Supreme Court Deletes Line-Item Veto



|Article 1: Supreme Court Deletes Line-Item Veto |

|Clinton disappointed; Opponents of veto call it a victory for the Constitution |

|WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, June 25) -- The line-item veto is unconstitutional, the Supreme Court decided Thursday, ruling that Congress |

|did not have the authority to hand that power to the president. |

|The 6-3 ruling said that the Constitution gives a president only two choices: either sign legislation or send it back to Congress. The |

|1996 line-item veto law allowed the president to pencil out specific spending items approved by the Congress. |

|In his majority opinion Justice John Paul Stevens upheld a lower court's decision, concluding "the procedures authorized by the |

|line-item veto act are not authorized by the Constitution." |

|If Congress wants to give the president that power, they will have to pass a constitutional amendment, Stevens said. "If there is to be |

|a new procedure in which the president will play a different role in determining the text of what may become a law, such change must |

|come not by legislation but through the amendment procedures set forth in Article V of the Constitution," Stevens said. |

|The court's ruling was a defeat for the Clinton Administration, which asked the high court to reverse the lower court's ruling. |

|President Bill Clinton, traveling in China, said he was "deeply disappointed." |

|Clinton was the first president to exercise the veto, which he did 82 times last year. Many of the vetoed programs are under court |

|challenges and should now win their appeals. |

|Stevens was joined in his opinion by Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Clarence Thomas and |

|Ruth Bader Ginsburg. |

|Justices Antonin Scalia, Sandra Day O'Connor and Stephen Breyer dissented. Scalia, who wrote the dissent, made clear his disagreement by|

|taking the unusual step of using nine minutes in court to read from his opinion. |

|"The title of the Line Item Veto Act, which was perhaps designed to simplify for public comprehension, or perhaps merely to comply with |

|the terms of a campaign pledge, has succeeded in faking out the Supreme Court," Scalia said. "The president's action it authorizes in |

|fact is not a line-item veto." |

|A federal judge in Washington ruled the law unconstitutional in February. Once a bill becomes law, the president's sole duty is to carry|

|it out, U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan said. |

|The case was brought by an Idaho potato growers' group and New York City. |

|New York City sued to restore a provision that would have let the city and New York state raise taxes on hospitals and use the money to |

|attract federal Medicaid payments. |

|The Snake River Potato Growers sued over Clinton's veto of a tax measure that would have allowed agricultural processors to defer |

|capital gains taxes when they sell such facilities to farmers' cooperatives. |

|Clinton, Republican supporters 'disappointed' |

|The line-item veto had been a hallmark of the GOP "Contract With America," when Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, and was |

|the only plank of that agenda that Clinton supported |

|In a written statement, Clinton said: "The decision is a defeat for all Americans, it deprives the president of a valuable tool for |

|eliminating waste in the federal budget and for enlivening the debate over how to make the best use of public funds. ... I am determined|

|to do everything in my power to continue to cut wasteful government spending, maintain fiscal discipline and create opportunity through |

|continued economic growth." |

|In addition to allowing him to strike specific projects from spending bills, Clinton said the line-item veto was useful as a negotiating|

|tool -- a weapon to discourage Congress from adding pork-barrel spending to legislation. |

|Key Senate supporters of the veto power, Sens. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) said they would try to work around the |

|court's objections, perhaps by requiring each spending item to be sent to the president as a separate bill. |

|"This is a temporary defeat -- a temporary defeat for the American people, for fiscal responsibility. But anyone who knows John McCain |

|and anybody, hopefully, who knows Dan Coats knows that this is one battle in a war to address the issue of fiscal responsibility and to |

|represent the American taxpayer so that the light of day can be shed on the way in which the Congress spends their money." |

|McCain had suffered an earlier blow last week as his tobacco legislation was scuttled in the Senate. Even so, the former Vietnam prison |

|of war was able to keep a light view of the defeats. |

|"I would just like to point out that this has been a wonderful two weeks for me personally," McCain said to laughter during the press |

|conference. "I'm really on a roll. I really haven't had quite so much fun since my last interrogation in Hanoi." |

|House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich (R-Ohio) said Congress should still try to pass a constitutional amendment, but has offered |

|in the meantime legislation forcing Congress to act upon any reductions in spending that the president earmarks in legislation. |

|Kasich said that under his proposal "what this says is the president sends us something he wants eliminated, then we've got to vote |

