Suit Challenges the Legality of Line-Item Veto
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WASHINGTON — Six lawmakers launched a long-promised legal challenge Thursday to the constitutionality of a new law that vastly expands the power of the president by allowing him to strike specific programs from spending bills.
In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, the lawmakers allege that the line-item veto, a marquee item in the House Republicans’ “contract with America” last year, illegally rewrites the Constitution through its historic surrendering of congressional power to the office of the president.
“The idea that one guy . . . can go back and rearrange the pieces to suit himself smacks of a royal prerogative that we tried to get away from over 200 years ago,” said Rep. David E. Skaggs (D-Colo.), one of the lawmakers who sued.
Skaggs and the others--Sens. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), Mark O. Hatfield (R-Ore.), Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles)--allege that such an extensive transfer of power from Congress to the president can only be done through a constitutional amendment, not merely through a new statute.
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