I. Line Item Legislation

THE PROBLEM
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.... In constructing a bill, Congress begins with a central item of legislation. In itself, this item is usually worth debating, but an endless number of ‘riders’ will then be attached to it. Riders include favors to lobbyists, pork-barrel spending items or earmarks, which could seldom have stood on their own merit. But when attached to a popular bill, they become an integral part of that bill and must be approved or disapproved as a part of the same package.
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.... The House and the Senate will pass their own versions of the bill, then both versions will proceed to a conference committee where its members may attach still more riders. After that, there will be no further method for separating the wasteful portions of the bill from the good.
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.... Both houses will now vote on the compromise legislation. If it passes in both, it will proceed to the President, who must likewise pass or veto the bill as a single unit, since a line-item veto is not currently allowable under the Constitution.
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.... The economic inefficiency of this arrangement is obvious and is a concern in itself, but other, equally worrisome issues are raised:

• When a bill must be taken or left as a single unit, without any sort of distinction between items, how will we know what our elected officials really stand for?
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• Which items represent their principles truly, and which have they signed onto reluctantly as a compromise?
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• Was there a hidden agenda?
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• Were some of the approved items intended as political poker chips? Accountability has been thoroughly compromised through the process.
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• And without a line-item veto, how will we know what our President really stands for?

.... In an effort to restore efficiency and accountability to both houses of Congress as well as the Presidency, a new concept should now be considered. It is a ‘supply-side’ version of the line-item veto, called Line-Item Legislation.
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LINE ITEM AUTHORSHIP
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.... Under Line Item Legislation, new bills would be drafted in line item form using a special new software template. For example HR 40, with 100 items, would have those items denoted HR 40.1, HR 40.2, etc, through HR 40.100. Under this technical distinction, each item would be considered a distinct, line-item ‘bill’ in itself. As such, the template will require each item to explain its source of revenue, jurisdiction, article of constitutionality, or any other component that would allow it to stand alone. Thus, it would be impermissible for these line-items to 'refer' to outside sources for further actionable definition. The total definition must appear in the bill itself and subject to review.
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.... Since these line-items would now be defined as ‘bills’, the larger body of legislation containing them would be referred to as the ‘legislative package’. or simply the 'package' As the package winds it way through committees and then to the floor, individual items could be dropped, added or modified:

Dropped items. For clarity’s sake, line items that are dropped would leave numerical gaps in the sub-sequence. For example, if HR 40.22 was dropped, a numerical gap would appear between line items 21 and 23. The deleted number, 40.22, would not be re-issued to another item that is added.
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Added items. If new line-item bills are added to the package, they would receive a newly generated number at the end of the sub-sequence. In the example above, the legislative package already included 100 items so a new item would become HR 40.101, etc.
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Modified items. If line-items are modified, they will receive a generation designator. For example, if HR 40.50 was modified, the modification would become HR 40.50.1, etc.

.... Each addition, deletion or modification would be tracked and recorded automatically by the computer system through the user ID of the responsible party, to be recorded separately for public scrutiny. This would provide a key element of transparency and accountability that would help curtail abuses, including stealth earmarking campaigns.
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.... When the completed package comes up for a vote, legislators will vote their support in line item fashion, electronically accepting the items they wish to support or else rejecting the ones they did not wish to support. If the legislative package is still as thick as a phone book (which will probably be the case initially) different party members or committees could cooperate by investigating different sections of the package and issuing recommendations for their colleagues. However, the very nature of the new procedure should quickly result in bills of a smaller, more manageable size, that are truer to definition.
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.... As a further measure (completely separate and optional), legislators could attach their reasons for supporting or not supporting each measure, for the purpose of accountability to their constituents. Already, the Constitution requires the president to give his reasons when he vetoes a bill, so this is similar in principle. These comments would be attached electronically in background records.
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.... After the voting in each house is completed, items that failed to achieve a majority of would be dropped from the package and would not be sent to the Conference Committee at all; items that obtained a majority in either house would proceed to the committee to be worked into a compatible version of the legislation.
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THE CONFERENCE COMMITTEE
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.... Under this plan, the House/Senate conference committee would operate under a new rule called ‘Realistic Parameters’:

If a line item is basically identical in both versions of the bill, it must be carried into the compromise legislation without further conditions or amendments, except to reconcile the basic language.
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If the same item is present but with different parameters, such as different funding amounts, the compromise version must adopt this measure and the compromise funding must fall within the bounds of those two parameters.
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In the committee, items that are present in one version of the bill but not the other become bargaining chips. Some, all, or none of them may be included in the final bill, as the committee negotiates a compromise. 

