Obama on the Line Item Veto

Soon I will have the link to the transcript of Barak Obama's speech at the DNC convention, because I want to point to one particular part of it that really bothered me.

Obama talked about (and got large cheers) when he said that the main way that he would pay for all of his ideas is by going through the federal budget line by line, and eliminating items that he didn't agree with.

This sounds very much like having the power of line-item veto, which he refused to give to President Bush. Line-item veto also was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, who said that it violated the idea of separation of powers, and gave too much legislative power to the executive. And he didn't propose to just do this with new bills- he wants to go through all the laws passed in our nation, and unilaterally change them. He wants to disregard the collective wisdom of our Congress, ignore the compromises and struggles that went into place to put those budgets in place, and on his will alone shape the budget.

Obama didn't care or know that this impulse violates the spirit of our Constitution. Either he has less knowledge of the powers of the executive than my senior high school students, or he doesn't care, because he believes he is not bound by the laws of our nation. He wants to act as the legislative and executive part of our government- he doesn't want to follow the Constitution, protect our country, and serve as an executive- he wants to pass laws, pass programs, make budgets, and then make sure we all follow his decrees.

The way that he described what he wanted to do with the budget should chill you- Barack Obama's budgeting ideas violates the very spirit of our nation.