From: wchen@beirut.berkeley.edu (William Chen)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections,talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Argument for broadening the veto power (Re: Who's weakening the constitution?)
Date: 15 Dec 92 09:13:56 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: U.C. Berkeley Math. Department.

I've seen plenty of discussion about how a line item veto would be
unconstitutional and furthermore would give the president too much power. 
Although we may need to have an amendment, I disagree that this gives him
any more power that he already has.  As one poster suggested, he really 
can't add anything extra to the bill, he can only approve what Congress
has already passed.

From the comments of some people you'd think we're giving him the power 
to write new laws or something.  Come on people, you know darn well
that Congress oversteps their bounds when they send the President two 
completely unrelated things (or 2 hundred) and asks him to either 
approve the whole thing or leave it. This has gone far enough,
and we surely need the line item veto.


Of course if Congressmen have any brains at all (some might) they will start 
tacking pork on the same line item.  Imagine tacking to a random sentence
on a bill about education the phrase "and Congress appropriates one billion
dollars to the Byrd Porkfest Foundation of West Virginia..."  Now clearly
the President should be able to just mark out that clause, right?  Now,
probably many of you could come up with a more subtle way of tying pork
so that it appears on the same "line-item" as something the President
needs crucially, but I give that just as an example. 

That's why in order for the veto to work the President needs to be given 
a bit more leverage, otherwise his veto an item would be about as meaningful
as his power to veto an entire bill is today.  I propose that the President 
be allowed to strike individual phrases and words.  Of course this would
not be giving him too much power, because after all, Congress still can 
override him by voting separately on each line, phrase, or word by a 2/3
majority, just as in a regular veto (or maybe even a 3/5 or 1/2 majority for 
the first few years to try the thing out.)
 
Now some folks may wonder why the President needs such leverage to delete 
individual words.  Let me give a hypothetical example.  Suppose Congress
passes a law saying "Private businesses shall not be allowed to drill 
on protected wildlife refuges." Now suppose the President knows it's 
in the nation's best interest to allow drilling in those refuges.
Now it would be a shame if he had to veto the whole sentence, since he 
agrees with it except one small word -- "not."  We can also argue that this
was the real intent of the bill and that the word "not" was simply tacked
on to the bill in some subcommitee by some loony environmentalist.  Most 
Congresspeople voting on the bill probably did not even realize that this
word was tacked on--you have to read really carefully to realize this.
Ok so under my proposal the bill without the word "not" would become law
and if Congress really meant to have it in there they can just vote it
in with a 2/3 majority.  If they can't get a 2/3 majority for the clause 
then they didn't really mean it, now did they? 

Certainly some very clever individual could conjure up cases in which the 
President could abuse this, but we'll have to assume that the President
has enough integrity not to do this. 

Ok people what do you think of my proposal?

                                             William



    
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