Item Veto

Doing his level best to avoid being branded an intractable Republican diehard, Michigan's Senator Vandenberg recently urged President Roosevelt to seek the item veto--power to strike out individual items in big appropriations bills. Last week in his budget message (see p. 19), without mention of the senior Michigan Senator, President Roosevelt asked for the item-veto power, added with unusual deference to the Constitution: "A respectable difference of opinion exists as to whether . . . item-veto power could be given to the President by legislation or whether a Constitutional amendment would be necessary. I strongly recommend that the present Congress adopt whichever course it may deem to be the correct one."

Well did such a request suit a budget message. Congressmen often load an important appropriation bill with pork, leaving the President the choice of taking bad with good, or nothing. With the item veto, now possessed by the Governors of most of the States, he could separate the sheep from the porkers. Proposed on a non-partisan basis, the item veto seemed to have a fair chance of passage--an event which would make life measurably easier for any President who undertakes to balance the budget.

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