Should the President have the power of Line Item Veto?

[Chief_Pedant]

Given the fact that we run a huge deficit, it would appear that we love our pork. A large, central government will not ever be able to spend efficiently, and a line item veto is not going to make a whiff of difference.

We should have decided long ago not to spend what we don’t take in. Too late now, since the majority of voters have realized they can pass the cost of their pork into the future.

[Snnipe_70E]

YES!

[Little_Nemo]

@Mnemnosyne

It would, I think, be better to make it so that each individual bill has to be about one thing, and one thing only. If it can be reasonably construed to be about more than one unrelated thing, it must be split up into separate bills (this would require careful definition in order to be a useful metric, but I assume it could be accomplished).

This wouldn’t give the president the power of crossing out specific lines, but it would totally prevent all the riders and attachments to completely unrelated bills, as is often the case.

The problem is that’s often the cost of getting things done in politics. Which do you want? A health care reform bill that doesn’t get passed or a health care reform bill with a bridge that does get passed? And if that Congressman was promised a bridge for his vote, you don’t want the President removing it.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@humanafterall

I think that the President should, simply for the fact that it would eliminate the tremendous pork barrel spending happening in Washington. It would also get ***someone to actually read the damn things!***Pork barrel spending is terrible, it makes bad bills even worse, and can completely kill a good bill. And another thing, is there any real reason, other than specificity, that these bills are written in legalese? Even if the language in a bill is as specific as you can get it, there are still loopholes. Knowing that, I don’t think there’s any point in being specific.

It is a horrible idea. There simply isn’t enough pork to justify this sort of extraordinary power to the president.

Besides its unconstitutional.

[Blaster_Master]

As others have demonstrated upthread, it essentially gives the president the power to legislate by signing a bill into law that congress never voted for. Yeah, we can imagine now that an ethical president might just knock off some pork spending here or a bad clause there, but in practice it will become an unchecked political tool. Besides the possibilities listed above, if one party knows the other party’s concessions are likely to get wiped out anyway, then just like we pretty much have to have a filibuster-proof majority in the senate to get anything done there, we’d now also have to have a veto-override majority in the House to protect those concessions or nothing with any concessions will ever pass.

Besides, he can more or less do that by working in the system. He can tell congress ahead of time what he does and doesn’t want to see in the bill and threaten to veto it if those demands aren’t met. Similarly, he can veto the whole thing and send it back saying what he wants to see changed before he will sign it. In either case, if congress can get enough support to override a veto, then it doesn’t matter what the president thinks.

I think a better solution would be new laws that strongly restrict the scope of a bill. If we want to get rid of pork, we need to make it so an amendment for money to corn farmers in Iowa can’t be attached to a bill authorizing military action in Afghanistan. Bills should have very narrow scopes and amendments should have to be directly related to the bill. I’m not sure how it would be worded and enforced, but I think that would do a better job of effecting the desired change.

[gatorslap]

Let’s say the president finds the Tennessee Valley Authority unpalatable. In the next budget bill, he line-item vetoes all TVA-related spending, effectively disestablishing the agency and unilaterally repealing the law that created it.

I don’t think he should be able to do that.

[Learjeff]

@Little_Nemo

I think it’s a bad idea. The President should only be able to sign or veto a law as a whole, not edit it to his satisfaction.

Let’s say Congress authorizes the President to send troops to some foreign country under threat. But to keep a check on him, they say he must have ongoing re-authorization from Congress every ninety days or withdraw the troops. The President could sign the part giving him permission to send the troops and veto the part requiring him to get re-authorization. That would clearly be defying Congress’ intent.

Or a more partisan example. Let’s say the Democrats and Republicans in Congress are able to come together on a deficit reduction deal. The Republicans agree to a tax increase while the Democrats agree to spending cuts. They’ve worked out an acceptable compromise and the bill is passed. The bill goes to the President who then vetoes half of it based on his party affiliation. A Republican President would veto the tax increases and just make it spending cuts and a Democratic President would veto the spending cuts and just make it tax increases. In fact, the President could have gotten together with the members of his party in Congress and told them they could offer anything it took to get the other party to vote for the compromise and it wouldn’t matter because he’d throw about the parts they didn’t want.

Bingo. As much as I’d like to see the pork disappear, the pork isn’t the main problem causing the deficit, and a line item veto (even if only for bugetary lines) would be too easy to abuse. It would reduce what little impetus there is for parties to compromise and work together towards solutions acceptable to both sides.

[Lord_Feldon]

“Pork” is something that other peoples’ representatives cause anyways. (It’s one of those irregular verbs. My congressman is taking care of the needs of his constituents. Your congressman isn’t being mindful of the deficit. That congressman is lining his cronies’ pockets with graft.)