Line-Item Veto Gets Second Look Lawmakers Regret Strengthening Clinton’s Hand

Since Ronald Reagan mentioned the idea more than 15 years ago, Republicans passionately have advocated giving presidents power to slash specific tax and spending items from bills passed by Congress.

“The line-item veto is an article of faith with Republicans,” said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn. “We’re the party of fiscal responsibility.”

“It is an indispensable tool for imposing discipline on Congress’ urge to spend,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., “if it is used fairly and judiciously.”

But now that a Democratic president enthusiastically is wielding the power - granted by a GOP-controlled Congress last year when his re-election seemed less likely - many Republicans are having second thoughts.

“Maybe the Founding Fathers were right,” said a forlorn Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, referring to the founders’ express rejection of the idea when framing the U.S. Constitution more than 200 years ago.

Clinton’s aides have been reviewing more than 200 veto targets in a massive defense-spending bill now on his desk, and the president is expected to announce this week, perhaps as early as today, which items will get the knife.

The Clinton vetoes are almost certain to draw a legal challenge from critics who say the legislation permitting them is an unconstitutional usurpation of congressional power.

Still, in coming weeks, Clinton is promising to look for pork in nearly a dozen other major spending proposals. That prospect has Capitol Hill worried, and with some reason.

Last week, in his first opportunity to send Congress a message about pork, the president slashed 38 projects - totaling about $287 million - from a $9.2 billion military-construction bill.

It was a measured move, hitting only a small fraction of the eligible targets in the bill. But Senate appropriations committee leaders were so alarmed that they called a hearing last Thursday, summoned several hapless Pentagon aides to the witness table, and complained about how the president was abusing his authority.

The hearing was clearly intended to warn the president to go easy on the defense-spending bill.

It was also an opportunity to vent spleens. And before it ended, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, and Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah - who was a staunch advocate of the line-item veto - indicated they were of a mind to take away the president’s new power.

“We are not all eunuchs,” Stevens fumed, threatening to deliver retribution against Clinton’s nominees - who must go to the Senate for confirmation - if the president persists in knocking down senators’ pet projects.

“As I’ve said before and will say again,” said Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., who led the fight against the line-item authority for years before it was finally adopted, “it is nothing more than a club for the White House to use to beat the members of Congress, and it stinks!”

As Republicans ranted over Clinton’s use of the veto, Democrats had an “I told you so” glint in their eyes. Though they, too, are dismayed at their president’s apparent zest for using it, they at least opposed the idea before finally being voted down by majority Republicans last year.

Byrd, the senior Democrat on the appropriations committee, archly observed:

“I did not vote for this horror, and I wonder how some members who did are feeling, now that their legislative initiatives have felt the line-item meat cleaver.”