Line-item Veto in The United States - Subsequent Developments

Subsequent Developments

Though the Supreme Court struck down the Line-Item Veto Act in 1998, President George W. Bush asked the Congress to enact legislation that would return the line-item veto power to the Executive Authority. First announcing his intent to seek such legislation in his January 31, 2006 State of the Union address, President Bush sent a legislative proposal Legislative Line-Item Veto Act of 2006 to the Congress on March 6, 2006, urging its prompt passage. Senator Bill Frist, Senator John McCain, and Republican Whip Senator Mitch McConnell jointly introduced this proposal. Representative Paul Ryan introduced his own version, the Legislative Line Item Veto Act of 2006, in March of that year.

On that same day, Joshua Bolten, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, gave a press conference on the President’s line-item veto proposal. Bolten explained that the proposed Act would give the President the ability to single out “wasteful” spending and to put such spending on hold. While the spending line-item is on hold, the President can send legislation to Congress to withdraw the particular line-item. The proposal would then be considered in both houses within ten days on an up or down basis, and could be passed by a simple majority. Additionally, such proposals could not be filibustered.

When asked how this proposed legislation was different from the 1996 Line-Item Veto Act that the United States Supreme Court had declared illegal, Bolten said that whereas the former act granted unilateral authority to the Executive to disallow specific spending line items, the new proposal would seek Congressional approval of such line-item vetoes. Thus, for the President to successfully withdraw previously enacted spending, a simple majority of Congress is required to agree to specific legislation to that effect.

Though the current line-item veto proposal is much weaker than the 1996 version, it has nevertheless failed to find strong support in the Congress. Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, who was frequently accused, during his tenure in the Senate, of repeatedly inserting pork-barrel spending that favored his state into budget appropriations, called it "an offensive slap at Congress," asserting that the legislation would enable the President to intimidate individual members of any Congress by targeting the projects of his political opponents. He also complained that the line-item veto as proposed would take away the Congress’s constitutional "power of the purse" and give it to the executive branch.

On June 8, 2006, Viet D. Dinh, Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, and Nathan A. Sales, John M. Olin Fellow at Georgetown University Law Center, testified by written statement before the House Committee on the Budget on the constitutional issues in connection with the proposed legislation. Dinh and Sales argued that the Legislative Line Item Veto Act of 2006 satisfies the Constitution’s Bicameralism and Presentment Clause, and therefore avoids the constitutional issues raised in the 1996 Act struck down by the Supreme Court. They also stated that the proposed Act is consistent with the basic principle that grants the Congress broad discretion to establish procedures to govern its internal operations.

H.R. 4890, the Legislative Line-Item Veto Act, was approved by the House Budget Committee on June 14, 2006 by a vote of 24-9. It was approved in the full House on June 22. A similar version was included in the "Stop Over Spending Act of 2006", authored by Senator Judd Gregg, in the Senate and approved by the Senate Budget Committee, but the full Senate failed to approve it, thereby preventing the Legislative Line-Item Veto Act from becoming law.