By the way, we can give credit for this part of the President’s speech last night almost entirely to the blogospheric initiative called “Porkbusters”:
Next, there is the matter of earmarks. These special interest items are often slipped into bills at the last hour – when not even C-SPAN is watching. In 2005 alone, the number of earmarks grew to over 13,000 and totaled nearly $18 billion. Even worse, over 90 percent of earmarks never make it to the floor of the House and Senate – they are dropped into Committee reports that are not even part of the bill that arrives on my desk. You did not vote them into law. I did not sign them into law. Yet they are treated as if they have the force of law. The time has come to end this practice. So let us work together to reform the budget process … expose every earmark to the light of day and to a vote in Congress … and cut the number and cost of earmarks at least in half by the end of this session.
The fact that it got such wild applause was heartening, too.
Now let’s hope they carry through on it.
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…and he’s signed every one of those bills.
Correct. Because he has no choice currently: he can only sign an entire spending bill sent to him by Congress, or veto the whole thing.
This is why Presidents since Reagan have been asking for a line item veto or something similar. Maybe now they’ll get something like it, since apparently everyone on both sides wants this? (It used to be almost purely a Republican issue.)
I think the President really should have line item veto power. Yes, it’s a lot of power, but at least that way the guy that has the power is accountable to the whole country rather than sneaky congressman who’s constituency is too close to the earmarks to be objective about their value.
Every Minority Party when in the House and Senate screams for line item veto…. EVEN more if they have the Presidency. I’m sickened by the republicans who clamored for it until they had the House and Senate then shutup when they had the power to do something about it. To me, the whole situation seems like everyone of us who would LOVE to lose a bit of weight but are willing to do NONE of the things it would take.
The perks and the deceptions, and the under the table deals have gone on too long. Transperency and accountability need to be the new talking points.
p.s. so what if it’s “always been this way”, why does it have to be that way tomorrow?
Or, the president could refuse to sign a bill until the pork is removed.
So he does have a choice, as have all presidents.
Are you vetoing a pedophilia database, school funding, healthcare reform, etc. because Robert Byrd wants another building named after him?
Do you really want to hand your oponents the weapon of < cue ominous music > “He vetoed (insert incredibly popular proposal). Does he really represent America’s values?”< /cue ominous music >
Yes Michael. That’s right. Every President could refuse to sign any budget bill. Each of which routinely runs into hundreds of thousands of line items. He could refuse to sign it if he finds so much as one item in it he doesn’t approve of.
There are routinely tens of thousands he doesn’t approve of. But you want him to veto if there’s even one he doesn’t like. Even though, Constitutionally, he doesn’t even control spending.
So here’s your priority, obviously:
A President in the middle of a war who needs spending for that should pick that particular moment to engage in a massive pissing match with the Congress over spending. Because that’s your ideal of a good President.
A couple of points here:
A line item veto, as currently understood and as had been passed years ago, is unconstitutional. It’s not that it would give the President too much power, it’s that Congress does not have the authority to give part of its power to another branch.
Unless and until the Constitution is amended to give the President that power, it’s going to remain illegal.
There is a new attempt to write a new law that might have the same effect, but would be legal. It would permit the President to send a list of things (like earmarks) back to Congress and ask them to drop them from the legislation. There’s nothing to force Congress to do so, of course, and that’s a big weak point. Shame might win in a few cases, but since presidential attempts would be limited to six per year, that’s not terribly strong either.
Second, if a president refuses to sign a law within 10 days of its passage, it goes into effect anyway. The exception to this is if the bill reaches him less than 10 days before the end of a session of Congress. A late-submitted bill can be ‘pocket vetoed’ by his not signing.
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