Althouse: "Vetoes Have Gone Out Of Style."

May 9, 2013

"Vetoes Have Gone Out Of Style."

5 reasons why.

25 comments:

Lem Vibe Bandit said...: Veto doesn't go well with "forward", "hope and change".; 5/9/13, 1:09 PM
Nonapod said...: "Bills have gotten bigger," Ritchie says. "They bundle lots of issues, and the president is loath to veto parts of it."

Bundling as a mean of obfuscating is certainly one of the more pernicious and reprehensible issues in modern politics. But the shear size and scope of certain bills can be problematic even without unrelated riders. Nightmares like the Affordable Healthcare Act are a product of our times. I wonder if the people who are assembling and championing such bills ever feel a twinge of guilt? If you have to hide something because it might be objectionable by a majority of the American people, do you realize that you're lying? Are you so certain that you know best? Or do you care at all?

I almost always prefer government gridlock, since inaction is almost always better than action (unless that action happens to be reducing the size of government, which it never is these days).; 5/9/13, 1:10 PM
damikesc said...: I want a President who will veto a bill that is simply too big for anybody wih a life to read and comprehend.

If a bill exceeds 100 pages, it is likely terrible and shouldn't be passed anyways.

Heck, make it 50.; 5/9/13, 1:15 PM
Brew Master said...: I say 10 pages.; 5/9/13, 1:17 PM
Nonapod said...: Ideally if a piece of legislation can't be explained clearly and concisely in terms of its purpose, scope, and cost in a few short minutes to a normal person, then it should never be passed.; 5/9/13, 1:18 PM
RecChief said...: I see nothing wrong with 'low production' from Congress. Typically, the products from their production turn out to be unproductive.; 5/9/13, 1:20 PM
RecChief said...: The bundling of several issues in one bill leads to challengers in elections being able to claim that incumbents voted against "The Up with Kids and Seniors Act" or some such nonsense.; 5/9/13, 1:24 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: Maybe its for the best?

No veto of monstrosities like Obamacare will lead to a peoples veto; otherwise known as repeal.; 5/9/13, 1:25 PM
X said...: Obama vetoes less than anyone! Vetoes must be square!

/npr; 5/9/13, 1:31 PM
edutcher said...: It's not that they're out of style, it's that Choom hasn't got the guts to face an override.; 5/9/13, 1:41 PM
Unknown said...: "Basically, what Bush was doing was item-vetoing stuff," says Cary Covington, a University of Iowa political scientist. "Now, Obama's doing the same thing."

This cannot be true.

Obama is the anti-Bush.

Everything Bush did was evil and twisted.; 5/9/13, 1:54 PM
Lyssa said...: Maybe its for the best?

No veto of monstrosities like Obamacare will lead to a peoples veto; otherwise known as repeal.

That idea might have given me some hope, if Obama hadn't just been re-elected.; 5/9/13, 2:09 PM
MadisonMan said...: A President should also automatically veto anything with an acronym for a name.; 5/9/13, 2:10 PM
Methadras said...: Line Item Vetoes would change all of that. Oh wait, they are unconstitutional, yet may be warranted especially in the case of ever growing page counts on bills looking to become law. Catch 22.; 5/9/13, 2:11 PM
lemondog said...: Government is excellent at creating.......bloat....

Every 5 years (to keep them busy and less meddlesome) congress should review all federal laws for relevancy, redundancy, complexity, sloppiness and which are just plain a**hole stupid.

There should a ceiling on the number of laws allowed to exist at any one time.; 5/9/13, 2:21 PM
Anonymous said...: Let's keep this long term trend of government growth going folks. We're not 'great' if we don't.; 5/9/13, 2:21 PM
Left Bank of the Charles said...: The divided Congress is the real reason. A lot of vetoes are bills the other side puts up so that the President has to veto, and the other side can run against the veto.

Harry Reid has largely protected the current President from that type of bill.

The other major type of veto is the kind that Congress thinks it has the votes to override. That's not realistic in a divided Congress, so those bills never get passed.; 5/9/13, 2:47 PM
Anonymous said...: What we could use would be a good Supreme Court decision explaining, in words adapted to the meanest intelligence, that when a President signs a bill into law, he's signed the whole thing into law just as it's written, and any words he says while he's doing it are legally meaningless unless he happens to be reading aloud from the bill.; 5/9/13, 2:51 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: That idea might have given me some hope, if Obama hadn't just been re-elected.

If you apply the logic behind Obamas political implementation of the sequester...
The pain of Obamacare has not been felt yet.; 5/9/13, 2:53 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: What we could use would be a good Supreme Court decision...

You been reading too much Taranto and not enough Esperanto ;); 5/9/13, 3:02 PM
Amartel said...: Government by consensus.; 5/9/13, 3:11 PM
Amartel said...: In the global warming sense of the word.; 5/9/13, 3:11 PM
sean said...: Reading this article, and having learned from Prof. Althouse that lawyers are people of integrity, guided by conscience and the law, I am a little puzzled about why the ABA complained about President Bush's signing statements, but not President Obama's. Maybe another lawyer can explain.; 5/9/13, 3:15 PM
pdug said...: "obama is like bush" is missing; 5/9/13, 3:45 PM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: Bills have gotten bigger

Balls have gotten smaller.; 5/9/13, 7:31 PM