Suit Challenges the Legality of Line-Item Veto

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 new law, according to the suit, circumvents a constitutional requirement that the president veto whole bills, not pieces of them.

“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.

How the issue is resolved could be critical to this year’s budget negotiations, since it would allow President Clinton to cut specific spending items that Congress chose not to slash. And while the matter is in limbo, it could disrupt the negotiating strategies of both parties as they try to anticipate the effect that the veto--or lack of it--might have.

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 passage of a statute.

Under the law, which was signed by Clinton last April and took effect Wednesday, the president can use the veto on discretionary spending items dealing with particular projects, tax breaks affecting fewer than 100 people and expansions of entitlement programs.

Proponents of the line-item veto say governors in 43 states use similar power with few problems. They also argue that it will enable presidents to attack the so-called pork buried in the federal budget--those public projects that lawmakers put into spending legislation to benefit people in their districts or a special-interest group that they favor.

Clinton believes that the law was carefully drafted and can withstand the legal challenge.

“It was reviewed by the Justice Department before the president signed it,” said White House spokesman Barry Toiv, “and we are confident and hopeful that it will withstand constitutional scrutiny.”