Would A Line Item Veto Amendment Be Useless Today?
President Reagan, faced with out of control spending by the Democratically controlled House and Senate, asked the American people throughout the 1984 campaign cycle to give him what so many Governors around the country had, a line item veto. Following the Republican Revolution of 1994, Senate Majority Leader Dole introduced legislation co-sponsored by Senator McCain and twenty-eight others that became known as The Line Item Veto Act of 1996. The Act was challenged immediately by a group of Senators lead by Byrd (D) of WV. Senator Byrd’s contention was that the Constitution prohibited the President from interfering with Congress’s control of the federal purse. “Judge Thomas Hogan of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia combined the cases and declared the law unconstitutional on February 12, 1998. This ruling was subsequently affirmed on June 25, 1998 by a 6-3 decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case Clinton v. City of New York. Justices Bre
