WASHINGTON -- Nullifying a historic experiment aimed at cutting budget deficits, the Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional yesterday the 2-year-old line-item veto law that allowed the president to delete individual items from spending and tax bills he has already signed into law.
The law, long advocated by presidents but used only by one -- Clinton -- fell by a 6-3 vote.
The court said the law ran counter to the procedure laid down in the Constitution for enacting laws. Under that procedure, Congress must present legislation to the president, who must approve or veto the entire bill.
"The line-item veto act authorizes the president to effect the repeal of laws, for his own policy reasons, without observing the procedures set out" in the Constitution, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority.
"The fact that Congress intended such a result is of no moment."
If Congress wants to give the president a new role in lawmaking, Stevens wrote, "such change must come not by legislation but through" an amendment to the Constitution.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, in a brief separate opinion, lectured Congress for failing to "restrain persistent excessive spending" but added: "Failure of political will does not justify unconstitutional remedies."
Clinton used the veto power 82 times, resulting in savings that the White House has estimated at more than $1 billion.
The president, speaking from China, expressed disappointment.
"The decision is a defeat for all Americans," he said. "It deprives the president of a valuable tool for eliminating waste in the federal budget and for enlivening the public debate over how to make the best use of public funds."
The line-item veto was enacted two years ago as one of the key items in the Republican-led Congress' "Contract With America."
It was intended to help lower budget deficits by shifting to the president the politically delicate task of killing specific spending items or tax benefits that Congress had embraced, often at the urging of lawmakers whose districts those items benefited.
Yesterday, with their numbers dwindling, Congress' most ardent supporters of the line-item veto vowed to enact a new version that could pass constitutional muster.
Sen. Daniel R. Coats, an Indiana Republican, lamented that yesterday's ruling will encourage Congress to return to the practice of larding up spending bills with wasteful "pork-barrel" spending.
"The Supreme Court has resurrected a pig that we thought was dead," Coats declared.
But in general, response on Capitol Hill yesterday was remarkably subdued, given that the line-item veto had been a leading priority of the Republican Congress that took office in 1995.
That year, the line-item veto passed both houses overwhelmingly. At the time, the government was running budget deficits in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and Republicans had swept to power pledging to restore the nation's fiscal health.
Now, with a budget surplus looming, the political muscle that backed the line-item veto has shrunk. Sen. Robert F. Bennett, a Utah Republican and former supporter, said enthusiasm has waned since Clinton first wielded the line-item veto last year. Lawmakers overrode his vetoes to restore 38 military construction projects.
"I was a proponent," Bennett said. "I campaigned for it vigorously. But when I saw the way President Clinton abused the line-item veto, I ate crow publicly."
Sen. Robert C. Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat who has been the line-item veto's fiercest opponent, said yesterday: "I have had senators, particularly Republican senators, come to me to say: 'You were right. If we have that fight ever again, count me on your side.' "
But the measure's leading advocates in the Senate -- Coats and John McCain, an Arizona Republican -- remained hopeful. Within hours of the Supreme Court ruling, the two introduced a new measure that they said would be constitutional.
Under this version, instead of presenting the president with sweeping spending bills, Congress would pass a separate bill for each item of spending. The president could then sift through thousands of tiny spending bills and veto those he deemed unnecessary.
But there seemed to be little enthusiasm for the cause.
"You wouldn't have enough time all year to do [the equivalent of] one bill," said Rep. Robert L. Livingston of Louisiana, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.
Alternatively, McCain and Coats said, a constitutional amendment to grant the president line-item veto power is possible but unlikely to pass. Constitutional amendments require the support of two-thirds of both the House and Senate, as well as three-fourths of the states.
The day belonged to the handful of lawmakers who all along had proclaimed the line-item veto unconstitutional. Byrd, considered a constitutional authority, proclaimed that a battle that began during Ulysses S. Grant's administration had finally ended.
"The framers had a vision, and the Constitution embodies that vision in a structure that is based on checks and balances and the separation of powers," Byrd said. "If that structure is ever impaired, then the fragile wings of the people's liberties -- the people's liberties -- will never soar as high again."
Under the line-item veto, the president could delete items that would reduce the budget deficit and not harm any "essential government function."
The veto power took effect at the beginning of last year. Clinton did not use it until August because, before then, the law was tied up in courts. Six members of Congress had filed an immediate challenge to the law.
But the Supreme Court ruled last year that those lawmakers had no right to file the challenge because they had suffered no harm as legislators from a line-item veto.
Clinton's first uses of the veto power led to two new lawsuits. The Supreme Court found that those groups of challengers had a right to sue. One group included New York City, a hospital and two hospital associations, protesting Clinton's veto of a law that would have forgiven the state from having to reimburse Washington for $2.6 billion in Medicare funds.
The other group was made up of Idaho potato growers who objected to a Clinton veto of a tax break that would have allowed the growers to buy a processing plant.
Justice Stevens announced the law's demise in a seven-minute reading from the bench -- the fifth of six rulings the justices released yesterday. As he read, Solicitor General Seth P. Waxman, who had vigorously defended the law's constitutionality, sat alone at a front desk, taking notes.
After Stevens finished, Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the lead dissenting opinion, spoke for nine minutes. The law, Scalia said, created not a veto at all but rather a presidential option -- directly authorized by Congress -- to decline to spend money in a bill.
Scalia remarked sarcastically that by putting "veto" in the law's title, Congress "has succeeded in faking out the Supreme Court."
Joining Stevens in the majority, besides Kennedy, were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David H. Souter and Clarence Thomas. The dissenters, along with Scalia, were Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Sandra Day O'Connor.
The demise of the law presumably means the two laws at issue in the case now can take effect, although it may take further court action to make that happen. The fate of the other items vetoed by Clinton remains unclear.
The majority opinion relied on history dating to the Constitution's origins in 1789 to explain why it was nullifying the line-item veto. Under the route defined in the Constitution and never changed, the two houses of Congress pass a bill and send it to the president, who can veto it in its entirety or sign it into law.
The line-item veto gave the president the authority to decide within five days of signing a tax or spending bill whether to cancel specific spending or tax benefits that would be shared by only a few taxpayers. If it chose, Congress could then pass an entirely new bill, which the president was free to veto in the usual fashion.
The court majority rejected all the arguments made by defenders of the law, concluding that the line-item veto deviates from the "finely wrought procedure" for legislating chosen by those who wrote the Constitution in 1789.
"What has emerged in these cases," as a result of the president's vetoes, "are truncated versions of two bills that passed both houses of Congress," Stevens wrote. "They are not the product of the finely wrought procedure that the Framers [of the Constitution] designed."
Pub Date: 6/26/98