[DanielBMarkham]

If the president were to have the line-item veto, where he could approve of certain parts of a bill and veto others, we could hold him personally responsible whenever bills get loaded up like this. As it is, they can pass what they want and nobody is responsible. That's clearly not the way the system was designed to work. The entire purpose of representative democracies is that while representatives can freely vote against their constituents, the constituents also can throw them out of office based on the representative's decisions.

I've seen this same problem play out in a variety of contexts, and it looks to me like the line-item veto is the only thing that will prevent this corruption of the system we're seeing. While this idea has been a pet cause of conservatives for some time, it looks like supporters of liberty have just as much or more skin in the game as fiscal hawks.

Play out the following scenario in your head: it's late in the year, no budget has been passed by Congress (again), and suddenly some third-rail social program is running out of money. Congress passes a law to help the orphans and grandmothers, everybody climbs on-board with huge majority votes, and way in the back section is another version of SOPA.

If you're the president, what do you do? Note this is a much different political scenario than just threatening a veto -- this is asking if you're willing to risk pissing off huge special interests groups just to make a much smaller number of nerds happy. It's political math, and it works quite simply. You sign the bill, make a public speech about how bad the new SOPA is, and life goes on. If you're smart you send out mailers asking people to donate so you can get rid of the thing you just signed! One party will pick the "side" of SOPA, the other party will pick the other "side". In fact it doesn't matter whether you really support or oppose the bill, whoever paid for it got it passed, huge numbers of politicians got to oppose it, and the public can't point the finger at anybody. There's nobody to throw out of office. There's no feedback loop. The system is broken.

In my mind the only thing that is going to fix that is the line-item veto. A lot of state governors have it. I think it's about time POTUS got it also.

[mattwdelong]

That's actually laid out quite nicely. And in theory, I really like it.

However, it's kind of like a last line of defense, where the rest of the defense is entirely broken. It's putting all your faith in that last line of defense, and hoping that the right scenario will play out. Eventually, it too, will fail. Still, the first line of defense has to be fixed. With that being said, it's a step in the right direction.

[philwelch]

Wasn't the line item veto passed into law but ruled unconstitutional during the Clinton administration? In any case, this argument is predicated on the idea that we can trust the president, which is an idea the most recent couple of presidencies should have disabused us of.

[rgrieselhuber]

In effect, doesn't the President already have line item veto? If there are items he doesn't agree with, he should signal that he will veto until they are removed.

[jbooth]

That requires a lot from the President and oftentimes they'll be on the losing end of that political battle. On the recently-passed NDAA for example (which explicitly made it legal to detain people without trial, and hopefully will be struck down by the courts), it was passed as part of funding the military, sending out soldier paychecks, etc. Fox News is already (wrongly) accusing Obama of wanting to undermine our troops all the time, and people are already sick of pointless squabbling over routine funding matters in DC. Obama would have been the political loser from vetoing the bill, the Republicans would have known it, and they probably would have just kept passing the bill and forcing him to veto it until he caved.

[dantheman]

Obama originally objected to the NDAA because it limited his powers too much, not because of the indefinite detention clause.

The Administration strongly objects to the military custody provision of section 1032, which would appear to mandate military custody for a certain class of terrorism suspects. This unnecessary, untested, and legally controversial restriction of the President's authority to defend the Nation from terrorist threats would tie the hands of our intelligence and law enforcement professionals. Moreover, applying this military custody requirement to individuals inside the United States, as some Members of Congress have suggested is their intention, would raise serious and unsettled legal questions and would be inconsistent with the fundamental American principle that our military does not patrol our streets. We have spent ten years since September 11, 2001, breaking down the walls between intelligence, military, and law enforcement professionals; Congress should not now rebuild those walls and unnecessarily make the job of preventing terrorist attacks more difficult. Specifically, the provision would limit the flexibility of our national security professionals to choose, based on the evidence and the facts and circumstances of each case, which tool for incapacitating dangerous terrorists best serves our national security interests. The waiver provision fails to address these concerns, particularly in time-sensitive operations in which law enforcement personnel have traditionally played the leading role. These problems are all the more acute because the section defines the category of individuals who would be subject to mandatory military custody by substituting new and untested legislative criteria for the criteria the Executive and Judicial branches are currently using for detention under the AUMF in both habeas litigation and military operations. Such confusion threatens our ability to act swiftly and decisively to capture, detain, and interrogate terrorism suspects, and could disrupt the collection of vital intelligence about threats to the American people.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/legislativ...

[jbooth]

What? Break it down for me here, in what way is he arguing for more quote "powers"? The power to not indefinitely detain people? That's a really brutal one, favorite of dictators everywhere. I shudder at the thought of someday being not-detained.

I mean, I really don't want to carry Obama's water on this one given that he did sign the bill, but you're just engaged in some sort of silly deliberate misinterpretation of the paragraph you quoted.

[dantheman]

My understanding, and I could be wrong, is that the military detention provision would stop the rendition program because "terrorists" would be in military custody instead of allowing the flexibility that they currently have:

"Specifically, the provision would limit the flexibility of our national security professionals to choose, based on the evidence and the facts and circumstances of each case, which tool for incapacitating dangerous terrorists best serves our national security interests. "

I think this entire law is bad, but I'd prefer a well defined bad law than one that allows lots of discretion.

[danssig]

You're making the assumption that the president is against this legislation aren't you?