Feingold to Hold Hearing on Line-Item Veto

Office of Management and Budget Official to Testify

May 21, 2010

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) announced today that he will hold a hearing on May 26th on giving the president a line-item veto to eliminate wasteful spending. The hearing comes after it was reported that President Obama would ask Congress for line-item veto authority this month. Feingold, the author of legislation to authorize a limited line-item veto for the president, will chair the hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Constitution. Feingold introduced his bipartisan Congressional Accountability and Line-Item Veto Act along with Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and fellow Janesville, Wisconsin, native Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). Feingold also included the line-item veto in his Control Spending Now Act, legislation made up of more than forty specific spending cuts that will save taxpayers about one half trillion dollars.

“A line-item veto, like the one I proposed with Rep. Ryan and Sen. McCain, would be a useful tool for the president to slash wasteful spending,” Feingold said. “This hearing will focus on ensuring that any line-item veto bill we advance is constitutional and effective at stopping unnecessary and wasteful spending. I am pleased the administration is sending a witness to testify, and I look forward to hearing more about the administration’s proposal and how it intends to use line-item veto authority.”

While added transparency requirements have helped, unauthorized earmarks continue to be a problem. The omnibus appropriations bill passed in 2009 contained over 8,000 earmarks at a cost of more than $7 billion. The Feingold-McCain-Ryan bill provides the president with new expedited rescission authority to remove congressional earmarks from larger bills and send them back to Congress to be voted on separately. The Senate bill is cosponsored by Senators John McCain (R-AZ), John Barrasso (R-WY), Tom Coburn (R-OK), Mike Johanns (R-NE), George LeMieux (R-FL), Joseph Lieberman (ID-CT), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), James Risch (R-ID), Mark Udall (D-CO) and Mark Warner (D-VA).

The hearing will be held on May 26th at 10:00 a.m. ET in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Room 226. The witnesses will include:

Jeffrey Liebman, Acting Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget
Ryan Alexander, President of Taxpayers for Common Sense
Charles J. Cooper, Partner at Cooper & Kirk, PLLC; Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel under President Reagan.