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CLINTON v. CITY OF NEW YORK

Opinion of Scalia, J.

constitutionality of the Balanced Budget and Emergency
Deﬁcit Control Act of 1985, 2 U. S. C. § 901 et seq. (1982 ed.,
Supp. III), which required the President,
if the federal
budget deﬁcit exceeded a certain amount, to issue a “seques-
tration” order mandating spending reductions speciﬁed by
the Comptroller General, § 902. The effect of sequestration
was that “amounts sequestered . . . shall be permanently
cancelled.”
§ 902(a)(4) (emphasis added). We held that the
Act was unconstitutional, not because it impermissibly gave
the Executive legislative power, but because it gave the
Comptroller General, an ofﬁcer of the Legislative Branch
over whom Congress retained removal power, “the ultimate
authority to determine the budget cuts to be made,” 478
U. S., at 733, “functions . . . plainly entailing execution of
the law in constitutional terms,” id., at 732–733 (emphasis
added). The President’s discretion under the Line Item
Veto Act is certainly broader than the Comptroller General’s
discretion was under the 1985 Act, but it is no broader than
the discretion traditionally granted the President in his exe-
cution of spending laws.

Insofar as the degree of political, “lawmaking” power con-
ferred upon the Executive is concerned, there is not a dime’s
worth of difference between Congress’s authorizing the
President to cancel a spending item, and Congress’s author-
izing money to be spent on a particular item at the Presi-
dent’s discretion. And the latter has been done since the
founding of the Nation. From 1789–1791, the First Con-
gress made lump-sum appropriations for the entire Govern-
ment—“sum[s] not exceeding” speciﬁed amounts for broad
purposes. 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, ch.
6, 1 Stat. 190. From a very early date Congress also made
permissive individual appropriations,
leaving the decision
whether to spend the money to the President’s unfettered
discretion.
In 1803, it appropriated $50,000 for the Presi-
dent to build “not exceeding ﬁfteen gun boats, to be armed,