The President Needs the Line-item Veto

The United State’s Constitution, the shortest written Constitution in the world, only has twenty-seven amendments, and now it is time to add another. The power of a presidential line-item veto was denied to the Clinton Administration in 1998, but with this last Congress being the least productive Congress ever, it is time to re-think the power distribution in the legislative process. In Congress, on average, only 10% of the bills proposed make their way through, and ever reach the President’s desk. In this modern day and age a bill, on average, is 3,105 words. When Congress was first created the idea was that each proposed legislation would be contained in one bill, now bills are comprised of various provisions. Which is why the power of the line-item veto would be beneficial to expand presidential authority. This line-item veto authority is the ability to cross out certain provisions while still being able to sign in to law the entire bill. This would be beneficial to the United States government, as an amendment that would allow the president to cut out unnecessary spending to in turn lower the national deficit. The United States government needs to pass an amendment to allow Presidents to use the line item veto.

The Constitution of the United States sets out the procedure of a bill becoming a law in Article 1, Section 7. Scholars have interpreted the Constitution to read that a president can only sign or veto a bill, but the section that many other scholars have looked over that would allow for the line-item veto is that, “if he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to r...

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