Word: item
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...order to lance the Greenpeace boil before it further threatened the government. Another possible motive for Joxe: to savage Hernu, a political rival. The rumors about Joxe's role as an informer multiplied so swiftly that Le Monde took the extraordinary step last week of running a small item under the byline Gorge Profonde, or Deep Throat, that said Joxe was not the paper's main source. Nonetheless, Le Gendre and Plenel admit that they relied partly on Interior Ministry sources for their stories. "We are not naive," says Plenel. "We know that sources have motives. The point...
After enough of these aggravating situations, however, Congressmen might begin to wise up. Realizing that the President might eliminate substantial portions of their compromises, they might then refuse to pass a budget at all, unless the President agrees beforehand not to cut certain items. It happened in 1983 in California, a state where the governor has a line-item veto. And the results were not exactly ideal: deadlock and delay which left state employees going unpaid for two and a half weeks...
...wishes, the President can use the line-item veto as a tool for rewarding, or as a weapon for punishing, individual congressmen. Used in this way, it can actually increase government spending. Congressmen have traditionally attached district-pleasing pork barrel to major spending legislation to protect their pet projects from vetoes. The President, proponents would argue, should have an item veto so that he can trim away this unnecessary spending. So far so good. But suppose that a new weapons system, which the President strongly favors, comes up. He now needs votes in Congress. Ordinarily, he would bargain, compromise, appear...
...line-item plan affords the President a new--and quite powerful--stratagem: he can threaten to item veto only the pork barrel projects of the congressmen who vote against the weapon system. Many congressmen, eager for re-election, might cave in to these threats and vote for a costly military device which they would ordinarily oppose. As a result, both the pork barrel and the weapons system pass Congress and are signed into law--not exactly what the line-item veto was supposed...
Substantial deficit reduction did not occur this term in Congress. Thus, some argue, we need the line-item veto. Yet while we must reduce the deficit, undermining the separation of powers and the system of checks and balances is not the way. Vesting both executive and legislative power in one person, the President, is asking for abuse. Congress must not sell itself to the President...