Bush Breaks the Law Again, Gives Himself Line-Item Veto Power

Posted by Phoenix Woman, Firedoglake at 4:11 AM on February 5, 2008.

Over at my home blog, my co-blogger MEC informs me that with the issuance of Executive Order 13457, "Protecting American Taxpayers From Government Spending on Wasteful Earmarks", Bush has broken the law yet again and given himself a line-item veto:

In effect, the Executive Order declares the Bush has the power to reject against any part of the budget passed by Congress that Bush doesn't like: a de facto line-item veto. Never mind that the Supreme Court ruled in 1998 that the Constitution does not permit the president to decide, item by item, which parts of the budget to accept or reject. If Bush doesn't have the power of line-item veto before he signs the budget bill, he doesn't have it afterward, either.

That's not the worst of it. As MEC notes, this Executive Order doesn't go into effect until Fiscal Year 2009 (beginning October 1, 2008). By the time it has any effect (if enforced), Bush will be out of the White House.

In other words, Bush just gave himself the power to decide how the next Administration spends the taxpayers' money.

Ironically, Bush and his media enablers were all fine with earmarks when the earmark-happy Republicans controlled Congress with an iron fist:

The use of earmarks grew exponentially during President Bush's years in the White House when the Republican Party controlled Congress. According to the watchdog group Citizen's Against Government Waste, in 2001 there were 6,333 earmarks totaling $18.5 billion in the federal budget. By 2005, that number had ballooned to $27.3 billion for 13,997 projects. In 2007, the first year the Democrats controlled Congress, the numbers dropped dramatically to $13.2 billion for 2,658 earmarks.

How serious is this? My other co-blogger, Charles, notes that when Nixon tried this, it was called "impoundment" and was listed as an impeachable offense.

Of course, the Democrats could make a point of questioning this illegal and unconstitutional maneuver, or they could just treat this EO with the same respect and consideration that former FBI chief and Republican judge Louis Freeh (one of the many Republicans Bill Clinton hired in a gracious bipartisan gesture who then backstabbed him by way of thanking him for his generosity) gave to President Clinton's eminently needed Executive Order 12963, which required financial-background checks of government employees working with classified info. That is to say, they could ignore it.

Ignoring Clinton's EO 12963 was a bad thing: Louis Freeh, so fixated on helping the Republican Congress of the time bring down President Clinton, was blind to the corruption of Robert Hanssen, the FBI agent turned Soviet spy, who thanks to Freeh would remain undetected right up until 2001.

Ignoring Bush's EO 13457, on the other hand, would be a good thing: It's not only itself illegal, it's disgusting. Rather like the person who issued it.

Tagged as: bush, democratic congress, federal budget, line item veto

Phoenix Woman is a regular blogger for FireDogLake