From: hallam@zeus02.desy.de (Phillip M. Hallam-Baker)
Subject: Re: Presidential Line-Item Veto Power
Reply-To: hallam@zeus02.desy.de
Organization: DESY ZEUS Central Data Acquisition
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1992 07:46:20 GMT

In article <1992Jul24.054130.13285@news.iastate.edu>,
barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N Barrett) writes:

|>   The July 27 issue of U.S. News, in an article on Bush's political campaign
|>strategies, mentioned that insiders in the GOP are prodding Bush to consider
|>"imposing large-scale budget cuts unilaterally through a line-item veto, 
|>provoking a constitutional fight with Congress."  Does anyone know anything 
|>more about this?  I have heard talk before that the President might actually
|>have line-item veto power already, that it had just never been tested, and
|>that if a President were to try to use this power it might actually be upheld
|>by the Supreme Court.  IMO, line-item veto power for the President would be
|>the best development since the origination of the Constitution itself.


ONLY IF YOU WANT ONE MAN GOVERNMENT WITH NO CHECKS.


|>   If there is any possibility at all that the President might have
|>this power,
|>I would like Bush to test it.  A lot of bills go through Congress that
|>are
|>good overall, but have tiny rider amendments that make the bills
|>unsignable.
|>Similar tactics by Democrats include passing legislation that includes
|>most, 
|>but not all, of the wishes of the President along with points (such as
|>major
|>tax increases) that make such bills similarly unsignable.   A lot of
|>the waste
|>in our government is from pork that originates in this manner.

A line item veto would give the President absolute power.  Not just over
the budget but over every piece of legislation.

Also what happens if a bill had a clauses removed, would the bill have
to go back to the Senate & House first, would they then get the chance
to scrap the whole thing?

Consider the following scenario, Congress decide to pass a law
reorganising welfare benefits. The bill has a set of clauses which
terminate the old provisions and then a second set to create new ones. A
deranged President can then decide either to abolish welfare benefits
entirely or to double them !


|>   IMO, the perfect way to test this would be for President Bush to
|>wait until
|>a backlog a legislation accumulates on his desk that includes a lot of
|>pork-
|>barrel rider amendments and similar attachments, and line-item veto
|>the whole
|>misbegotten mess, removing the waste and passing on the parts that are
|>|>beneficial for the nation as a whole.  In this time when the public
|>just

And generaly behave like absolute dictator. If you didn't want the pork
barrel, you shouldn't have voted the clowns into congress and senate in
the first place.

|>totally fed up with the government as a whole and Congress in particular, a
|>stunt like this -- deliberately provoking Congress into a constitutional
|>fight and exposing the whole bunch for the rotten, self-thinking,
|>pork-passing
|>people that they really are, would set up George Bush for a real
|>landslide 
|>in November.

Why not just abolish Congress altogether?

Never trust the politician who claims that they can solve problem X if
only they have a bit more power. If someone genuinely needs more
authority to do something ask them which powers they will give up
instead. The capacity of one person is finite, the President is
overworked as it is. If he takes more powers he will cease to excercise
some of his existing ones, these will then be exercised by the civil
service, who elected them?


Phill Hallam-Baker
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc