to the Constitution.

Rather, Congress gave the president enhanced power to rescind specific dollar amounts in an individual appropriation, in a new entitlement program or in selected tax breaks. Congress now has an opportunity, in a cumbersome two-vote procedure, to reverse Clinton. Clinton called the veto’s constitutionality an “implicit thing” and likened the process to the authority he had as governor of Arkansas and that is enjoyed by California governors. But there is a difference in that the state constitutions explicitly grant such powers to their governors.

Veto supporters believe it will be used with discretion by any president. But such a prediction is not likely to impress the Supreme Court, which must decide the issue on the meaning of words and not the sincerity of promises. In the meantime, while it’s true that the line-item veto will produce only marginal savings in a federal budget of more than $1.6 trillion, we’re again reminded of the words of the late Republican Senate Leader Everett M. Dirksen: “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”