President Bush and Senator Kerry’s rare agreement in support of a line-item veto signals widespread backing for the idea, and there’s plenty of pork in the federal budget that could stand vetoing. But there’s also more to this line-item veto issue than meets the eye, and our own sense is that if the support for this idea is as broad-based as its backers claim, then the best way for the president to seek the line-item veto authority isn’t via mere legislation but by going all the way for a Constitutional amendment.

“It’s no secret that President Bush and I don’t agree on much, but I fully support giving him the line-item veto. I’m going to introduce this legislation, Congress should immediately pass it, and I want to see President Bush use this veto pen to get tough on wasteful spending. Under this Republican-led House and Senate, pork barrel spending has gone through the roof,” Mr. Kerry said yesterday, mentioning money wasted on the “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska and “research to enhance the flavor of roasted peanuts.”

New Yorkers have a particular interest in this. The last time Congress passed a line-item veto, it was April 1996, and the Republicans led by Newt Gingrich gave President Clinton the power to nix specific tax breaks or line-item expenditures without torpedoing an entire bill. Mr. Clinton promptly used the power to veto a section of a law that was designed to save New York State $2.6 billion that it would otherwise have owed the federal Department of Health and Human Services. The City of New York sued, challenging the constitutionality of the line item veto law. And in a 1998 opinion, Clinton, President of the United States et al. v. City of New York et al, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled by a six to three majority in New York’s favor, finding that the Line Item Veto Act violates Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution. That section is known as the Presentment Clause, for the language, “Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a law, be presented to the President of the United States: If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it.”

The six justices in the majority in Clinton et al. v. City of New York et al. include five – Stevens, Ginsburg, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas, and Ginsburg – who are still on the bench. The Great Scalia said the line item veto law was constitutional. The Bush administration says its new draft of the line item veto law passes constitutional muster because a presidential “veto” under the law doesn’t actually eliminate the spending, it just sends the “vetoed” spending back to Congress for an up-or-down vote. Well, Harriet Miers might buy that argument, but it strikes us that it’d be a tough one to get past justices who were actually confirmed. Maybe the Bush camp is hoping that Roberts and Alito will side with Scalia and that one of the five justices who voted against the line-item veto last time around will be swayed by the minor modifications to abandon their defense of the Presentment Clause. After all, the argument goes, it’s the Congress voting to give up its own privileges – they are entitled to some deference.

Well, it may be worth a shot. But there are a lot of ironies to savor here besides Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry taking the same side. For example, the position taken by Mayor Giuliani in the lawsuit that saved the city all that money would also have the effect of robbing from Mr. Giuliani the line-item veto power in the event that Mr. Giuliani ever makes it to the Oval Office as President Giuliani. Likewise, Senator Clinton is now put in the position of either having to make it easier for President Bush to eliminate the pork-barrel projects she is putting in the budget for her New York campaign contributors – or making it harder for herself to balance the budget if she ever becomes the second President Clinton. Mrs. Clinton has loyalties on both sides of the last constitutional test case of the line item veto – that is, she has a connection both to President Clinton and to the City of New York.

The way for a true advocate of the line item veto to exercise some executive leadership would be to write it right into the Constitution. Then the president’s veto power wouldn’t rest at the pleasure of Congress but would represent a decision by the people to adjust the legislative mechanism so as to give the president more power to restrain spending. We’re not convinced so far that such an amendment is necessary, especially given Mr. Bush’s reluctance to exercise the veto authority he already has under the Constitution. The president has a lot of power already under our constitutional system, and giving him more would be a ploy by Congress to weasel out of its responsibility for the wasteful spending it has been appropriating. In the meantime, Mr. Bush can look tough on spending by supporting a line-item veto without actually having to issue any genuine old-fashioned vetoes and without being able actually to win over the Senate to reining in entitlement spending. The old saying is that when Washington starts talking about bipartisanship, taxpayers should watch their wallets. The news of Senator Kerry and Mr. Bush backing a line-item veto is a case in point.