COMMENT Whenever a US president wants to signal fiscal resolve, he proposes a budget "line item veto". George W. Bush is no exception, having this week called on the senate to give him such powers. But even assuming it got past the Supreme Court, which in 1998 struck it down as unconstitutional, the measure would have a negligible impact on America's troubling fiscal outlook.
Against a projected deficit of at least $300bn (£165bn) this year on a total US federal budget of almost $2,800bn, the total cost of congressional "pork barrel" items, or earmarks, is unlikely to exceed $50bn. Even if Mr Bush vetoed every single earmark, a strategy that would alienate most of his Republican allies on the Hill, there would only be peanuts to show for it. It seems likelier the White House is resuscitating the veto as a way to appear fiscally responsible to those alienated by Mr Bush's budgetary indiscipline.
