DATE: Thursday, October 9, 1997             TAG: 9710090014

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B10  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 
                                            LENGTH:   52 lines

LINE-ITEM VETO POWER SHIFTS

For years, members of Congress claimed the panacea for budget imbalance and pork-barrel spending was the line-item veto. Now President Clinton has got it, is using it and members of Congress are yelping. It's a case of be careful what you wish for.

Clinton has lined out 38 projects from a military construction bill for a saving of $287 million out of a $9 billion total. Three local items worth $27 million bit the dust - a missile storage facility in Yorktown, a pier project in Portsmouth and an air operations building in Norfolk.

Local congressmen are not amused. Rep. Owen Pickett calls the veto ``a cheap shot at the military.'' Rep. Norman Sisisky, who shepherded the pier improvements, said the project ``wasn't one of those things added on in the middle of the night.''

The line-item veto is supposed to address the propensity by members of Congress to smuggle pork-barrel spending into huge bills containing hundreds of items. That was seen as a misuse of power.

Now the executive can veto not just entire bills but single items. But to critics, this episode demonstrates that there's no guarantee a president will use power any more wisely than Congress. Sisisky is upset because he believes his pet project was a justified expense, not a wasteful boondoggle. And he faults the White House for not doing sufficient homework to tell the difference.

``Nobody asked a question. That's what's so irritating,'' he said.

Critics of the line-item veto have long warned that it represented a significant shift from the power of Congress to put in to the power of the president to take out. Now we begin to see what that looks like in real-life examples.

Presidents will use their new power for their own purposes. Clinton has hardly engaged in a slash-and-burn exercise, but Sisisky may be right that little individual thought was given to each item vetoed. Clinton himself said he chose to line out items not included in his own budget request. That's not exactly a decision on the merits. Furthermore, unquestionable pork in the state of Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., survived. Clinton needs Lott. Another reminder that the exercise of power rather than unalloyed fiscal prudence is at work.

Congress can now override, if it has the votes, or repeal the line-item veto if it repents of the experiment. Otherwise, the cuts will stand and the president will use his new power as he sees fit. And there are plenty of opportunities ahead - massive bills to fund the military and the continuing operations of the rest of the government.

If the choice is to favor the power to cut or the power to add spending, cutting looks better. But the political side effects can't be overlooked, nor the risks of trusting so much budget discretion to one man.

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