My goodness, George Will and I agree on something...

[acroyear]

The Vexing Qualities of a Veto:

Not only is the constitutionality of the line-item veto questionable, so, too, is the veto's utility as a restraint on spending. Arming presidents with a line-item veto might increase federal spending, for two reasons.

First, Josh Bolten, director of the Office of Management and Budget, may be exactly wrong when he says the veto would be a "deterrent" because legislators would be reluctant to sponsor spending that was then singled out for a veto. It is at least as likely that, knowing the president can veto line items, legislators might feel even freer to pack them into legislation, thereby earning constituents' gratitude for at least trying to deliver.

Second, presidents would buy legislators' support on other large matters in exchange for not vetoing the legislators' favorite small items. During the two-year life of the line-item veto, Vice President Al Gore promised that Clinton would use the bargaining leverage it gave him to get legislators to increase welfare spending.

The line-item veto's primary effect might be political, and inimical to a core conservative value. It would aggravate an imbalance in our constitutional system that has been growing for seven decades: the expansion of executive power at the expense of the legislature.

Comments

[motherwell.livejournal.com]

Another nightmare scenario consists of Congress padding each budget with EVEN MORE items, in the hope that the President will either not have time to go through all of them, or feel compelled to "compromise" and only cross out a certain number of them. Give Congress an opportunity to be irresponsible, and guess what happens...

Question: there used to be some procedure called "withholding," whereby the President could withhold funding of programs already signed, and force Congress to vote up-or-down on each of them. Nixon overused it, I'm told, so they changed the procedure and renamed it. Does anyone know what it's called now?