Articles
We need a line item veto NOW!
by Bill Wilcox
After the actions of the U.S. House of Representatives this week, it is time to say enough is enough! We the American voting public need to demand a constitutional amendment granting the president a line item veto. It is a power that all but seven governors have in one form or another and it is a critical weapon in our fiscal arsenal.
How did we get ourselves in this financial mess? One of the first people we have to thank is President Lyndon Baines Johnson. In 1969. LBJ had a problem. His “guns and butter” approach to the Vietnam War was forcing our federal budget deeper into the red. In order to hide the size of the deficit and the cost of the war, he made the decision in 1969 to create a “unified” budget. The unified budget took all of the government independent trust funds like Social Security which were running huge surpluses and he combined them with the regular budget. Thus, with the wave of a pen the deficit disappeared. How big a deal was this? If you believe a February 1st column by George Will, separating out Social Security in last year’s budget to show the true picture would mean an annual deficit of $3 trillion and a total debt of $56 trillion, far worse than Americans have been lead to believe. Bottom line, the last president to see a true budget surplus was Eisenhower.
The next person we have to thank is President Richard Nixon. Earlier presidents had used an informal power called impoundment to cut or defer some spending as needed when the economy warranted a budget move. Nixon decided to take this informal and occasional power and turn it into a constitutional right, refusing to spend almost 20 percent of expenditures signed into law during his first term. The end result of Nixon’s actions was the Congress passing the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act in 1974, which severely limited the ability of presidents to impact the budget process. Thanks to Nixon, the president has fewer budgetary measures to stop an out-of-control Congress.
Finally of course, we have to thank all of the members of Congress who have continued to bribe the American people with their own money (plus borrowed money) over the years. It is thanks to them that my great-grandkids will be paying for our sins with a lower standard of living.
A line item veto has been tried through legislation before. The Line Item Veto Act of 1996 was the last real attempt to control spending. It was also a truly bipartisan effort created by a Gingrich-lead Congress to give a powerful budgetary tool to President Clinton. Unfortunately for all of us, it was ruled unconstitutional on a 6-3 Supreme Court vote. If we are going to get a line item veto, it will have to be a constitutional amendment. It can be done! Congressman Todd Platts of Pennsylvania introduced a line item amendment bill in the house just last month. The bill could be voted on immediately if we flooded the phone lines of Washington demanding action. Nothing else we have tried has the strength to help us out of our federal spending addiction.
Detractors would argue that a line item veto upsets the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches. They fear that it would allow a president to do his own legislating. That fear is overblown because Congress would always have the ability to pass the line item as a bill by itself. The dirty little secret is that members of Congress would rather not have to actually attach their name to some of the spending measures that currently appear in legislation. As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once said, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant”. A line item veto will force more openness in the legislation passed by Congress, and in the current economic climate, we need to take every possible action to preserve America, now and for the future.
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