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

475

Breyer, J., dissenting

from “having legal force or effect,” see 2 U. S. C. § 691e(4)(B)
(1994 ed., Supp. II), has either repealed or amended this
particular hypothetical statute. Rather, the President has
followed that law to the letter. He has exercised the power
it explicitly delegates to him. He has executed the law, not
repealed it.

It could make no signiﬁcant difference to this linguistic
point were the italicized proviso to appear, not as part of
what I have called Section One, but, instead, at the bottom
of the statute page, say, referenced by an asterisk, with a
statement that it applies to every spending provision in the
Act next to which a similar asterisk appears. And that
being so, it could make no difference if that proviso appeared,
instead, in a different, earlier enacted law, along with legal
language that makes it applicable to every future spending
provision picked out according to a speciﬁed formula. See,
e. g., Balanced Budget and Emergency Deﬁcit Control Act of
1985 (Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act), Pub. L. 99–177, 99 Stat.
1063, 2 U. S. C. § 901 et seq. (enforcing strict spending and
deﬁcit-neutrality limits on future appropriations statutes);
see also 1 U. S. C. § 1 (in “any Act of Congress” singular
words include plural, and vice versa) (emphasis added).

But, of course, this last mentioned possibility is this very
case. The earlier law, namely, the Line Item Veto Act, says
that “the President may . . . prevent such [future] budget
authority from having legal force or effect.” 2 U. S. C.
§§ 691(a), 691e(4)(B) (1994 ed., Supp. II).
Its deﬁnitional sec-
tions make clear that it applies to the 1997 New York health
care provision, see § 691e(8), just as they give a special legal
meaning to the word “cancel,” § 691e(4). For that reason,
one cannot dispose of this case through a purely literal analy-
sis as the majority does. Literally speaking, the President
has not “repealed” or “amended” anything. He has simply
executed a power conferred upon him by Congress, which
power is contained in laws that were enacted in compliance
with the exclusive method set forth in the Constitution.
See Field v. Clark, 143 U. S. 649, 693 (1892) (President’s