7 ms·

The president could threaten to veto any bill that bundled unrelated issues unless it was split and passed as independent bills.

• mkopinsky 15y ago
  But then how will they pass earmarks?!
  • ajross 15y ago
    Ragging 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 ago
  The 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.