Today, 62 percent of federal spending goes to entitlements (56) and debt service (6). Both will be growing portions of budgets, and both are immune to any vetoes. Defense and homeland security are 21 percent of the budget and will be almost entirely immune. So the line-item veto’s target would be at most 17 percent of the budget.
What about earmarks? If all 9,499 of last year’s had been vetoed, this would have saved $15.9 billion, or a risible 0.45 percent of spending.
Furthermore, Obama’s proposed law would encourage legislators to feel free to appropriate even more irresponsibly, because it would locate responsibility in the presidency. And presidents could decline to veto particular spending projects in exchange for the sponsoring legislators’ support on other matters. When Congress gave Clinton the line-item veto in 1996, the year of welfare reform, Vice President Al Gore said Clinton would use the promise of not vetoing pet projects to leverage higher welfare spending.
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