Idaho Potato Growers Challenge Line-Item Veto Group’s Lawsuit Among Three Questioning President’s Cuts

An Idaho potato growers’ group filed a lawsuit Tuesday marking the third court challenge to the constitutionality of the presidential line-item veto.

The line-item veto law - enacted in 1996 and first used by President Clinton in August - gives the president “an impermissible unilateral power to reverse and repeal federal law,” according to the suit filed in Washington by Snake River Potato Growers Inc. of Blackfoot.

The grower cooperative maintained that President Clinton’s veto of a tax revision intended to put agricultural cooperatives on the same footing with corporations leaves cooperatives like it at a competitive disadvantage in acquiring processing facilities.

“Attempts have been made to arrive at a legislative solution,” Randon Wilson, the cooperative’s attorney said. “However, a legislative solution does not appear likely at this time, which leaves challenging the right of the president to exercise his veto of the cooperative tax legislation as the most viable option.”

Two other lawsuits challenging the law were filed in U.S. District Court in Washington last week by New York City and the National Treasury Employees Union.

Clinton has used the line-item veto to cancel measures that would have given New York City special authority to raise Medicaid funds by taxing hospitals, and that would have let some federal employees change their pension plans.

In June, the Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the law by six members of Congress, saying they lacked legal standing to sue. But the justices made clear the law could be challenged by anyone affected by a line-item veto once the president exercised that authority.

Clinton has used the line-item veto 50-plus times since August.