[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 35 (Thursday, March 24, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
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[Congressional Record: March 24, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
           SENATE RESOLUTION 195--RELATING TO LINE-ITEM VETO

  Mr. SPECTER submitted the following resolution; which was referred to 
the Committee on the Judiciary:

                              S. Res. 195

       Whereas article I, section 7, clause 2 of the Constitution 
     authorizes the President to veto bills passed by both Houses 
     of Congress;
       Whereas article I, section 7, clause 3 of the Constitution 
     authorizes the President to veto every ``Order, Resolution, 
     or Vote'' passed by both Houses of Congress;
       Whereas during the Constitutional Convention, Roger Sherman 
     of Connecticut opined that article I, section 7, clause 3 was 
     ``unnecessary, except as to votes taking money out of the 
     Treasury;''
       Whereas the language of article I, section 7, clause 3 was 
     taken directly from the Constitution of the Commonwealth of 
     Massachusetts of 1780;
       Whereas the provision of the Massachusetts Constitution of 
     1780 that was included as article I, section 7, clause 3 of 
     the United States Constitution vested in the Governor of 
     Massachusetts the authority to veto individual items of 
     appropriation contained in omnibus appropriations bills 
     passed by the Massachusetts Legislature;
       Whereas the Governor of Massachusetts had enjoyed the 
     authority to veto individual items of appropriation passed by 
     the Legislature since 1733;
       Whereas in explaining the purpose of the constitutional 
     veto power, Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist No. 69 
     that it ``tallies exactly with the revisionary authority of 
     the council of revision'' in the State of New York, which had 
     the authority to revise or strike out individual items of 
     appropriation contained in spending bills;
       Whereas shortly after the new Federal Constitution was 
     adopted, the States of Georgia, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and 
     Kentucky adopted new Constitutions which included the 
     language of article I, section 7 of the Federal Constitution, 
     and allowed their governors to veto individual items of 
     appropriation on the basis of these provisions;
       Whereas the contemporary practice in the States is 
     probative as to the understanding of the Framers of the 
     Constitution as to the meaning of article I, section 7, 
     clause 3;
       Whereas President Washington, on a matter of presidential 
     authority, exercised the prerogative to shift appropriated 
     funds from one account to another, effectuating a line-item 
     veto;
       Whereas President Jefferson considered appropriations bills 
     to be permissive and refused on at least two occasions to 
     spend funds appropriated by the Congress: Now, therefore, be 
     it
       Resolved, That it is the sense of the Senate that--
       (1) The Constitution grants to the President the authority 
     to veto individual items of appropriation; and
       (2) the President should exercise that constitutional 
     authority to veto individual items of appropriation without 
     awaiting the enactment of additional authorization.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I have long supported a line-item veto 
for the President, I have proposed constitutional amendments to grant 
the President such authority, and I have supported statutory enhanced 
rescission authority.
  As these measures have failed, after extensive legal research and 
analysis, I now urge the President to exercise the line-item veto 
without further legislative action. I do so because I believe, after a 
careful review of the historical record, that the President already has 
the authority under the Constitution to veto individual items of 
appropriation in an appropriations bill and that neither an amendment 
to the Constitution nor legislation granting enhanced rescission 
authority is necessary.
  The line-item veto would be effective in helping to reduce the hugh 
deficit that now burdens our country. While alone it is no panacea, its 
use would enable the President to veto specific items of appropriation 
in large spending bills, thereby restraining some of the pork-barrel or 
purely local projects that creep into every appropriations bill. With 
the broad national interest rather than purely local concerns at work, 
the President's use of the line-item veto would cut significant amounts 
of this type of spending.
  The line-item veto would also have a salutary effect on Members of 
Congress. Knowing that their attempts to insert items into 
appropriations bills will be subjected to presidential scrutiny, 
Members are likely to become more reluctant to seek special favors for 
the home district at the expense of the Nation at large. While such 
discretionary programs and earmarks do not account for a large part of 
Federal spending, getting control over them will improve the 
authorization and appropriations process. The President could use the 
veto to eliminate funding for unauthorized programs. Such a message 
would motivate Congress to reauthorize programs with regularity, 
improving our oversight and the effectiveness of the government.
  The line-item veto is not a partisan issue. It is a good government 
issue. Many Democrats support the line-item veto; some Republicans 
oppose it. As a candidate in 1992, Bill Clinton firmly embraced the 
line-item veto. As President, he has the opportunity to make effective 
use of it to help control in some small measure the deficits we 
accumulate. By exercising this option, the President can provide a 
check on unfettered spending and carve away many of the pork-barrel 
projects contained in both versions of the budget that serve primarily 
private, not national interests.
  Beyond the specific savings, the presence and use of the line-item 
veto by the President could give the public assurances that tax dollars 
were not being wasted. Each year the media reports many instances of 
congressional expenditures which border, if in fact they do not pass, 
the frivolous. Those expenditures are made because of the 
impracticality of having the President veto an entire appropriations 
bill or sometimes a continuing resolution. That creates a general 
impression that public funds are routinely wasted by the Congress.

