President’s ‘Line-Item Veto’ Is Weak Medicine

• By Scott Lilly
• Special to Roll Call
• March 16, 2006, Midnight

The budget that President Bush sent to Congress last month requested $2.8 trillion in new spending authority for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. He is soon expected to increase that request by $50 billion to cover a larger portion of the coming year’s Iraq war costs. Assuming that Congress grants most or all of the money requested in the president’s budget, federal spending will have increased by $830 billion a year — more than 42 percent — since the 2001 budget that was in place when Bush took office.