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Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Senate's Second Chances for Line-Item Slim
A new edition of the old GOP chestnut, the line-item veto, is getting substantial Senate floor time during consideration of S. 2, the Fair Minimum Wage Act. Senate Budget Committee ranking member Judd Gregg (R-NH) has offered an amendment to the minimum wage bill to grant the president line-item "enhanced rescission" authority to strike earmarks from tax and spending bills.
Gregg's amendment, called the Second Look at Wasteful Spending Act of 2007, would allow the president four rescission packages per year and require Congress to vote on a proposed rescission within 10 days. Currently, the president can withhold funding for up to 45 days for a program it asks Congress to rescind.
The Senate is currently considering the amendment. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has filed for cloture, a vote on which tomorrow is expected to fail, given vociferous opposition from Appropriations Committee chair Robert Byrd (D-WV) and Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND).
Touted as a tool to help presidents pick pork out of legislation and thus eliminate wasteful items and reduce the deficit, the Gregg amendment actually proposes an unorthodox, quite possibly unconstitutional incursion on Congress's legislative authority. The Supreme Court declared similar line-item legislation unconstitutional in 1998, but Sen. Gregg points out that under his version, Congress would have to approve any proposed recission, unlike the original law. It is not clear that this difference would correct the constitutional defect.
Critics also say the Constitution already provides the president with ample opportunity to stop wasteful or excessive spending via the veto, something the current president has not used once in six years of signing spending bills. Nor has he ever used his existing recission authority.
Furthermore, opponents say, it could make legislators vulnerable to hardball pressure from presidents who seek to horse-trade votes by threatening to veto a given lawmaker's favored provision. Similarly, it could make it that much harder to strike deals on politically risky legislative packages such as entitlement reform by allowing the president to cherry-pick items out of the bargain after the fact.p>
The arguments are reprised in a floor statement by Senator Conrad yesterday.
Posted by Dana Chasin
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