Remember how back in 1996, then President Bill Clinton was accorded the line-item veto power by Congress for a brief period of time? Those were a neat couple of years, during which time Clinton deployed the power "against one provision of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 and two provisions of the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997." Eventually, the Supreme Court declared the whole thing to be unconstitutional. But today, the idea is poised to make a comeback! ABC News' Sunlen Miller has the rundown:
As an alternative to the line-item veto, today President Obama sent a package to Congress to "streamline" the process of deleting individual items from spending bills. The Reduce Unnecessary Spending Act of 2010, first reported by Politico would allow the president to submit a package of rescissions shortly after a spending bill is passed.
"It's another tool adding to the arsenal on cutting back on unnecessary spending," OMB director Peter Orszag said on a conference call today with reporters. "It is not a panacea, but it is an important additional tool."
Obviously, the first shrewd move was to call your line-item veto something other than "line-item veto." But the idea has actually been significantly re-imagined, with the hopes of surviving court scrutiny this time around. The GAME-CHANGING alteration? Change the mechanism by which cuts are made.
Remember how, in LOST, the Black Smoke Monster wanted to kill all the "candidates" but couldn't do it directly, so he had to create contrived situations in which the "candidates" managed to kill each other? I think that was what was going on, anyway? Well, the new version of the line-item veto basically works like that:
"The proposal has been crafted to preserve the constitutional balance of power between the president and congress," OMB Acting Deputy Director Jeffrey Liebman says.
This is in contrast to the line item veto that was struck down by the Supreme Court in 1998.
"Here the president has to send legislation back to the congress and the congress has to act on it, albeit in an expedited way," [OMB Director Peter] Orszag said. "The line item veto gave the knife to the president that was unconstitutional. Here we are providing a way for the president to give the knife back to congress to help it cut out unnecessary fat."
So basically, the president cannot make the cuts himself, but what he can do is underline the stuff he doesn't like, strongly suggest that Congress make the changes, and then drop a pair of scissors on the floor as he backs out of the room. "Ha, ha," he'll say, winking and nudging, "How did those scissors get there? Looks like they've been sharpened, too!" This really seems like only cosmetic changes have been made to the original line-item veto idea. But on the other hand, everyone is totally freaking out about the deficit!
In other news, President Obama will probably just go right on using "signing statements" to alter pieces of legislation he doesn't like, something he promised not to do during the campaign.
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