  The line-item veto could eliminate such waste and help to dispel that 
notion. The resentment to taxes is obviously much less than when the 
public does not feel the monies are being wasted. Notwithstanding the 
so called taxpayers' revolts in some States, there is still a 
willingness by the citizenry to approve taxes for specific items where 
the taxpayers believe the funds are being spent for a useful purpose. 
The line-item veto could be a significant factor in improving such 
public confidence in governmental spending even beyond the specific 
savings.
  I now turn to the basis for my position that the President already 
has authority under the Constitution to exercise the line-item veto, 
without a need for additional constitutional or statutory legislation.
  The constitutional basis for the President's exercise of a line-item 
veto is found in article I, section 7, clause 3 of the Constitution. 
Clause 2 of article I, section 7 provides the executive the authority 
to veto bills in their entirety. The question of conferring on the 
President the power to veto specific items within a bill appears not to 
have been discussed at the Constitutional Convention. During the 
drafting of the Constitution, however, James Madison expressed his 
concern that Congress might try to get around the President's veto 
power by labeling bills by some other term. In response to Madison's 
concern, Edmund Randolph proposed and the Convention adopted the third 
clause of article I, section 7, whose language was taken directly from 
a provision of the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780.
  Clause 3 of article I, section 7 provides that in addition to bills--
the veto of which is set forth in clause 2:

       Every Order, Resolution, or Vote to which the Concurrence 
     of the Senate and House of Representatives may be necessary 
     (except on a question of adjournment) shall be presented to 
     the President of the United States; and before the same shall 
     take Effect, shall be approved by him, or being disapproved 
     by him, shall be repassed by two thirds of the Senate and 
     House of Representatives, according to the Rules and 
     Limitations prescribed in the case of a Bill.

  While the clause does not explicitly set out the executive authority 
to veto individual items of appropriation, the context and practice are 
evidence that that was its purpose. According to noted historian 
Professor Forrest McDonald of the University of Alabama, the clause was 
taken directly from a provision of the Massachusetts Constitution of 
1780. In his article entitled ``The Framers' Conception of the Veto 
Power,'' published in the monograph Pork Barrels and Principles: The 
Politics of the Presidential Veto 1-7--1988, Professor McDonald 
explains that this provision dates back to the state's fundamental 
charter of 1733 and was implemented specifically to give the royal 
Governor a check on the unbridled spending of the colonial 
legislature, which had put the colony in serious debt by avoiding the 
Governor's veto power by appropriating money through votes rather than 
through legislation.

