Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) have an op-ed in today’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on bringing the line-item veto to the West Wing to solve the problem of earmarks stuffed into appropriations bills. It sounds nice, but I see a couple problems:
- Allowing the President 30 days to find line-item vetoes seems to fly in the face of the Constitutional 10-day (excepting Sundays) requirement for Presidential action on full-bill vetoes.
- While the requirement of positive affirmation of the vetoes by majorities in both Houses of Congress would seem to solve the problem that downed the 1998 line-item veto law, it, and especially the packaging of all the line-item vetoes into a single package, would seem to render the line-item veto powerless. The whole problem is that the earmarks are bundled together; keeping them bundled and requiring a mere 50% (not 50%+1) rejection of the veto message to keep them around is a guarantee that the pork will stay in the pipeline.
In my humble opinion, the proper response to the striking down of the 1998 line-item veto law is not to water it down and hope against hope that it would pass Constitutional muster. It is to make that part of the Constitution.
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