{"id":6556,"date":"2006-02-07T13:05:21","date_gmt":"2006-02-07T18:05:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6556"},"modified":"2006-02-07T13:05:21","modified_gmt":"2006-02-07T18:05:21","slug":"the-white-house-resurrects-the-line-item-veto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-white-house-resurrects-the-line-item-veto\/","title":{"rendered":"The White House resurrects the line-item veto"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the president brought up the line-item veto in the State of the Union<\/a>, I more or less assumed it was empty rhetoric. Surely the president’s lawyers remember that Congress already passed a line-item veto, Clinton signed it in 1996, and the Supreme Court ruled in 1998 that it’s unconstitutional. Why bring up a tool the president can’t use?<\/p>\n

Of course, the Bush White House is unconcerned with pesky details like Supreme Court rulings. These guys seriously expect Congress to pass the same measure again.<\/p>\n

At a press briefing<\/a> Office of Management and Budget Director Joshua Bolten held yesterday, he reiterated the need for the line-item veto.<\/p>\n

“On our side, the President has asked for a line-item veto, which would make it possible for him to step into an appropriations bill once it’s been enacted, and take out the elements that at least the executive branch considers are ill advised, not well supported by policy.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And according to Roll Call<\/a>, this is a serious push.<\/p>\n

Bolten did not provide details of the administration proposal, but according to budget documents released Monday, Bush will seek to tie the line-item veto to deficit reduction.<\/p>\n

“This proposal would give the President the authority to defer new spending whenever the President determines the spending is not an essential Government priority,” the document states. “All savings from the line-item veto would be used for deficit reduction, and they could not be applied to augment other spending.”<\/p>\n

But according to Louis Fisher, an expert on the line-item veto at the Congressional Research Service, the budget language does not differ from the Bush administration’s previous attempts to impose a line-item veto.<\/p>\n

“They’ve been repeating this language year after year,” said Fisher, the author of “Congressional Abdication on War and Spending” and “Presidential Spending Power.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I find so many of the White House’s beliefs confusing, but this one really doesn’t make any sense. I know the Bush gang’s attitude towards the Constitution falls far short of reverence, but if the Supreme Court just recently said a tool is unconstitutional, why waste time working on resurrecting the exact same tool now?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the president brought up the line-item veto in the State of the Union, I more or less assumed it was empty rhetoric. Surely the president’s lawyers remember that Congress already passed a line-item veto, Clinton signed it in 1996, and the Supreme Court ruled in 1998 that it’s unconstitutional. Why bring up a tool […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6556\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}