Word: itemizes
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...Capitol Hill, Reagan's case for the line-item veto suddenly seems a little more convincing. "I used to think the line-item veto was the stupidest idea in the world," says Stephen Bell, former staff director of the Senate Budget Committee. "I was wrong." Republican Senator Bob Packwood of Oregon thinks Congress will eventually be forced to pass the reform. "We're going to be ridiculed into doing it," he says. "I've come to the conclusion that we are not going to be capable of governing ourselves." In discussing the veto, Senator Ted Kennedy recently said something...
...while a line-item veto might help diminish budget pork, it would have only a negligible impact on the deficit. Huge chunks of the budget -- Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs, which total more than $325 billion -- are granted automatically and do not require annual % reauthorization. Other spending measures, such as agricultural support programs ($26 billion), are politically sacrosanct. And while some Democrats might be ready to chop away at the $298 billion in defense spending, substantial Pentagon cuts would be unlikely under any Republican Administration. Thus, spending that is truly discretionary (read politically negotiable) amounts to less than...
Some observers think the line-item veto would actually lead to an increase in Government spending. Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, points out that in 1985 Reagan asked for 100 MX missiles, but Congress gave him only 50. If Reagan had had the line-item veto, says Ornstein, he could have used it to squeeze lawmakers, threatening to eradicate programs in their districts if they did not support the vastly more expensive MX. In Ornstein's opinion, Presidents, not legislators, are traditionally inclined to budgetary extravagance. "They have to make their mark in a relatively...
Aside from Ted Kennedy, most congressional Democrats consider Reagan's fiscal pieties gross hypocrisy. "His has been the biggest spending Administration in history," fumes House Budget Chairman William Gray of Pennsylvania. "And every year he returns to the tired old rhetoric that a line-item veto is the magic wand that would bring down Government spending...
Despite its post-budget bill voguishness, the line-item veto will not become a reality anytime soon. "It is something that neither this President nor any other President should have," says Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd. "It is a quack nostrum." As House Majority Leader Thomas Foley of Washington has suggested, the deficit crisis is essentially a matter of willpower. The White House, the Congress and the American public must decide together to make the sacrifices necessary to reduce the deficit. Until that time, ideas like the line-item veto will remain irrelevant oldies...