On February 8, the House approved legislation to allow the President to eliminate specific items from appropriations bill ― otherwise known as line-item veto authority. The authority is one that Presidents of both parties have long sought but ultimately failed to obtain.  (See the September 1998 issue of Supreme Court Debates titled  “The Line Item Veto ― The President, the Congress, and the Constitution.”)

H.R. 3521, the Expedited Legislative Line-Item Veto and Rescissions Act, introduced by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul D. Ryan (WI-R) and the panel’s top Democrat, Representative Chris Van Hollen (MD-D), passed the House by a bipartisan vote of 254 to 173.

The Obama Administration, which had requested the authority, endorsed the bill in a February 6 Statement of Administration Policy, saying that it would eliminate unnecessary spending and discourage waste.

The final version passed by the House included a manager’s amendment, offered by the two sponsors, that would give the President 10 days after signing an appropriations bill to submit proposed rescissions to Congress. The House and Senate would then have three days to bring the measure to the floor for an up-or-down vote.

Following the bill’s passage, Chairman Ryan issued a statement saying that “Washington spends too much money that we don’t have on programs that can’t be justified. This bipartisan reform will help lawmakers to a better job of prioritizing hardworking taxpayers’ dollars.”

In a floor statement opposing the bill, Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (KY-R) said that the line-item veto would weaken Congress’s constitutionally bestowed power of the purse, “shifting budgetary authority to the Executive Branch and giving the President a power that our Founding Fathers did not see fit to give him.”

Congress, in fact, gave President Bill Clinton line-item veto authority when it passed the Line Item Veto Act of 1966, but the Supreme Court later ruled the Act unconstitutional. Supporters of the new bill maintain that it has been written to meet constitutional standards.

H.R. 3521 now goes to the Senate, where the outcome is uncertain because of likely opposition by Appropriations Committee members.