Subjugating the Legislative process

By Dave Anderson:

I am not a fan of the line item veto on seperation of power grounds. It transfers too much negoatiating leverage and committment credibility to the executive. The Legislature is a quasi-functioning rump that can only set minimal contstraints on a governor's actions when the governor has a line item veto. Basically my complaints on the use of signing statements by President Bush to disregard clear Congressional directives in laws he just signed are magnified by several orders of magnitude by the line item veto. And I say this even as the line item veto removes several headaches in Pennsylvania for the next couple of months.

Here is the Tribune Review's report on Governor Rendell using the line item veto to get a barebones budget in place while the state government wrestles with the rest of the budget:

Rendell signed almost $11 billion of a $27.3 billion budget using his line item veto to knock out $12.9 billion in state funding. About 77,000 state employees, who received partial pay checks or missed one entirely, will be paid starting early next week.

This came at the end of a complex maneuver where the Republican controlled Senate passed a maximal aspiration, cuts only budget and the Democratic controlled House passed a maximal apsiration increased taxes and revenue from somewhere yet to be defined budget, and the governor proposed a cuts and tax increase budget, and everyone is flinging mud at each other, and will continue to do so for the next couple of months. The Democratic-controlled House recently passed the Senate budget with the understanding that Governor Rendell would take a hacksaw to at least half of the budget.

Which he then did.

This solves one problem, paying most state workers and keeping several key functions funded, but a partial budget where the Legislature exerted their power of the purse instead of abrograting it to the Governor would have done the same damn thing.

I am being cranky here but I really do not like the line item veto as it concentrates way too much structural power in the Executive. I am glad the Supreme Court declared the line item veto unconstitutional in the 90s, as I don't want the President to be able to strip out the effective hooks of oversight and institutional conflict that Congress has to check an unconstrained executive if Congress has the balls and smarts to defend itself as relevant.