.... Items not present in either bill when it is sent into the committee cannot be added by the committee during this process. The committee members are delegates, operating within the authority of the voting of their respective house, and have no power to supersede that authority.
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.... When the committee has finished with the compromise bill, they will have one more task: to set the rules for the next round of voting. And for this, they will have two options:

1). The Legislative Option:
Under this option, the compromise legislation becomes a single, comprehensive bill, and is sent to both houses for approval, just as it is done today. If the bill passed in both houses, it will proceed to the President in the same form, to be signed or vetoed as a single unit, just as it would be done presently. This process would achieve all the benefits of the line-item veto but through Congress itself, without shifting the balance of power toward the presidency.
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2). The Executive Option:
Under this option, the compromise legislation would remain in its original line-item form but it would be returned to both houses on a ‘fast track’ status. Each house would vote on the compromise legislation as a package, having already expressed their views on the individual items in the earlier voting rounds. The intention for this round is to see whether they can reach an agreement and strike a compromise in the matter.

But remember that each item in the compromise package would remain a separate, line-item bill in itself. Therefore, if the package passes in both houses, it would proceed to the President in that form. The President would then have the ability to veto those parts of the bill that he is not willing to support, and to sign the rest into law. This would be done electronically, as in the the House or Senate, except that his reason for each veto must be attached for entry in the Congressional records, as the Constitution requires, for each and every veto he issues.

Since each line item is considered a separate bill in itself, this would not be a line-item veto, but would merely emulate it in purpose. Technically, it would be a standard veto of line-item bills, so it should easily pass a constitutional muster.

.... The Executive Option would be used only rarely, when Congress wished to force an issue with the President. For example, in 1995, the government was temporarily shut down over funding issues. Bills were sent to President Clinton to authorize spending that the Legislature considered reasonable, but they were vetoed because they did not include everything the president wished. Essentially he used the ‘packaging’ to win the debate and the Legislature was forced to concede. But if the Executive Option had been available, he would have been forced to justify each veto for each and every line item on its own, individual merit, without tying them to other issues, and the Legislature would have probably prevailed on the balance.
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THE PRESIDENT
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.... Under the Constitution, when the President receives a bill, he has just ten days to prepare and submit his response. To help in his decision, the special new software program would allow him to view the debate while it is still in progress. He would also see how much support each item received, who authored, modified or supported each part of the bill, or who refused to support which parts, and why (if their optional comments were included).
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.... If the Legislative option was used, the president would accept or reject the Legislation as a single unit, as at present. But even so, there is no particular reason why he would not be allowed to attach comments to explain his acceptance or misgivings over individual items, at his own option.
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.... If the Executive option was authorized in the conference committee, he could accept or reject individual items as he saw fit, using the same special software. And of course, the Constitution requires him to explain his veto over every item that is rejected.

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.... In either case, Congress could still override his vetoes with a 2/3 majority.
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THE RESULTS
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.... In this way, the folks back home would know exactly where every politician stands on every issue, so that no one could hide behind the cloak of a ‘reluctant compromise.’ There would be no more confusion over voting records at election time.
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.... There would be an end to earmarking since authorship and modification would be automatically tracked and subject to public scrutiny, and because those items could be easily singled out and voted down. This would incentivize other legislators to reign them in, or else penalize them for supporting them, by exposing them to the same public awareness. A new balance of power, with the legislature itself, would thus be established.
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.... In the same way, there would be an end to wasteful or corrupt spending since no politician would be able to hide their spending or their support for the excesses of others. Spending could only proceed on the basis of true merit and priority, in order to receive wide enough support to appear reasonable to voters from all parts of the country.
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.... Best of all, this entire procedure could be adopted under the existing Constitutional structure without the need for a Constitutional amendment. Congress need only set the rules for it, and it is done:

“... Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings...”

(U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 5, Clause 2)

.... In effect, Line Item Legislation would expand the proven effectiveness of the balance of powers doctrine, but would do so within Congress itself, between its own members. It would tackle the problem up front at it’s source, through the legislature, rather than allowing the President to address the problem in its final resolution through a line-item veto.

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To proceed to the next section, on Line Item Computer Power, click here.