Obama Signs Spending Bill, Breaks Yet Another Promise

[tgraf66]

Originally Posted by alyscat

Yes, he has line item veto.

No, no president has ever had the line-item veto. Bush used signing statements as a virtual version of it, but there is no legislative or constitutional authority for the L-I veto.

[alyscat]

Actually, we're both right. It was granted in 1996 for a short period of time before the courts apparently ruled it unconstitutional. My memory was from when it was granted.

from wikipedia

Line Item Veto Act of 1996
Presidents have repeatedly asked Congress to give them a line item veto power. According to Louis Fisher in The Politics of Shared Power, Ronald Reagan said to Congress in his 1986 State of the Union address, "Tonight I ask you to give me what forty-three governors have: Give me a line-item veto this year. Give me the authority to veto waste, and I'll take the responsibility, I'll make the cuts, I'll take the heat." Bill Clinton echoed the request in his State of the Union address in 1995.

The President was briefly granted this power by the Line Item Veto Act of 1996, passed by Congress in order to control "pork barrel spending" that favors a particular region rather than the nation as a whole. The line-item veto was used 11 times to strike 82 items from the federal budget by President Bill Clinton. [3][4]

However, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas F. Hogan ruled on February 12, 1998, that unilateral amendment or repeal of only parts of statutes violated the U.S. Constitution. This ruling was subsequently affirmed on June 25, 1998, by a 6-3 decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case Clinton v. City of New York. The case was brought by the then New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani.

A constitutional amendment to give the President line item veto power has been considered periodically since the Court ruled the 1996 act unconstitutional.

Originally Posted by tgraf66

No, no president has ever had the line-item veto. Bush used signing statements as a virtual version of it, but there is no legislative or constitutional authority for the L-I veto.