From: MCMASTER@LSTC2VM.stortek.com (Jim McMaster)
Subject: Re: Argument for broadening the veto power (Re: Who's weakening the constitution?)
Organization: StorageTek SW Engineering
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 21:25:01 GMT

In article <1992Dec15.091356.3890@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
wchen@beirut.berkeley.edu (William Chen) writes:
 
>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
>
I think you are absolutely out of your mind.  Would you have assumed
Richard Nixon had the integrity not to abuse such power?  Or Lyndon
Johnson?  Or Bill Clinton?  I do not.
 
I hope you forgot to include smiley's in your post.
 
Jim McMaster
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections,talk.politics.misc,tx.politics,misc.legal