Is it time for the line-item veto?

Virginia Senator (and former Va Governor) George Allen was on Hannity yesterday (Monday) afternoon (what little bit I head of it amongst sports stations), and he was advocating anew a constitutional amendment to give the line-item veto to Presidents on spending bills.

Right now, the purse is in the hands of Congress. All the President can do is say yes or no to their spending bills -- if he says no, it will be spun to say he's against this program or that program or some other program he may actually support. The President often gets the blame for the country spending so much, when in reality he has very little control at all.

Congress has for decades taken advantage of the spot Presidents are put in by cramming these omnibus spending bills with pet projects and other measures unrelated to the spending to get them through when they otherwise could not.

Giving the President a line item veto to do something that Congress should be doing already is not a step to be taken lightly. In one sense, I would be against it, for Congress (and the media and the People) could then rightly blame the President for any spending since he would have had the opportunity to say no. On the other hand, the Presidential veto carries a heavy burden to override -- and I don't know that the left will want to give up that power to a republican president.

In the abstract theory, the current system should work. It is apparent it does not, as Bush 43 has not vetoed anything in his near 5 years in office. Granted, his party has been in control of both houses during most all that time, so instances should have been far and few. I for one would have liked to see McCain-Feingold vetoed, but we all know where that went.... straight to SCOTUS.

Congress themselves are each out to bring their own jurisdiction back more and more money. Big names such as Rostenkowski, Byrd, Murtha and Shuster come to mind as MCs that brought large chunks home, and now many things are named after them in their respective states.

The failure last week of the Coburn amendment, which would have axed the $220M bridge to nowhere in Alaska (a 5 mile bridge to an island with a population of 50 to replace a ferry) in favor of rebuilding a major bridge down in Louisiana post Katrina, by a whopping 84-15 tells us there is a long way to go to get to fiscal sanity. If we can't get more than 15 votes in the senate, getting 67 for a constitutional amendment is going to be damn near impossible.

(See redstate chronicle of the Coburn amendment from last week: http://www.redstate.org/story/2005/10/20/154945/43)