Line Item Veto Act of 1996
The Line Item Veto Act of 1996 was legislation that aimed to allow the President of the United States to veto specific provisions of a bill without rejecting the entire piece of legislation. Proposed initially by President Ronald Reagan in response to rising national debt and government spending, the act authorized the president to cancel individual spending and tax benefit items within five days of signing a bill into law. However, its implementation faced immediate legal challenges, with critics arguing that it undermined the constitutional balance of powers by strengthening the presidency.
Shortly after the act took effect in January 1997, it was challenged in court, leading to a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court that deemed the law unconstitutional. The Court determined that the president's cancellation authority violated the presentment clause, which outlines how legislation should be enacted. As a result, the Line Item Veto Act was effectively nullified within eighteen months of its enactment, having been used only eleven times to cancel provisions from the federal budget during that brief period. Since then, Congress has not proposed a constitutional amendment to revisit the issue, leaving the line-item veto a topic of historical interest rather than practical application.
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Subject Terms
Line Item Veto Act of 1996
Identification Federal law authorizing the president to exercise a limited line-item veto
Date Signed into law April 9, 1996; declared unconstitutional June 25, 1998
Congress, unable to control its own spending, permitted the president to cancel specific items within appropriations and tax bills after signing the bill into law.
A line-item veto permits the executive to veto parts of a bill without vetoing the entire bill. In the 1980’s, with the annual deficit and national debt rising, President Ronald Reagan proposed that the president be given the authority to discourage wasteful spending and reduce the national debt. Although Reagan’s efforts were unsuccessful, the executive was subsequently given this power, however briefly, by the Line Item Veto Act of 1996. The act, which went into effect on January 1, 1997, authorized the president to “cancel” individual spending and tax benefit provisions contained in a bill within five days after signing the bill into law.
On January 2, 1997, two representatives and four senators filed a lawsuit asserting that the law unconstitutionally strengthened the presidency. Although the federal district court declared the law unconstitutional, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Raines v. Byrd, dismissed the lawsuit, holding that the litigants did not have standing. Shortly thereafter, President Bill Clinton canceled one provision in the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 and two provisions of the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997. These provisions, if not canceled, would have benefited two public hospitals in New York City and a potato farmers’ cooperative in Idaho. These parties filed suit in federal district court, which declared the statute unconstitutional. The Supreme Court granted expedited review.
In Clinton v. City of New York, decided on June 25, 1998, the justices held that the cancellation provisions set forth in the Line Item Veto Act of 1996 violated the presentment clause of Article I, section 7, clause 2 of the Constitution. Writing for six members of the Court, Justice John Paul Stevens noted that there were important differences between the president’s “return” of a bill pursuant to Article I, section 7 and the president’s cancellation authority pursuant to the Line Item Veto Act—most notably that the Constitution expressly authorized the president to play a role in the process of enacting statutes, but was silent on the subject of unilateral presidential action that either appealed or amended parts of duly enacted statutes. Although the Congress was willing to grant such sweeping powers to the president, the Court found it unconstitutional.
Impact
The impact of the Line Item Veto Act was negligible. The act was struck down less than eighteen months after it went into effect. Prior to that, the line-item veto was employed eleven times to strike eighty-two provisions from the federal budget. Since Clinton v. City of New York, Congress has considered, but never proposed, a constitutional amendment that would grant line-item veto power to the president.
Bibliography
Dewar, Helen, and Joan Biskupic. “Line-Item Veto Struck Down; Backers Push for Alternative.” The Washington Post, June 26, 1998, p. A01.
Worcester, Courtney. “An Abdication of Responsibility and a Violation of a Finely Wrought Procedure: The Supreme Court Vetoes the Line Item Veto Act of 1996.” Boston University Law Review 78 (December, 1998): 1583-1608.