Line-Item Veto Act of 1996
Presidents of the United States have repeatedly asked the Congress to give them a line-item veto power. According to Louis Fisher in The Politics of Shared Power, Ronald Reagan 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 Clinton echoed the request in his State of the Union address in 1995. Congress attempted to grant this power to the president by the Line Item Veto Act of 1996 to control "pork barrel spending", but in 1998 the US Supreme Court ruled the act to be unconstitutional in a 6-3 decision in Clinton v. City of New York. The court found that exercise of the line-item veto is tantamount to a unilateral amendment or repeal of only parts of statutes authorizing federal spending, and was therefore violated the Presentment Clause of the United States Constitution. As a result, it appears that a federal line-item veto will only be possible through amendment of the US Constitution. Prior to that ruling, President Clinton applied the line-item veto to the federal budget 82 times.
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“The veto is a President’s Constitutional right, given to him by the drafters of the Constitution because they wanted it as a check against irresponsible Congressional action. The veto forces Congress to take another look at legislation that has been passed. I think this is a responsible tool for a president of the United States, and I have sought to use it responsibly.”
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
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