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CLINTON v. CITY OF NEW YORK

Opinion of the Court

moment. Although Congress presumably anticipated that
the President might cancel some of the items in the Balanced
Budget Act and in the Taxpayer Relief Act, Congress cannot
alter the procedures set out in Article I, § 7, without amend-
ing the Constitution.40

Neither are we persuaded by the Government’s contention
that the President’s authority to cancel new direct spending
and tax beneﬁt items is no greater than his traditional au-
thority to decline to spend appropriated funds. The Gov-
ernment has reviewed in some detail the series of statutes
in which Congress has given the Executive broad discretion
over the expenditure of appropriated funds. For example,
the First Congress appropriated “sum[s] not exceeding”
speciﬁed amounts to be spent on various Government opera-
tions. See, e. g., Act of Sept. 29, 1789, ch. 23, 1 Stat. 95; Act
of Mar. 26, 1790, ch. 4, § 1, 1 Stat. 104; Act of Feb. 11, 1791,
In those statutes, as in later years, the
ch. 6, 1 Stat. 190.
President was given wide discretion with respect to both the
amounts to be spent and how the money would be allocated
among different functions.
It is argued that the Line Item
Veto Act merely confers comparable discretionary authority
over the expenditure of appropriated funds. The critical

40 The Government argues that the Rules Enabling Act, 28 U. S. C.
§ 2072(b), permits this Court to “repeal” prior laws without violating
Article I, § 7. Section 2072(b) provides that this Court may promulgate
rules of procedure for the lower federal courts and that “[a]ll laws in con-
ﬂict with such rules shall be of no further force or effect after such rules
have taken effect.” See Sibbach v. Wilson & Co., 312 U. S. 1, 10 (1941)
(stating that the procedural rules that this Court promulgates, “if they
are within the authority granted by Congress, repeal” a prior inconsistent
procedural statute); see also Henderson v. United States, 517 U. S. 654,
664 (1996) (citing § 2072(b)).
In enacting § 2072(b), however, Congress ex-
pressly provided that laws inconsistent with the procedural rules promul-
gated by this Court would automatically be repealed upon the enactment
of new rules in order to create a uniform system of rules for Article III
courts. As in the tariff statutes, Congress itself made the decision to
repeal prior rules upon the occurrence of a particular event—here, the
promulgation of procedural rules by this Court.