|whether we agree or disagree with him." Kasich called his proposal "a pretty good remedy for what we lost today," in the Supreme Court |

|ruling. |

|Under the current system, the president can sign a piece of legislation, but send Congress his recommendations that certain spending |

|portions be cut out of the bill, with Congress not required to act upon those recommendations. |

|Under the Kasich proposal, both Houses of Congress would be required to vote on the rescissions proposed by the president, passing them |

|by a simple majority. |

|The court ruling comes as Congress is preparing the budget for 1999. And with an unusual budget surplus tempting it to spend more, |

|Congress may have to exert its own fiscal discipline, since Clinton will no longer have the line-item veto as leverage. |

|Strict constitutionalists praise decision |

|But lawmaker who had fought against the line-item veto legislation three years ago were thrilled with the Supreme Court's ruling that |

|the statute is unconstitutional. |

|Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) called it " a great day for the U.S. Constitution." |

|"We feel that the liberties of the American people have been assured," said Byrd. "Without adequate control by the citizens represented |

|in Congress, liberty is threatened." |

|Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said the law of the land -- the Constitution -- applies to all, including the president. |

|"Congress, in this particular line-item veto bill struck down today, tried to bend the Constitution. The court said it will not allow |

|that to happen. Thank God it did, because this particular line-item bill would have given the president the power to repeal the law of |

|the land without Congress participating," said Levin. |

|The law let the president sign a bill and within five days go back to reject specific spending items or tax breaks in it. Congress could|

|then reinstate the item by passing a separate bill. |

|Nearly every president in the past century has sought the line-item veto as a tool for controlling "pork barrel" programs added by |

|lawmakers. Most governors have similar authority over state spending. |

|The Associated Press contributed to this report. |

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| |Clinton v. City of New York |

| |524 U.S. 417 (1998) |

| |Docket Number: 97-1374 |

| |Abstract |

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| |Argued: |

| |April 27, 1998 |

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| |Decided: |

| |June 25, 1998 |

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| |Subjects: |

| |Miscellaneous: Miscellaneous |

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| |Facts of the Case |

| |This case consolidates two separate challenges to the constitutionality of two cancellations, made by President William J. |

| |Clinton, under the Line Item Veto Act ("Act"). In the first, the City of New York, two hospital associations, a hospital, and |

| |two health care unions, challenged the President's cancellation of a provision in the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 which |

| |relinquished the Federal Government's ability to recoup nearly $2.6 billion in taxes levied against Medicaid providers by the |

| |State of New York. In the second, the Snake River farmer's cooperative and one of its individual members challenged the |

| |President's cancellation of a provision of the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997. The provision permitted some food refiners and |

| |processors to defer recognition of their capital gains in exchange for selling their stock to eligible farmers' cooperatives. |

| |After a district court held the Act unconstitutional, the Supreme Court granted certiorari on expedited appeal. |

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| |Question Presented |

| |Did the President's ability to selectively cancel individual portions of bills, under the Line Item Veto Act, violate the |

| |Presentment Clause of Article I? |

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| |Conclusion |

| |Yes. In a 6-to-3 decision the Court first established that both the City of New York, and its affiliates, and the farmers' |

| |cooperative suffered sufficiently immediate and concrete injuries to sustain their standing to challenge the President's |

| |actions. The Court then explained that under the Presentment Clause, legislation that passes both Houses of Congress must either|

| |be entirely approved (i.e. signed) or rejected (i.e. vetoed) by the President. The Court held that by canceling only selected |

| |portions of the bills at issue, under authority granted him by the Act, the President in effect "amended" the laws before him. |

| |Such discretion, the Court concluded, violated the "finely wrought" legislative procedures of Article I as envisioned by the |

| |Framers. |

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|Democratic Sens. Carl Levin (center) and |

|Robert C. Byrd (right) welcomed the court's |

|decision by displaying their personal copies |

|of the Constitution. (AP) |

Court Strikes Down Line-Item Veto

By Helen Dewar and Joan Biskupic

Washington Post Staff Writers

Friday, June 26, 1998; Page A01

The Supreme Court yesterday struck down the broad new line-item veto authority that Congress had given the president to cancel specific items in spending and tax bills.

Within a couple of hours of the ruling, the law's backers announced they will try again to find a constitutional way to expand the president's powers to cut pork-barrel expenditures.

