Friday, March 13, 2009
The Right Time for Two Fiscal Reforms
Congress piece by
Bruce Walker
Republicans for years made the line item veto a centerpiece of federal budgetary reform and championed repeal of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974. Now is the perfect time to make those two fiscal reforms a centerpiece of Republican policy.
The line item veto, which forty-three state governors already possess, would allow the president to veto only certain items of a federal appropriations bill. So in the stimulus package which Congress just passed, President Obama would have the power to do more than just sign the bill into law. He would have the power to go through each item in the bill and choose whether or not to veto that item. If Obama chose to sign the bill without vetoing any particular items, then he, alone, would have been politically responsible for all the pork in the bill.
Presidents up through Richard Nixon also used their inherent constitutional power to impound funds. If Congress appropriated more money than was needed to perform a certain governmental or statutory duty, then the president could save the money - - not spend the tax dollars - - or “impound” it. Democrats controlled Congress in 1974 and they did not want President Nixon to be able to spend fewer tax dollars than Congress wished to spend. They passed legislation, arguably unconstitutional legislation, which essentially took the impoundment power away from the presidency.
So after President Obama signed the stimulus package, he cannot look at the myriad appropriations and determine that the executive branch could perform those activities more cheaply than Congress believed. If Congress repealed its 1974 law, however, any president could spend what he thought was enough to execute his constitutional duties.
If Republicans now asked for the introduction of a line item veto and the return of the impoundment power to the presidency, what would Democrats say? Idolization of Barack Obama has almost become a cult of personality. What Democrat in Congress could dare say “Congress does not trust the president to act responsibly with these two fiscal powers?” The line item veto and impoundment power has been exercised without problem by most state governors for many yeas. It is hardly a new, untested concept.
What would Barack Obama say? He, who has claimed to have the wisdom and leadership to guide our nation through almost any problem and to bring up to the Promised Land, would never concede that he lacked the perception to distinguish pure pork from responsible expenditures. And how could he say that with an army of fiscal assistants, the executive branch could not read through long bills and find absurd appropriations? Conservative commentators have had no trouble finding self-serving, political boondoggles almost as soon as the text of the stimulus bill became public.
Because Democrats control everything, partisan Democrat attacks on Republican proposals to allow a line item veto to Obama and to restore impoundment to the presidency would look positively silly. Democrats in Congress are afraid of abuse of power by…President Obama? Really! Adopting these two reforms, though, would permanently change the federal appropriations and budget processes for the better.
Today the biggest friends of pork and political spending of tax dollars are obscurity and unaccountability. No one knew what was in the stimulus package until it passed. The president was left with a choice of signing it or vetoing it (and Obama could hardly veto it.) After it is law, the president lacks the power to impound the appropriated funds.
If the president had the power to veto only certain portions of an appropriation bill and if he had the power to impound the expenditure of appropriations which were not needed, then our nation would also know just who to blame for wasteful and ridiculous federal spending. Every story about a road to nowhere or train from Las Vegas to Disneyland could be stopped by the president. If he did not stop this waste, then he would have politically adopted this waste.
The president, and this would mean more than just this current President Obama, would have the job and the power to keep wasteful expenditures of federal funds under control. A president who failed could no longer blame Congress. He would have to accept full responsibility for every obviously wrongheaded pork project of the federal government.
Granting the president these two powers would also make members of Congress uneasy about pork spending. Who would want to have a presidential line-item veto on a pet spending project? No only could members no longer safely bring home the bacon, but they would face public ridicule and condemnation for trying to slip a fast one on the tax payers.
Today, no federal policy makers really have an incentive to spend tax dollars frugally and prudently. If the president had a line item veto and recovered the historic power to impound funds, everyone would have an incentive to behave responsibly. Republicans are floundering for ideas? This is the perfect time to push hard for these two reforms.
Bruce Walker
HowardWasRight 
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