  Professor McDonald also points out that at the time of the 
Constitution's ratification process, anti-Federalist pamphleteers 
opposed the proposed Constitution and in particular clause 3 of article 
I, section 7, precisely because it ``made too strong a line-item veto 
in the hands of the President.''
  Federalists, on other hand, saw clause 3 and the power to veto 
individual items of appropriation as an important executive privilege--
one that was essential in assuring fiscal responsibility while also 
comporting with the delicate balance of power they were seeking to 
achieve. For example, during his State's ratifying convention, James 
Bowdoin, the Federalist Governor of Massachusetts, argued that the veto 
power conferred to the President in the Federal Constitution was to be 
read in light of the Massachusetts experience under which, I have 
already noted, the Governor had enjoyed the right to veto or reduce by 
line-item since 1733.
  In The Federalist No. 69, Alexander Hamilton, a member of the 
Constitutional Convention who was soon to become the first Secretary of 
the Treasury, wrote that the constitutional veto power ``tallies 
exactly with the revisionary authority of the council of revision'' in 
New York, which, according to Professor McDonald, had the power to 
revise appropriations bills, not merely accept or reject legislative 
enactments in their entirety. This power was not unique to New York, as 
the Governors of Massachusetts, Georgia, and Vermont (soon to be the 
first new State admitted to the new union) also enjoyed revisionary 
authority over legislative appropriations.
  As many of my colleagues know, our distinguished colleague from West 
Virginia, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, had made a 
series of speeches on the Senate floor drawing on his vast knowledge 
about the historical underpinnings of our republican form of government 
and on the framers' rationale for the checks and balances they created. 
His review of Roman history is apt, because, as he knows, the framers 
were acutely aware of Roman history. This awareness helped them develop 
their government of limited powers and of checks and balances. The 
framers knew that the vice of faction, the desire to pursue one's 
private interest at the expense of the public interest, had helped 
bring on the downfall of the Roman Republic. Madison and others were 
convinced that the diffusing power and balancing it off in different 
branches of government, we might avoid to the fullest extent possible, 
the defects of faction.
  In another sense, however, the distinguished Chairman of the 
Appropriations Committee, overlooks the fundamental differences between 
Rome's ancient government and ours. In ours, the people have a direct 
say. In Rome's the male citizens had a limited, indirect say, by mostly 
the ruling class was hereditary or was based on wealth. We have a 
democracy; Rome did not.
  This fundamental difference between our Nation and ancient Rome means 
that there are more factions with which our Government must contend. 
With so many different factions, or ``interest groups, as we call them 
today, it is much easier for one of them to ``capture'' a single Member 
of Congress to advance its cause and to fund it. Each Representative 
has a much narrower focus than a Senator, each of whom has a much 
narrower focus than the President. Thus, Congress is more susceptible 
to pressure from factions, as one Member who wants a favor for a 
particular faction trades his or her support for another Member's 
preferred faction. We all know that this appropriations log-rolling 
occurs. Ultimately, the President is presented with one large spending 
bill, much of which reflects the political horse-trading that occurs.

  The line-item veto sheds light on the power of private interests that 
seek to use the appropriations process for their one private benefit. 
By excising line items and making Congress vote on them individually in 
an effort to override the veto, the President can shed light directly 
on these private interests and force Members to be more accountable to 
their constituents by voting on the projects identified by the 
President as unnecessary and wasteful.
  Some, like the distinguished chairman of the Appropriations 
Committee, contend that the line-item veto would result in an 
intolerable shift of power from Congress to the Executive. To this 
argument, I have two responses. The first is that, as I believe I show, 
the Framers of the Constitution intended that the President have the 
authority to veto individual items of appropriations, Thus, in their 
concept, the line-item veto does not offend the balance of powers.
  The second response is related to the entire structure of the 
Government. The Constitution places the power of the purse in the hands 
of Congress. It is peculiarly legislative function to decide how much 
money to spend and how to allocate these expenditures. In this regard, 
however, spending is no different than any other legislative function. 
Thus, there is no reason to consider the line-item veto any more of an 
infringement of the separation of powers than the President's ability 
to veto bills at all. Hamilton recognized the structure importance of 
the veto in the Federalist 73, when he wrote that the veto provides 
``an additional security against the inaction of improper laws--to 
guard the community against the effects of faction, precipitancy, or of 
any impulse unfriendly to the public good, which may happen to 
influence a majority of the--legislative--body'' from time to time. The 
Framers were acutely aware that it is the legislative branch that is 
most susceptible to fractional influence. Thus, they understood that 
the veto served a critical role.
  But, opponents of the line-item veto argue, Hamilton's point went to 
bills as a whole, and not simply pieces of them. The legislative 
process necessarily relies on horse-trading to get things done, and 
nowhere is such trading more important than in the appropriations 
process. This response, while acknowledging the reality, is an answer 
that directly contradicts the Framers' intent and leads to bad 
government, for it accepts the premise that factions and the prominent 
Members of Congress who support their causes must be bought off with 
goodies in appropriations bills. But that is precisely the evil that 
the Framers sought to insulate against with the veto.

