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

451

Kennedy, J., concurring

branch to inﬂuence basic political decisions. Quoting Mon-
tesquieu, the Federalist Papers made the point in the follow-
ing manner:

“ ‘When the legislative and executive powers are united
in the same person or body,’ says he, ‘there can be no
liberty, because apprehensions may arise lest the same
monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws to exe-
cute them in a tyrannical manner.’ Again: ‘Were the
power of judging joined with the legislative, the life and
liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary con-
trol, for the judge would then be the legislator. Were
it joined to the executive power, the judge might behave
with all the violence of an oppressor.’ ” The Federalist
No. 47, supra, at 303.

It follows that if a citizen who is taxed has the measure of
the tax or the decision to spend determined by the Executive
alone, without adequate control by the citizen’s Representa-
tives in Congress, liberty is threatened. Money is the in-
strument of policy and policy affects the lives of citizens.
The individual loses liberty in a real sense if that instrument
is not subject to traditional constitutional constraints.

The principal object of the statute, it is true, was not to
enhance the President’s power to reward one group and pun-
ish another, to help one set of taxpayers and hurt another,
to favor one State and ignore another. Yet these are its
undeniable effects. The law establishes a new mechanism
which gives the President the sole ability to hurt a group
that is a visible target, in order to disfavor the group or to
extract further concessions from Congress. The law is the
functional equivalent of a line item veto and enhances the
President’s powers beyond what the Framers would have
endorsed.

It is no answer, of course, to say that Congress surren-
dered its authority by its own hand; nor does it sufﬁce to
point out that a new statute, signed by the President or