WASHINGTON — House Republicans put aside their usual antipathy toward President Barack Obama on Wednesday to give the president, and his successors, the line-item veto, a constitutionally questionable power over the purse that long has been sought by presidents of both parties.
A minority of Democrats joined in casting a 254-173 vote in favor of allowing the president to pick out specific items in spending bills for elimination. Currently, the chief executive must sign or veto spending bills in their entirety.
The main opposition came from members of the Appropriations Committee, which is responsible for putting together the annual spending bills. They argued that the bill upsets the constitutional separation of powers balance in favor of the executive branch and that recent efforts to curtail so-called earmarks in spending bills make the line-item veto unnecessary.
The bill’s prospects in the Senate are uncertain.
In 1996, a Republican-controlled Congress succeeded in giving line-item veto authority to another Democratic president, Bill Clinton. He exercised that authority 82 times, and although Congress overrode his veto in 38 instances, the moves saved the government almost $2 billion. But in 1998, on a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court ruled that the law was unconstitutional, saying it violated the principle that Congress, not the executive branch, holds the power of the purse.
Supporters say the bill has been written to meet constitutional standards. They say that while the president can propose items for rescission, or elimination, Congress must vote on the revised spending package and then the president must sign what is in effect a new bill.
The House bill, offered by Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and the committee’s top Democrat, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, stipulates that all savings from eliminated programs go to deficit reduction. The bill is part of a package of measures to overhaul the budget process to save money.
Van Hollen, in arguing the need for more scrutiny of spending bills, pointed to the catch-all spending bill the House voted on in December, when members had only 15 hours to review a 1,200-page bill containing more than $1 trillion in spending.
“Sometimes we call them airdrops, earmarks, pork,” Ryan said of special-interest projects that find their way into spending bills. “Whatever you want to call it, we ought to have members of Congress think twice that they might have to justify this provision, this spending bill, on the merits.”
The bill was supported by 57 Democrats. Forty-one Republicans voted against it. Among Colorado’s delegation, only Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette voted against it.
Under the plan, the president has 45 days within the enactment of a bill to propose cuts to discretionary, or nonentitlement, spending. Legislation to consider the proposed cuts would move quickly to the House and Senate for automatic up-or-down votes with no amendments.