  Given the role of factions in the appropriation process, the use of 
the line-item veto is completely consistent with the Framers' 
conception of the veto power. Indeed, that is not surprising, as the 
Framers believed they had granted the President a line-item veto. 
Despite the arguments of the distinguished Chairman of the 
Appropriations Committee to the contrary, the line-item veto was not 
only intended by the Framers but is an appropriate limitation on 
congressional authority to combat the force of faction.
  This process would not surprise the Framers of the Constitution, 
Madison and the others who met in Philadelphia in 1787 were not just 
knowledgeable about history. They were practical men of affairs and 
politics who understood human nature. They knew the dangers of faction 
and the likelihood that faction would influence Congress more so than 
the President, who is responsible to the entire Nation, not a single 
district or State.
  Thus, it is only to be expected that the Framers provided Congress 
with the power to appropriate funds, tempered with executive authority 
to line-item veto as a means of expunging special interest spending was 
their resolution, and history bears this out. The line-item veto is 
entirely consistent with the Framers' conception of government and the 
dangers of faction.
  Shortly after the new Federal Constitution was ratified, several 
States, including Georgia, Vermont, Kentucky, and my home State of 
Pennsylvania, rewrote their constitutions to conform with the Federal 
one and specifically incorporated language to give to their executives 
the authority to exercise a line-item veto. These States were in 
addition to the States like Massachusetts and New York, where the 
Governor's power to revise items of appropriation was well-established. 
For example, article II, section 10 of the Georgia Constitution of 1789 
gave the governor the power of ``revision of all bills'' subject to a 
two-thirds vote of the general assembly. Section 16 of chapter II of 
the Vermont Constitution of 1793 vested in the governor and council the 
right to revise legislation or to propose amendments to the 
legislature, which would have to adopt the proposed amendments if the 
bill were to be enacted. Article I of the Kentucky Constitution of 1792 
and section 23 of article I of the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1790 
tracked the language of article I, section 7, clause 3 of the new 
United States Constitution.
  The chief executives of both the State and new Federal Governments 
immediately employed the line-item veto. On the national level, the 
early practice was one in which the President viewed appropriations as 
permissive rather than mandatory. President Washington and his Treasury 
Secretary Hamilton assumed the authority to shift appropriated funds 
from one account to another. Although his party had at one time opposed 
such transfers, once he became President, Republican Thomas Jefferson 
also embraced the practice, and at least on two occasions, he refused 
to spend money that the Congress had appropriated.

  The practice continued. As late as 1830, President Andrew Jackson 
declined to enforce provisions of a congressional enactment. Likewise 
in 1842, President John Tyler signed a bill that he refused to execute 
in full. It was not until after the Civil War that a President assumed 
he did not already have the authority to veto individual items of 
appropriation, when President Grant urged the Congress to grant him 
such authority.
  But President Grant's view was anomalous. The Framers' understanding 
and their original intent was that the Constitution did provide the 
authority to veto or impound specific items of appropriation. The 
States understood that to be the case, and many in fact embraced the 
Federal model as a means of providing their own executives this same 
authority.
  I believe that the evidence strongly supports the position that under 
the Constitution the President has the authority to employ the line-
item veto. At the very least, the President's use of the line-item veto 
will almost certainly engender a court challenge if the veto is not 
overridden. The courts will then decide whether the Constitution 
authorizes the line-item veto. If they find it does, then the matter 
will be settled. If they find it does not, then Congress may revisit 
the issue and decide whether to amend the Constitution or grant 
statutory enhanced rescission authority to the President.
  In conclusion, I urge the President to employ the line-item veto if 
he is seriously committed to deficit reduction. As I have argued here 
today, the authority to exercise this power is not dependent on the 
adoption of a constitutional amendment or any additional legislation; 
it already exists. The Framers' intent and the historical practice of 
the first Presidents serve as ample evidence that the Constitution 
confers to the executive the authority to line-item veto. Given 
President Clinton's use of the line-item veto as Governor and his 
support of it as a candidate, I urge him to act on that authority 
consistent with his rightful power to do so.
  I ask unanimous consent that a copy of a memorandum I have prepared 
summarizing my research into the Framers' intent to establish a line-
item veto and the early national practice by included in the Record.

                               Memorandum

     Re: Presidential authority to exercise a line-item veto.

