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As I understand it, the NDAA is an annual act specifying the DoD's budget, so bad things would happend (TM) if he had vetoed it outright because there was a rea
by newhouseb 15y ago
As I understand it, the NDAA is an annual act specifying the DoD's budget, so bad things would happend (TM) if he had vetoed it outright because there was a reasonable expectation that the DoD would have a budget by a certain date. There aren't the same expectations around CISPA, so a veto may be more realistic.
I don't mean to excuse or justify any acts on behalf of the president, just to point out that the surrounding circumstances are a lot different.
- jonhohle 15y agoThey probably shouldn't couple too unrelated things then.
- newhouseb 15y agoYeah, I really wish there was a test that either the founding fathers provided in the constitution or the supreme court found in court precedent to determine if two components of a bill belong together or separately (maybe if both clauses could be witheld without the support of the other). There is way too much political gamesmanship around packaging bills together in our system today.
- btilly 15y agoI would personally support a Constitutional amendment putting an upper limit on the length of any bill passed by Congress.
- freehunter 15y agoCain was roundly mocked for suggesting that. I think the better way of saying it (this is my opinion) would be "I'd support a length limit on the clauses in a bill". The problem with legalese in bills is, Congress has to specifically outline every use case of every law. If it's not clear in the law, a judge can overthrow it. What was that case the other week where the judge threw out part of a law saying "if Congress wanted this to be part of the law, they should have specifically stated that"? This is why bills have to be long. I would personally support a Constitutional amendment putting an upper limit on the amount of attachments placed in any bill passed by Congress.
- ajross 15y agoNo doubt. But that's hardly something the executive branch can control.
- luriel 15y agoThe president could threaten to veto any bill that bundled unrelated issues unless it was split and passed as independent bills.
- mkopinsky 15y agoBut then how will they pass earmarks?!
- ajross 15y agoRagging on "earmarks" is dumb, you need to stop that. There are two branches of government involved in making a budget. Normally, the exective branch "writes a budget" and sends it to congress to vote on. Sometimes congress wants to make its own decision as to what gets funded. Why is the former "good" and the latter "bad"? Obviously what you really want to complain about is "bad" spending in general, for which both branch are guilty. But the problem with that is that there isn't that much "bad" spending. Cutting anyone hurts someone somewhere, and those people vote. So instead political wonks like to complain about process issues as a proxy, so they flip out about "earmarks" instead of actual policy. Yawn.
- tptacek 15y agoThe President can do that, and when the American people realize that the issue the President is taking a stand on is far less important to them than the rest of the bill (for instance: far less important to them than the timely payment of wages to soldiers and their families), the people would simply punish the President and the President's party, removing them from office and replacing them with the very people the President is taking a stand against. The check-and-balance situation at play here is why the notion of a "line item veto" is so controversial. The legislative branch of the government likes that the executive really has to mean it if it wants to shoot down a provision the legislature voted in favor of. In this case, no part of the NDAA was interesting enough to not pay soldiers over. A previous comment on this thread is correct: the authority Internet people were freaking out about came not from the NDAA, but from the AUMF.