LINE-ITEM VETO’S RETURN

The Supreme Court’s 1998 rejection of the line-item veto was simple. There was no mountain of precedent, no hair-splitting, no great debate. Just a straightforward reading of that remarkably straightforward document, the U.S. Constitution. Specifically, the presentment clause of Article I that says the president can do only one of two things with a bill passed by Congress – sign it or veto it. No tinkering.

Instead, Republicans, who included this measure in their 1994 Contract with America, did some tinkering of their own and this week produced a new version. President Bush, who has never used his standard-issue veto, says he has taken care of the constitutional question by allowing for a post-veto up-or-down congressional vote, a fast-track version for deciding specifically what it has already decided generally.

The line-item veto goes back to the Reagan era, when free-spending Democrats controlled Congress and the president and his minority cohort swore that giving the White House a blue pencil to excise the excess would allow for both increased defense spending and generous tax cuts and would generate prosperity across the land.

Turned out, however, the fat Democrats stuffed into the federal budget bore a remarkable resemblance to the lard favored by Republicans. Every tiny Clinton veto had a very upset constituency. In fact, the two loudest complainers, those who forced this issue upon the Supreme Court, were prime examples of wounded special interests – New York hospitals sued to get back a provision that gave them preferential treatment in receiving federal funds and Idaho potato growers sued to get back a tax break of which they’d grown quite fond.

At the time, those who campaigned for the veto swear they’d be back, and Tuesday Sen. Bill Frist introduced the new model, urging the president be given the ability to restrain Congress because, apparently, Sen. Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert cannot.

In the intervening years, Congress could have made a line-item veto unnecessary by being prudent with spending. President Bush could have made it unnecessary by balancing tax cuts with spending increases and working with his own party more often.

But these, of course, would take control, a commodity Congress has yet to earmark.