Ed Brayton alerts us:
This is an interesting development. Fox News reports:
A bipartisan group is giving the line-item veto another go at it, albeit with some key tweaks, more than a decade after the Supreme Court struck down the procedure as unconstitutional.
Sens. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and John McCain, R-Ariz., and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., on Wednesday will announce the introduction of a Line-Item Veto Act, which would enable the president to strike individual items like earmarks from a spending bill before signing it.
He goes on to point out that the key change that making this attempt more likely to pass constitutional muster is this (from the Fox report):
“We are proposing a line-item veto that takes a balanced approach, giving the president power to send earmarks back to Congress, and requires Congress to vote, under fast-track procedures, on whether or not those earmarks should be included in the final bill,” Feingold and Ryan wrote in an op-ed in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Monday.
Brayton is has a mixed opinion on this… he points out that this might not really cut back any earmarks really, but instead it might become a negotiating tool for the executive to secure votes by threatening veto.
I’m not sure what I think of this yet, I’ll have to give it some thought. Anyone want to weigh in with thoughts or conjecture?
But I do like the idea of having to vote on earmarks individually, which in of itself causes transparency in how your legislators think and behave.
Stepping back for the moment from the strict constitutional issue involved, as a policy matter this is a bad idea. The President hardly needs more power vis-a-vis the legislature — Presidential power has already been greatly expanded (and far too much, in my view). The extent to which this will allow the President to involve him/herself in the legislative process as a quasi-legislator is too great, even in comparison to the stronger version proposed (and struck down by the Court) in the 1990s.
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p>The legislative process is messy and frustrating, to be sure…but the end product is the result of legislative compromises — as it should be. I would imagine that allowing the President this additional veto power would make it more difficult to pass legislation by eliminating a key tool of compromise available to legislators.
Many Governors, including MA, have varying degrees of line-item veto. Members of Congress have the opportunity to divide the question, vote separately on amendments, etc. according to their rules. President’s should likewise be able to pick and choose which provisions they like and don’t like. Any provision he doesn’t like would still be subject to an override. If this had been in place during the Clinton-Gingrich battles of 1995 Clinton could have signed parts of the budget and veteod others and possibly have avoided shutting down the government entirely. I’m actually fine with a strong executive as long as he doesn’t go so far as to trample the Constitution.