Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 531

524US2

Unit: $U93

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486

CLINTON v. CITY OF NEW YORK

Breyer, J., dissenting

gation” doctrine. One such case, Panama Reﬁning Co. v.
Ryan, 293 U. S. 388 (1935), was in a sense a special case, for
it was discovered in the midst of the case that the particular
exercise of the power at issue, the promulgation of a Petro-
leum Code under the National Industrial Recovery Act, did
Id., at 412–413.
not contain any legally operative sentence.
The other case, A. L. A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United
States, 295 U. S. 495 (1935), involved a delegation through
the National Industrial Recovery Act, 48 Stat. 195, that con-
tained not simply a broad standard (“fair competition”), but
also the conferral of power on private parties to promulgate
rules applying that standard to virtually all of American in-
dustry, id., at 521–525. As Justice Cardozo put it, the legis-
lation exempliﬁed “delegation running riot,” which created a
“roving commission to inquire into evils and upon discovery
correct them.”

Id., at 553, 551 (concurring opinion).

The case before us does not involve any such “roving com-
mission,” nor does it involve delegation to private parties,
nor does it bring all of American industry within its scope.
It is limited to one area of Government, the budget, and it
seeks to give the President the power, in one portion of that
budget, to tailor spending and special tax relief to what he
concludes are the demands of ﬁscal responsibility. Nor is
the standard that governs his judgment, though broad, any
broader than the standard that currently governs the award
of television licenses, namely, “public convenience, interest,
or necessity.”
47 U. S. C. § 303 (emphasis added). To the
contrary, (a) the broadly phrased limitations in the Act, to-
gether with (b) its evident deﬁcit reduction purpose, and (c)
a procedure that guarantees Presidential awareness of the
reasons for including a particular provision in a budget bill,
taken together, guide the President’s exercise of his discre-
tionary powers.

1

The relevant similarities and differences among and be-
tween this case and other “nondelegation” cases can be listed