Raines v. Byrd

The line-item veto case involved political ironies. Usually Republicans and conservatives have been associated with spending cuts in general, and line-item veto proposals in particular, and indeed a Republican, Senator Dan Coats of Indiana, authored the legislation that would become the Line Item Veto Act. Yet President Bill Clinton, as a member of the executive branch if not as a Democrat, favored the veto as well. Thus the legal action in Raines v. Byrd pitted five Democrats--Senators Robert Byrd, Carl Levin, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Representatives David Skaggs and Henry Waxman--along with liberal Republican Mark Hatfield, against a Democratic administration. President Clinton, in spite of differences with Republicans in the legislative branch, found that he had their support to veto spending proposals emanating from either House of (the Republican-dominated) Congress.

When the Republicans, for the first time in 40 years, regained a majority in both Houses during the 1994 elections, they did so with a promise of sweeping reforms embodied in a set of proposals called the "Contract with America." Of these, the line-item veto was the only one that enjoyed the president's support. On 27 March 1996, the Senate approved the Line Item Veto Bill by a 69-31 vote, in which four of the appellee Senators in Raines voted "nay". The following day, the House voted on its own Line Item Bill, which it passed by a vote of 232-177--again without the support of the two representatives who later became involved in the Raines legal action. On 29 March, the six appellees filed a complaint with the District Court for the District of Columbia, naming in their suit the secretary of the treasury and the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

A later USA Today article suggested why those two officers, particularly the OMB director, would be named in the suit: his staff had the job of scouring legislation to find suspected pork-barrel projects for the president's veto. "We have numbers of projects in bills where the only thing we know about them is the title," OMB Director Franklin Raines told the paper. "There's nothing in the record, nothing in the report, nothing in the bill that tells you what it is." The reason for such mystery is that if the purpose of a measure is unknown, it is not likely to be challenged--at least, such was the case until the passage of the Line Item Veto Act. "Some powerful lawmakers bury their projects deep in the legislation in hopes of avoiding scrutiny," Susan Page reported; therefore, "budget officials end up calling staffers on congressional subcommittees for clues or tracking down aides to the members of Congress suspected of being the likely sponsors. The last weapon is the threat that a mystery item may be vetoed if it can't be explained."

The legislators who brought the legal action known as Raines v. Byrd--designated as "appellees" by the Supreme Court because they were by the time the case reached the nation's highest bench--charged that the veto "unconstitutionally expands the President's power." They further charged that the act "violates the requirements of bicameral passage [i.e., by both houses] . . . by granting to the President, acting alone, the authority to `cancel' and thus repeal provisions of federal law." The act provided that members of Congress "or any individual adversely affected by [this act] may bring an action, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, for declaratory judgment and injunctive relief on the ground that any provision of this part violates the Constitution." Therefore, the legislators did just that. In their suit, they held that the act "directly and concretely" affected them in three ways: by altering "the legal and practical effect of all votes they may cast on bills containing such separately vetoable items"; by taking from them their "constitutional role in the repeal of legislation"; and by changing the constitutionally fixed balance of power between the executive and legislative branches.

The OMB Director and other appellants moved to have the case dismissed, holding that the appellees lacked standing to sue, and further charging that their case was not "ripe" because sufficient time had not passed since the act's introduction into law. On 10 April 1997, the district court denied this motion, ruling that the legislators had standing, and that their claim was ripe. The court further granted the appellees' summary judgment motion, holding that the act diluted their voting power as members of the legislative branch under Article I of the Constitution, and further holding that the case had standing under Article III.

Embodied in the act was a direct appeal to the Supreme Court to adjudicate any suit challenging its constitutionality. Therefore on 18 April, eight days after the district court's ruling, the appellants filed a statement with the High Court asking it to note probable jurisdiction. On 21 April, the appellees filed a memorandum in response, agreeing with the appellants' jurisdiction request. The Court duly noted probable jurisdiction, and in effect "moved the case to the top of the pile" on the basis of the constitutional questions involved.