President puts line-item veto power into practice

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Sept 8, 1997 | by Jennifer G. Hickey

With a historic stroke of the pen on Aug. 11, President Clinton employed the line-item veto, a tool he said was "designed to fight against waste and unjustifiable expenditures, to ensure government works for the public interest, not the private interests."

The line-item veto allows the president to veto particular items within a bill. Formerly, the president only could sign or veto the whole bill. Clinton used this power to eliminate several spending provisions, including:

* One that would have saved New York some $200 million by allowing it to use tax revenue for Medicaid payments;

* One allowing financial-services companies to delay paying taxes on overseas income, at a cost of $94 million over five years;

* One deferring taxes on profits from the sale of farm-product refiners and food-processing companies to farmer-owned cooperatives, at a cost of $84 million over five years.

Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, or CAGW, says the three items Clinton vetoed are a "good start," but noted that he hopes the president sheds more line-item ink on upcoming appropriations bills. But Clinton did fall short of a perfect score from CAGW Prior to the president's use of his line-item veto, CAGW proposed the elimination of a tax break for hard-cider makers that will cost $3 million over five years, a provision allowing county officials to deduct more of their business expenses at a cost of $27 million over five years and a tax refund for Amtrak that will cost $2.3 billion over five years -- all provisions that survived the veto threat.

"Clinton did the right thing" with his vetoes, Schatz says. However, his office is concerned that just one day after the historic first use of the line-item veto, Clinton suddenly was backtracking on the elimination of the New York Medicaid tax provision. Since the signing, Clinton has signaled that he may be willing to consider offering New York a waiver -- a move confirmed by White House spokesman Joe Lockhart.

The upcoming agricultural bill also,may include many wasteful provisions, such as research into better use of logging products, better lowfat snack foods and improvements in fruit growing -- all of which Schatz considers "long-standing agricultural pork."

Meanwhile, the line-item veto itself -- a power that often was requested but never obtained by President Reagan -- is drawing new criticism from the political right. Texas Rep. Ron Paul, a principled libertarian-conservative, says the Constitution only allows the president to "approve" or "disapprove" whole bills -- not to pick and choose which arts to veto.