Cutting pork, line by line

ONCE UPON A TIME, Republicans were so enamored of the line-item veto that they gave it to a president they despised, Bill Clinton. The veto was a key part of the “Contract with America,” the conservative platform that energized the party and put the GOP solidly in control of Congress in the mid-1990s, a position it has enjoyed ever since.

Clinton’s veto power, which he received in 1996 over objections from Democrats, didn’t survive long -- the Supreme Court quashed it in 1998 on grounds that it violated the Constitution’s separation-of-powers language giving Congress final say over the wording of laws. Although many new versions were floated over the years, GOP lawmakers, once they were in charge of both branches of Congress, discovered that they rather liked having the unfettered ability to lard legislation with “earmarks” -- a fancy word for pork -- for their home districts, without any pesky executive-branch obstruction standing in their way.

Fast forward to 2006, when a Republican president is putting solid legislation on the table for a retooled version of the line-item veto, one that should pass constitutional muster. The response from a Republican-dominated Congress will say a great deal about whether the party has any commitment left to reducing government spending now that it controls the purse strings.

The legislation wouldn’t go very far in paring the nation’s ballooning deficit, especially given this president’s track record of refusing to use the traditional veto even once, but it could at least trim back the runaway production of pork. Separation of powers would be preserved by the fact that it wouldn’t really be a line-item veto -- the president would simply be able to kick the offending items back to Congress, rather than cancel them outright. Though he can actually do that already, what’s different is that Congress would then have just 10 days to give the exposed language an up-or-down vote, with no filibustering. The vetoed bits would only require a simple majority to go through again, but highlighting these frequently embarrassing earmarks would levy a political cost on members voting in favor.

In the decade-plus that Republicans have controlled the House of Representatives, deficits have swelled and so -- not coincidentally -- has pork. There were 4,126 home-district earmarks in 1994, according to the Congressional Research Service; by 2005 that had skyrocketed to 15,877. If the GOP wants to maintain any illusions that it’s the party of small government, it will give to President Bush what it demanded of Clinton.