ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, April 11, 1997 TAG: 9704110087
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
A federal judge Thursday declared the presidential line-item veto unconstitutional, calling Congress' ceding of such vast powers to the president ``revolutionary'' and warning that it turned the division of legislative and executive branch responsibilities ``on its head.''
Because the line-item veto effectively gives the president the power to repeal laws or portions of laws he does not like, it violates the ``careful design'' of the Constitution by the founding fathers, U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ruled.
``Never before has Congress attempted to give away the power to shape the content of a statute of the United States, as the act purports to do,'' Jackson wrote in a 37-page opinion. ``As expansive as its delegations of power may have been in the past, none has gone so far as to transfer the function of repealing a provision of statutory law. The power to `make' the laws of the nation is the exclusive, non-delegable power of Congress,'' Jackson ruled.
Jackson's ruling came in a lawsuit filed by six lawmakers, led by Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., who argued that the line-item veto, a marquee item in the House Republicans' ``Contract With America'' in the last Congress, illegally circumvents the Constitution's requirement that the president veto whole bills, not pieces.
-ASSOCIATED PRESS
LENGTH: Short : 35 linesby CNB