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From: berman@psuvax1.UUCP (Piotr Berman)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Line Item Veto at Presidential Level
Message-ID: <2005@psuvax1.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 27-Feb-86 15:10:09 EST
Article-I.D.: psuvax1.2005
Posted: Thu Feb 27 15:10:09 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 28-Feb-86 20:59:21 EST
References: <155@jc3b21.UUCP>
Organization: Pennsylvania State Univ.
Lines: 38

> This morning I saw a Senator on CNN saying that
> if the President got his line item veto, it would
> upset the separation of powers and allow the
> President to say, "If you don't vote for this
> piece of legislation I'm pushing, I'll veto this
> program that is vital to your area from the
> budget." He said that this would make it
> possible for the President to virtually be a
> dictator. I can certainly see this is possible,
> especially in this country, the way it is now.
> But, one has to ask how come there are over
> 35 governors out there who have line item veto
> and who, apparently, haven't tried to dictate
> in the manner mentioned earlier...
>
> Line item veto power would, on the good side, allow
> the President to have greater control over the budget
> which has put us in DEEP debt over the years.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Emery Mandel

The problem here is indeed the concentration of power, not the budget.
The very fact that we have 50 governors prevents them to exercise to
much power, the scope of state government is much smaller.

There is nothing which supports an implicit idea in Emery's posting that
the President is better disposed toward solving the budget problem than
houses of Congress.  To the contrary, the budgets he offers are full of
one-sided bias.  On one side we have proposals to look for hyper-expensive
defence systems (Star Wars, ultra-fast airplane and others), on the
other side proposals to scrap legal services and passanger trains.
Other presidents may have different set of pet ideas, and in every
case we are dealing with things levels of magnitude larger than anything
which may be proposed by a governor.

Piotr Berman