       The President currently enjoys the authority under the 
     Constitution to exercise a line-item veto without any 
     additional constitutional or statutory authority. The 
     constitutional basis for the President's exercise of a line-
     item veto is to be found in article I, section 7, clause 3 of 
     the Constitution.
       The first article of the Constitution vests legislative 
     authority in the two Houses of Congress established 
     thereunder. Clause 2 of section 7 of the first article 
     provides the presidential authority and procedure to veto 
     ``bills.'' This is the basis of the President's clearly 
     established authority to veto legislation. The provision also 
     established the procedure under which Congress may override 
     the President's veto.
       The question of conferring authority on the President to 
     veto specific items within a bill was not discussed at the 
     Constitutional Convention. During the drafting of the 
     Constitution in 1787, however, James Madison noted in his 
     subsequently published diary that he had expressed his 
     concern that Congress might try to get around the President's 
     veto power by labeling ``bills'' by some other term. In 
     response to Madison's concern and in order to guard the 
     President's veto authority from encroachment or being 
     undermined and preserve the careful balance of power it 
     sought to establish, Edmund Randolph of Virginia proposed and 
     the Convention adopted language from the Massachusetts 
     Constitution which became article I, section 7, clause 3.
       This clause requires that in addition to bills: ``Every 
     Order, Resolution, or Vote to which the Concurrence of the 
     Senate and House of Representatives may be necessary (except 
     on a question of Adjournment) shall be presented to the 
     President of the United States; and before the Same shall 
     take Effect, shall be approved by him, or being disapproved 
     by him, shall be repassed by two thirds of the Senate and 
     House of Representatives, according to the Rules and 
     Limitations prescribed in the Case of a Bill [these being set 
     forth in article I, section 7, clause 2].''
       In combination with the preceding clause 2 of section 7, 
     this third clause gives the President the authority to veto 
     any legislative adoption of Congress, subject to 
     congressional override.
       The historical context of its adoption supports the 
     position that clause 3 vests the President with authority to 
     veto individual items of appropriation.
       According to the noted historian Professor Forrest McDonald 
     in his paper ``The Framers' Conception of the Veto Power,'' 
     published in ``Pork Barrels and Principles: The Politics of 
     the Presidential Veto'' 1-7 (1988), clause 3 was taken 
     directly from a provision of the Massachusetts Constitution 
     of 1780. This provision set in the State's fundamental 
     charter Massachusetts law dating to 1733 first implemented to 
     give the Royal Governor a check on unbridled spending by the 
     colonial legislature, which had put the colony in serious 
     debt by avoiding the governor's veto power by appropriating 
     money through ``votes'' rather than legislation. Professor 
     McDonald has also noted in an op-ed article published in the 
     ``Wall Street Journal,'' that the agents of the King of 
     England could disapprove or alter colonial legislative 
     enactments ``in any part thereof.''
       Discussion and debate at the Constitutional Convention over 
     the meaning of clause 3 was scant. In his notes of the 
     proceedings of the Convention, our main source for the intent 
     of the Framers of our fundamental Charter, Madison noted only 
     that Roger Sherman of Connecticut ``thought [article I, 
     section 7, clause 3] unnecessary, except as to votes taking 
     money out of the Treasury.'' No other member of the 
     Convention appears to have discussed the clause. Sherman's 
     comment was important, as it demonstrates the context in 
     which the Framers saw the newly added provision: it was 
     needed only insofar as it pertained to votes appropriating 
     money from the Treasury. Perhaps discussion was so scant 
     because the meaning of the clause was clear to the Framers.
       In his 1988 article, Professor McDonald notes that two 
     Anti-Federalist pamphleteers opposed the proposed 
     Constitution in part because article I, section 7, clause 3 
     ``made too strong a line-item veto in the hands of the 
     President.'' The Federalist Governor of Massachusetts, James 
     Bowdoin, argued during the Massachusetts ratifying convention 
     that the veto power was to be read in light of the 
     Massachusetts experience in which, as noted, the line-item 
     veto was exercised by the governor. In ``The Federalist'' No. 
     69, Alexander Hamilton wrote that the constitutional veto 
     power ``tallies exactly with the revisionary authority of the 
     council of revision'' in New York, which, according to 
     Professor McDonald, had the power to revise appropriations 
     bills, not merely turn down the entire legislative enactment. 
     Massachusetts, Georgia, and Vermont also gave their 
     executives revisionary authority over legislative 
     appropriations.
       Roger Sherman's comment was prescient, as he focused on the 
     issue confronting us over 200 hundred years later. The 
     language of clause 3 has proven to be redundant, as Congress 
     has not attempted to avoid the strictures of the second 
     clause. But clause 3 is not superfluous as regards, in 
     Sherman's language, ``votes taking money out of the 
     Treasury.'' In order to give effect to this provision, the 
     President must have the authority to separate out 
