Can a Band-Aid Be Weaponized? Yes.

I am old enough to remember when, back in the early to mid-nineties, the Republicans campaigned for, and eventually got a line item veto for the President of the United States.

The selling point was to rein in so-called "pork barrel spending," that is, government appropriations tacked on to legislation as part of the sausage-making endemic to our welfare state. Since the grand larceny that is the welfare state proper dwarfs such relatively petty theft, the measure by itself is cosmetic absent its use to keep a conversation about backing out of the welfare state going.

(The Supreme Court eventually overturned the Line Item Veto Act.)

I recall favoring a line item veto then, and until recently (read: yesterday) would have no problem with such a measure, so long as it were part of a broader program to return government to its proper scope: Ultimately, economics and the state must be separated in the same fashion as church and state. That achievement would render a line item veto superfluous.

But yesterday, I was curious about how Ron DeSantis got his legislature to ramrod through legislation affecting Disney -- a major political donor -- that it had to turn around and redo because it was so poorly conceived.

And that's how I learned the following:

Bill Clinton, using the line item veto. (Image by Ralph Alswang (White House), via Wikimedia Commons, public domain, per Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 105.)

State Sen. Linda Stewart, a Democrat representing a chunk of Orange County where many Disney employees reside, says "my way or the highway" is just DeSantis' "M.O." in his dealings with Republicans in the Legislature.

"'I want this, you better give it to me,'" she said, riffing on DeSantis' style. "'I want this, do you want your appropriations that's in the budget that I haven't approved yet? OK then, if you want it, you better vote yes. Do you want the bills you championed in the legislative session and I haven't signed them yet? You want them vetoed, then OK, vote against me, and you'll see what happens.'" I was speaking with Stewart on Wednesday, after she'd voted against the bill to dissolve Reedy Creek. She said she was worried about the fate of her own bills now. [bold added]

The part in bold reminded me of the line-item veto, which it turns out, Florida has, and DeSantis brags about using.

At its best, the line item veto can restore a measure of sanity to wheeling and dealing run amok, if the tool is in the right hands. At its worst, it is not just a half-measure, which would be bad enough; it is ripe for abuse.

44 states have some form of the line-item veto. Maybe that's not such a good thing.

-- CAV