THE LEGISLATIVE LINE ITEM VETO: A USEFUL TOOL TO CUT SPENDING

The Legislative Line Item Veto: A Useful Tool to Cut Spending

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 4890, the Legislative Line Item Veto Act of 2006 by a vote of 247 to 172. The bill will provide an essential tool designed to limit wasteful federal spending. Many of you agree with me that we must eliminate wasteful federal spending due to our growing federal deficit. I was pleased to cosponsor this legislation, because giving the President the line item veto will help us to meet that goal.

You may be aware that this is not the first time this measure has been proposed. In 1996, President Bill Clinton proposed a line item veto and Congress passed the bill. The Supreme Court later ruled the measure to be unconstitutional. This new attempt at the legislation attempts to deal with the constitutionality concerns and experts believe the bill is constitutionally sound.

This new version will work to limit wasteful spending. The legislation gives the President the ability to identify unnecessary, duplicative, or wasteful spending provisions that have passed Congress and send these expenditures back to Congress under an expedited procedure for an affirmative up-or-down vote by both the House and Senate.

Under the House version of the bill, the President would have 45 days from enactment to send a special message to Congress requesting they rescind specific lines of funding from the spending bill. Once the President sends a rescission request to Congress, Members would have a limited amount of time to consider the rescission proposal and then move it to the floor for an up or down vote.

The line item veto is a tool that will be beneficial to the legislative branch as well as the executive branch. It will give fiscal watchdogs extra ability to shine a new and focused light on wasteful spending. It will, however, also work as a preventative measure. Earmarks for frivolous pet projects slipped into spending packages might be less common if the request is subject to broad public scrutiny.

From 1996 until the Supreme Court ruled the Clinton version of the line-item veto unconstitutional in 1998, the President used it 82 times to directly cut around one billion dollars from the budget. Perhaps more interesting is what happened after the authority was taken from the executive. During the period between 1998 and 2004, the number of earmarks tripled.

It is now up to the Senate. If the Senate agrees Congress can send the final package to the President and this important tool could be in use for the coming budget. I hope we can give the President the authority for the line item veto, but it will not be easy.

I was proud to support this common sense measure. The line item veto is desperately needed to ensure that the federal government spends in a sensible way.  I believe that we should spend your tax dollars wisely or not at all.