Line-item veto bill passes House News
Line-item veto bill passes House

[JURIST] The US House of Representatives voted 247-172 [roll call] Thursday to pass the Legislative Line-Item Veto Act of 2006 [text, PDF; summary, PDF]. The bill, which President Bush proposed [JURIST report; White House press release] in March, allows the President to strip special spending and earmarks out of a bill, and then send those provisions back to Congress for an up or down majority vote, rather than requiring them to be sustained by a two-thirds supermajority. The line-item power would expire six years after the bill is enacted. The bill is weaker than the 1996 line-item veto legislation [text, PDF] that the US Supreme Court struck down [decision text; CNN report] as violating the constitutional separation of powers.

The bill was initially approved [JURIST report] by the House Budget Committee [official website] last week by a vote of 24-9, with four Democrats voting in favor. Read a 2004 Congressional Research Service analysis [PDF] of various line-item veto proposals. AP has more.

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