In a 6 to 3 decision, the court held that the line-item veto law violates a constitutional requirement that legislation be passed by both houses of Congress and presented in its entirety to the president for signature or veto.

Passage of the legislation in 1996 and its implementation in 1997 climaxed more than a century of struggle by presidents for this new authority. It was a rare unilateral yielding of power by Congress to the chief executive, prompted by Congress's increasing concern over its own lack of fiscal discipline. President Clinton, who had line-item veto powers as governor of Arkansas, signed the bill with relish and moved quickly, although cautiously, to begin trimming spending bills.

But the judicial branch, looking to constitutional rather than political or fiscal priorities, took a far dimmer view of the power swap.

Unlike earlier laws giving the president discretionary spending authority, "this act gives the president the unilateral power to change the text of duly enacted statutes," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority.

Such line-item vetoes are "the functional equivalent of partial repeals of acts of Congress," he said. But "there is no provision in the Constitution that authorizes the president to enact, to amend or to repeal statutes," he added.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy cut to the political chase. "Failure of political will does not justify unconstitutional remedies," he said in a concurring opinion.

The decision comes as a blow both to Clinton, who used the new power 82 times over the past 18 months, and to GOP leaders, who made the line-item veto a marquee item in their 1994 "Contract With America."

"The decision is a defeat for all Americans," Clinton said in a statement issued while traveling in China. "It deprives the president of a valuable tool for eliminating waste in the federal budget and for enlivening the public debate over how to make the best use of public funds."

On Capitol Hill, Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.), who co-sponsored the law with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), said the decision "means a retreat to the practice of loading up otherwise necessary legislation with pork-barrel spending."

By contrast, the law's foes were ecstatic. Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) raised his arm in a salute and exclaimed, "God save this honorable court." Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) said that Congress "tried to bend the Constitution [but] the court said it will not allow this to happen."

In his opinion, Stevens said Congress could alter the president's role in determining the final text of a law only by constitutional amendment. But Coats and other line-item veto supporters acknowledged that mustering the two-thirds majority in each house needed to move the constitutional amendment process forward would be difficult.

Instead, Coats and McCain said they will introduce legislation immediately to get around the Supreme Court's objections by breaking each appropriations bill into individual items, passing each one separately and sending them to the president to be signed or vetoed as separate bills.

The House balked at such a Senate proposal before settling on the current line-item veto law, gagging at the prospect of passing what could be thousands of separate appropriations bills instead of the 13 that must now be passed every year. Computers have since eased the procedural problems, Coats said, making the "separate enrollment" approach more feasible.

But many lawmakers' love affair with the line-item veto has cooled since Clinton began zeroing out some of their favorite projects and recent government projections of surpluses for the next several years. Many Republicans, who had put off implementing the law for months in hopes it would fall into the hands of a GOP president, are not keen about empowering Clinton or a possible Democratic successor. Moreover, there is little time left in this session for such a controversial issue.

Under the line-item veto law, the president could sign bills and then cancel spending for specific projects, narrowly targeted tax breaks, or new or expanded entitlement programs.

Congress could reinstate the spending but would have to muster a two-thirds vote of both houses to override a veto. Congress overrode only one of Clinton's line-item vetoes, involving 38 projects worth $287 million in a military construction bill; the vetoes that stood reversed $869 million in spending and tax breaks.

The challenge to the law came from New York and Idaho. New York City and hospital groups sued to restore tax breaks tied to the Medicaid program. The Snake River Potato Growers objected to Clinton's veto of a provision allowing deferral of capital gains taxes from sale of processing facilities to farmers' cooperatives. A lower court had ruled in the challengers' favor.

It was the Supreme Court's second ruling on the line-item veto. Last year the court set aside a suit brought by Byrd and five other lawmakers, saying they lacked legal standing to bring the case because they had not been sufficiently hurt by the law. Yesterday the court said the New York and Idaho groups had met this test.

Justices Antonin Scalia, Sandra Day O'Connor and Stephen G. Breyer dissented, with Scalia and O`Connor saying the Idaho potato growers had not shown they were harmed and hence lacked standing to sue; all three said the line-item veto should have been declared constitutional.

"There is not a dime's worth of difference between Congress authorizing the president to cancel a spending item, and Congress's authorizing money to be spent on a particular item at the president's discretion. And the latter has been done since the founding of the nation," said Scalia.

© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company

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