Line-item veto in the United States

Forty-four of the 50 U.S. states give their governors some form of line-item veto power; Indiana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Vermont are the exceptions.

Wisconsin Telephone Co. v. Henry, the Wisconsin Supreme Court recognized the absolute partial veto power of the Governor as long as a workable, complete law remained, stating the governor had "the right to pass independently on every separable piece of legislation in an appropriation bill.

[10] Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution of the Confederate States, adopted just before the start of the American Civil War, would have granted the President of the Confederate States the ability to "approve any appropriation and disapprove any other appropriation in the same bill," with such disapprovals returned to the Houses of Congress for reconsideration and potentially for override.

[11] Presidents of the United States have repeatedly asked Congress to give them line-item veto power.

The court found that exercise of the line-item veto is tantamount to a unilateral amendment or repeal by the executive of only parts of statutes authorizing federal spending, and therefore violated the Presentment Clause of the United States Constitution.

Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) introduced his own version, the Legislative Line Item Veto Act of 2006, in March of that year.

[16] On that same day, Joshua Bolten, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, gave a press conference on the President’s line-item veto proposal.

When asked how this proposed legislation was different from the 1996 Line-Item Veto Act that the United States Supreme Court had declared illegal, Bolten said that whereas the former act granted unilateral authority to the Executive to disallow specific spending line items, the new proposal would seek Congressional approval of such line-item vetoes.

Thus, for the President to successfully withdraw previously enacted spending, a simple majority of Congress is required to agree to specific legislation to that effect.

He also complained that the line-item veto as proposed would take away Congress’s constitutional "power of the purse" and give it to the executive branch.

They also stated that the proposed Act is consistent with the basic principle that grants Congress broad discretion to establish procedures to govern its internal operations.

[16] In 2009, Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI) and John McCain introduced legislation of a limited version of the line-item veto.