     different items from a single appropriation bill and veto 
     one or more of those individual items.
       This reading is consistent with the early national 
     practice, under which Presidents viewed appropriations as 
     permissive rather than mandatory. President Washington and 
     his Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, assumed that the 
     President had the authority to shift appropriated funds from 
     one account to another. The former Anti-Federalists, having 
     become the Republican party, objected to these transfers. 
     Once a Republican, Thomas Jefferson, became President, 
     however, he too considered appropriations bills to be 
     permissive and refused on a least two occasions to spend 
     money that had been appropriated by Congress.
       Professor McDonald points out in his 1988 article that 
     shortly after the new Federal Constitution was ratified, 
     several of the States rewrote their constitutions to conform 
     their basic charters to the new Federal one. The 
     contemporaneous experience of these States is highly relevant 
     to the Framers' understanding of the text they had devised. 
     Several States adopted new constitutions in 1789 or the early 
     1790's. Of these, Georgia and Pennsylvania, and the new 
     States of Vermont and Kentucky all adopted constitutions that 
     included the phrasing of article I, section 7 to enable their 
     governors to exercise the line-item veto.
       According to a 1984 report of the Committee on the Budget 
     of the House of Representatives, ``The Line-Item Veto: An 
     Appraisal,'' the practice at the national level of the 
     President's exercise of a line-item veto continued. President 
     Andrew Jackson declined, over congressional objection, to 
     enforce provisions of a congressional enactment in 1830. In 
     1842, President John Tyler signed a bill that he refused to 
     execute in full. Instead, he advised Congress that he had 
     deposited with the Secretary of State ``an exposition of my 
     reasons for giving [the bill] my sanction.'' Congress issued 
     a report challenging the legality of the President's action.
       Professor McDonald noted that between 1844 and 1859, three 
     northern States, responding to fiscal problems, adopted 
     constitutions explicitly providing their governors with power 
     to veto individual items of appropriation. Building on this 
     history, the provisional Constitution of the Confederate 
     States of America also made explicit that the President of 
     the Confederacy had line-item veto authority.
       It was only after the Civil War that President Grant 
     suggested that he did not already enjoy the authority to veto 
     individual items of appropriation and other specific riders 
     to legislation and urged that he be granted such authority. 
     President Grant's position that he did not enjoy a line-
     item veto under the Constitution was directly 
     contradictory to the original understanding of the 
     Constitution, a position endorsed by Presidents 
     Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, and Tyler through usage. 
     It ignored the original understanding of the Framers of 
     the Constitution and the historical context in which that 
     document was drafted. Proposals for a Federal line-item 
     veto have been made intermittently since the Grant 
     Administration.
       An alternative argument based on the language of article I, 
     section 7, clause 2, but consistent with the original 
     understanding of the veto power, has also been made to 
     support the President's exercise of a line-item veto. In 
     discussing why the issue of a line-item veto was not raised 
     during the Constitutional Convention, Professor Russell Ross 
     of the University of Iowa and former United States 
     Representative Fred Schwengel wrote in an article ``An Item 
     Veto for the President?,'' 12 ``Presidential Studies 
     Quarterly'' 66 (1982), ``[i]t is at least possible that this 
     subject was not raised because those attending the Convention 
     gave the term `bill' a much narrower construction than has 
     since been applied to the term. It may have been envisioned 
     that a bill would be concerned with only one specific subject 
     and that subject would be clearly stated in the title.''
       Professor Ross and Mr. Schwengel quote at length the former 
     Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Hatton W. Sumners, 
     who defended this view in a 1937 letter to the Speaker of the 
     House that was reprinted in the Congressional Record on 
     February 27, 1942. Chairman Sumners was of the view that the 
     term ``bill'' as used in clause 2 of section 7 of the first 
     article was intended to be applied narrowly to refer to 
     ``items which might have been the subject matter of separate 
     bills.'' This reading he thought most consistent with the 
     purpose and plan of the Constitution. Thus, Chairman Sumners 
     believed that clause 2, as originally intended, could also be 
     relied upon to vest line-item veto authority in the 
     President.
       Chairman Sumner's reading is also consistent with the 
     practice in some of the colonies. Professor McDonald cites to 
     the Maryland constitution of 1776, which expressly provided 
     that any enacted bill could have only one subject. Several 
     other States followed Maryland during the succeeding decades 
     and limited legislative enactments to a single subject.
       A review of the contemporary understanding of the veto 
     provisions of the Constitution when drafted supports the view 
     that the President currently enjoys line-item veto authority, 
     which several Presidents have exercised.

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