Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 532

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Cite as: 524 U. S. 417 (1998)

487

Breyer, J., dissenting

more systematically as follows: First, as I have just said,
like statutes delegating power to award broadcast television
licenses, or to regulate the securities industry, or to develop
and enforce workplace safety rules, the Act is aimed at a
discrete problem: namely, a particular set of expenditures
within the federal budget. The Act concerns, not the entire
economy, cf. Schecter Poultry Corp., supra, but the annual
federal budget. Within the budget it applies only to discre-
tionary budget authority and new direct spending items,
that together amount to approximately a third of the current
annual budget outlays, see Tr. of Oral Arg. 18; see also
Budget 303, and to “limited tax beneﬁts” that (because each
can affect no more than 100 people, see 2 U. S. C. § 691e(9)(A)
(1994 ed., Supp. II)), amount to a tiny fraction of federal rev-
enues and appropriations. Compare Analytical Perspec-
tives 73–75 (listing over $500 billion in overall “tax expendi-
tures” that OMB estimated were contained in federal law in
1997) and Budget 303 (federal outlays and receipts in 1997
were both over $1.5 trillion) with App. to Juris. Statement
71a (President’s cancellation message for Snake River appel-
lees’ limited tax beneﬁt, estimating annual “value” of beneﬁt,
in terms of revenue loss, at about $20 million).

Second, like the award of television licenses, the particular
problem involved—determining whether or not a particular
amount of money should be spent or whether a particular
dispensation from tax law should be granted a few individ-
uals—does not readily lend itself to a signiﬁcantly more
speciﬁc standard. The Act makes clear that the President
should consider the reasons for the expenditure, measure
those reasons against the desirability of avoiding a deﬁcit (or
building a surplus), and make up his mind about the com-
parative weight of these conﬂicting goals. Congress might
have expressed this matter in other language, but could
it have done so in a signiﬁcantly more speciﬁc way? See
National Broadcasting Co. v. United States, supra, at 216
(“[P]ublic interest, convenience, or necessity” standard is