Where I Stand: Congress dilutes your power

Friday, March 29, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

CONGRESS IS PASSING the line-item veto power into the hands of the man elected this November to reside in the White House. It really doesn't make any difference who is elected; it's a bad piece of legislation that our Founding Fathers had made certain couldn't be used or misused by a chief executive.

Members of Congress have deftly given the control of spending to the president. Now they can pass all of the pork they want, and the president can take the blame for cutting it from the spending plan. Sounds like the kind of situation that appeals to the large number of gutless wonders we now pay to live on the banks of the Potomac River. No longer can we hold them accountable for making the hard spending choices they have been elected to make. They have failed miserably to fulfill our expectations, and now they have voted themselves out of this responsibility.

Some scholarly critics of this giving of excessive power to the chief executive see it as a constitutional matter. They have a point, but I see it as a simple matter of a majority of 535 members of Congress saying they don't have the will to control their spending habits and they want a Big Daddy to do it for them. They refuse to consider the reasoning of the Founding Fathers, and gladly give up their powers to create a stronger chief executive.

Some supporters of the line-item veto point out that 43 governors already have this power. Studies show us that many use it to supplant legislators spending priorities with their own. In 1990, when this issue was debated, Sen. Wendell Ford, former governor of Kentucky, challenged the theory that line-item veto power would promote separation of powers. Ford told his colleagues, "I had line-item veto. It is very easy to call a fellow down from the third floor to the first floor of the governor's office and say, 'You have $10 million in there for that new building down home. Well, let us scratch each other's back.'

"Separation of powers? That is not separation of powers, that is giving too much down Pennsylvania Avenue and taking it away from here."

So much for using the governors' line-item veto power as an example of good government.

Nevada Sens. Harry Reid and Richard Bryan opposed the veto legislation six years ago and again this week. Bryan, in a news release Thursday, said, "The legislation gives the president the power to veto items for less-populous states, such as Nevada, in favor of items for larger states with more electoral votes."

Bryan continued to say, "The line-item veto also has the effect of skewing the careful balance of power that was crafted by our Founding Fathers in favor of the executive branch. The line-item veto could be used by the president to pressure members of Congress to change their positions on particular issues important to states in favor of the president's view."

Six years ago, on the Senate floor, Reid argued, "When I address a town hall meeting about the line-item veto, I tell those people the main reason it is bad is because it would really hurt what we have in our Constitution, that is, the protection given by the United States Senate to protect small states.

"Let me give an example. The president wants to send a message by picking an item of $10 million out of this Labor-HHS budget, for example. He does not want to do what President Bush did: be courageous and veto the whole appropriations bill. What he wants to do is send a message and veto a $10 million item. If a bill contains $10 million for a small state like Nevada, New Hampshire or South Dakota, it only makes political sense to go after the money provided to a small state with a few votes."

This week, again on the Senate floor, Nevada's senior senator reiterated his concerns and told of other parts of the legislation that bother him. For example, he not only sees it as dangerous to small states but as an infringement on the judiciary: "Consider the conflict that could arise if the administration receives an unfavorable ruling from a particular court. Now, the president could employ the power of the bully pulpit or appeal to Congress to handle the matter legislatively. With this new political weapon, he could also excise the appropriation for that particular court. This is not meant to cast aspersions on our future presidents. It merely reflects the political reality that the framers recognized when they wrote the Constitution."

A laggard and irresponsible majority of Congress has again taken a duck on their responsibilities, damaged the U.S. Constitution and has gone off whistling in the dark, believing they have again pulled the wool over the eyes of their constituents.

Have they?