Word: vetoes
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...firm gave $100,000 to the Democratic Party.) The trial lawyers' association has been trying to beat back an array of state and federal tort-reform measures, but, despite its best efforts, a bill limiting damages in product-liability suits cleared Congress last week. Clinton has promised to veto...
...says, as if enhanced political power were merely an incidental by-product. She knows better. Last December A.T.L.A. member Bill Lerach, a San Diego securities litigator whose firm has given more than $1 million to Democrats since 1990, had dinner at the White House. Four days later, Clinton vetoed the Securities Litigation Reform Act. But Congress voted to override the veto--a reminder, if Liapakis needed one, that you can't have too many friends in Washington...
...ONLY WE HAD THE LINE-ITEM VETO. FOR YEARS--decades, actually--that wish has been a mantra. Editorial writers, good-government groups and all modern Presidents have wanted to give the Chief Executive the power to comb bloated budget bills and X out the most nonsensical portions, notably the pork-barrel provisions that members of Congress trade among themselves. In fact, straight-shooting members of Congress have been trying to give Presidents this authority since 1876. Forty-three state Governors have had it for years. Now, finally, the call is being answered. Last week the House and Senate approved...
...does, and the nettlesome portion is repeated, the President can veto Congress's action. Congress could then override the veto, but a two-thirds vote would be required--a near impossibility in the real world...
Opponents of the line-item veto, which they contend is unconstitutional, abhor the unprecedented shift of power from Congress to the President. "The control of the purse [by Congress] is the foundation of our constitutional system of checks and balances," says Senator Robert Byrd, who is legendary for directing wasteful spending to West Virginia. Byrd predicts that Presidents will use the measure to blackmail members of Congress into rubber-stamping White House plans out of fear for their own pet projects. That worry isn't entirely off the wall--Presidents play politics too--but it's more likely that Congress...