There's a lot of back and forth about giving the president the power of the line item veto. Candidates like Mitt Romney say that it's essential in order to cut pork out of bills. Others say that that it gives the president far to much power, and that it would allow the president to twist legislation, and that the line item veto has been abused in the past. First of all I'm generally -against- giving the president more power. To much power in the hands of a single man is rarely a good thing. An example of this is the recent debacle in Virginia where the line item veto was used, not to remove pork, but to change the basic meaning of a bill. The bill said that no smoking could occur inside a bar or restaurant unless a sign was posted in the window that said it would allow smoking. In other words they made a small change to make it so that bar owners had to consciously make a choice, and so that people that didn't want to be in a smoking establishment could just walk on by it the way smokers can walk on by a bar that doesn't allow smoking because it displays a no smoking sign in the window. The governor removed the part that said they could allow smoking in their bar by posting a sign. He also removed language that defined what a restaurant was, restricting it to indoor venues, and leaving it as any place that serves food, such as wedding receptions, ball parks, and even the area around a street vendor's cart. I'm also against pork... but I don't think that we need to give the president the line item veto in order to get rid of it. I think that what it would take is simply for the American public to become more politically active and informed. I'd post links to the news items where I got the information, but while Fox news provides free video feeds on their websites, they make it nigh impossible to embed in a page, or even link to it. The articles are in their news section politics sub-section, labeled "Mitt's Momentum", and Butt out.
I havent thought about the line item in a long time. If the president/governor line items something out of a bill, say pork or as you said, changing the meaning of the bill... does the whole bill have to reapproved again, or, if the veto is sustained, does the remainder of the bill stay in tact? If the entire wording is changed, obviously the veto would be overturned, but for minor things, I think it'd sustain the veto. There is checks and balances.
The entire bill goes into law, minus the changes made, otherwise it'd just be the regular veto. In order to add the vetoed parts back in you have to have a vote with the same proportions as you would to get a bill passed despite a full veto. Another option is to simply repeal the law if the executive office with line item mucks it up to much.
The line item veto I am more familiar with only allows spending lines to be deleted. I believe this is the case in most U.S. states now, and that the federal government is somewhat out of sync.
I think cutting spending is definitely a good thing, but this power is not authorized by the constitution so I must be against it. Also, the president has the power to veto spending bills before they even exist. Why doesn't he use that power?
The problem is not in bills dedicated to spending, but the current trend to take a really good bill, then make about 50 amendments to add spending items to it. Then if the president vetos the bill because of pork, or a congressman votes against it because of pork, they are on the record as having done so, and it gives their opponents ammo to say that they voted against a bill designed to do "x" when the part of the legislation designed to do "x" has been drowned by the overwhelming number of spending add ons. And the proposed way to give the president a line item veto is by amending the constitution. And if you give the president the ability to strike out lines from a law, how are you going to specifically limit that to 'spending' items in a way that prevents him from striking anything else, and also prevents loopholes?
And they're doing so well that I want to allow them to amend the constitution. Really, any discussion of line item veto I have ever heard has not included any discussion of limiting it only to spending lines, but rather has listed pork as a major reason for giving the president line item veto powers.