Line-item veto in the United States

In United States government, the line-item veto, or partial veto, is the power of an executive authority to nullify or cancel specific provisions of a bill, usually a budget appropriations bill, without vetoing the entire legislative package. The line-item vetoes are usually subject to the possibility of legislative override as are traditional vetoes.

Forty-four states—all except Indiana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Vermont—give their governors some form of line-item veto power. The Mayor of Washington, D.C. also has this power.

The Governor of Wisconsin is empowered with a sweeping line-item veto. Wisconsin governors have the power to strike out words, numbers, and even entire sentences from appropriations bills.

According to scholars, Wisconsin has used four types of extraordinary partial vetoes. The first, the "digit veto", was first used by Governor Patrick Lucey in 1973. In appropriation for $25 million, he vetoed the digit 2, resulting in an appropriation of $5 million. Just two years later, Lucey introduced the "editing veto". In this instance, the word "not" was removed in the phrase "not less than 50 percent", thus resulting in the opposite effect than desired by the legislature. In 1983, an even more extreme version, the "pick-a-letter" or "Vanna White veto" was introduced. Governor Anthony Earl edited a 121-word, five-sentence paragraph down to a one-sentence, 22-word paragraph to change an appeals process from the courts to the Public Service Commission. The final version, the "reduction veto", was introduced in 1993 by Governor Tommy Thompson. This resulted in a legislatively-appropriated amount being reduced arbitrarily by the governor. This unprecedented usage has resulted in eight lawsuits and numerous amendment proposals. In the first lawsuit, State ex. rel. Wisconsin Telephone Co. v. Henry, the Wisconsin Supreme Court granted absolute partial veto power to the Governor as long as a workable, complete law remained, stating the governor had "the right to pass independently on every separable piece of legislation in an appropriation bill." In his first two terms as governor, Thompson used 1,500 line-item vetoes to cancel a total of $150 million in spending; none of these vetoes were overridden. The only judicial limitation was Risser v. Klauser, which prohibited the "reduction veto", stating that "the constitution prohibits a writein veto of monetary figures which are not appropriation amounts." In 2009, a constitutional amendment was passed abolishing the "Vanna White veto". Yet, in 2011, Governor Scott Walker controversially crossed out 116 words in a pension-related section of the budget bill.

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