The Constitutionality of the Presidential Line-Item Veto
On 15 June 1994, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Constitution, held hearings on a constitutional theory that might be alternately labeled stunning or bizarre-that the Constitution as written in 1787 provides the president not only with the power to veto bills, but parts of bills, when they cross the chief executive's desk. For over one-hundred years, scholars and political figures have debated the desirability of granting the president item veto powers.' This debate took on new life in the 1980s with President Ronald Reagan's repeated calls for such a power. That debate in turn took a new twist during the Bush presidency, when George Bush made it known in 1989 that he was actively considering the unilateral exercise of an item veto, and then letting the Congress take him to court if it objected.2 Both the House and the Senate took up this cause as well.3