§193. Section 1023 – Cancellation Disapproval

Line Item Veto Act of 1996

Section 1023

TITLE X—IMPOUNDMENT CONTROL
PART C—LINE ITEM VETO
cancellation effective unless disapproved

Sec. 1023.[1]  (a) In General.—The cancellation of any dollar amount of discretionary budget authority, item of new direct spending, or limited tax benefit[2] shall take effect upon receipt in the House of Representatives and the Senate of the special message notifying the Congress of the cancellation. If a disapproval bill for such special message is enacted into law, then all cancellations disapproved in that law shall be null and void and any such dollar amount of discretionary budget authority, item of new direct spending, or limited tax benefit shall be effective as of the original date provided in the law to which the cancellation applied.

(b) Commensurate Reductions in Discretionary Budget Authority.—Upon the cancellation of a dollar amount of discretionary budget authority under subsection (a), the total appropriation for each relevant account of which that dollar amount is a part shall be simultaneously reduced by the dollar amount of that cancellation.

 

 

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COUNSEL NOTES
Endnotes

[1] This section was originally classified to the U.S. Code at 2 U.S.C. 691b (section omitted from code). 

[2] The definition of “limited tax benefit” is set forth in section 1026(9) of this Act. Clause 9 of rule XXI of the Rules of the House also defines this term for purposes of the point of order set forth in that clause.

CODIFICATION

Section 1023 was codified as section 691b in title 2 of the U.S. Code, Pub. L. 93–344, title X, §1023, as added by section 2 of Pub. L. 104–130, §2(a), Apr. 9, 1996, 110 Stat. 1202, provided that cancellations were to be effective unless disapproved.

Joint Statement of Managers on the Line Item Veto Act of 1996

The Conference Report on the Line Item Veto Act of 1996 (H. Rept. 104-491):

Sec. 1023. Cancellation effective unless disapproved

Upon receipt of the President’s special message in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, each dollar amount of discretionary budget authority, item of new direct spending, or limited tax benefit identified in the special message is immediately canceled. The cancellation of a dollar amount of discretionary budget authority automatically rescinds the funds. With respect to an item of new direct spending or a limited tax benefit, the cancellation renders the provision void, such that the obligation of the United States has no legal force or effect.
The cancellation of a dollar amount of discretionary budget authority, an item of new direct spending, or a limited tax benefit is nullified only if a disapproval bill is enacted into law. The conferees intend that, if a disapproval bill is enacted, the President shall expend the funds or implement a provision as originally directed by Congress. The effective date for any cancellation disapproved in a disapproval bill is the original date provided in the law to which the cancellation applied.

Section 1023(b) provides that, when a dollar amount of discretionary budget authority canceled by the President is part of a larger sum in an appropriation law, such cancellation will result in the commensurate reduction of each relevant appropriation ac-count by that dollar amount. These reductions are a necessary conforming change to ensure that all sums required to be spent by the appropriation law accurately reflect the cancellation contained in the President’s message. This is a technical mechanism to maintain mathematical consistency and does not grant the President any additional authority.
To illustrate the mechanism for commensurate reductions in discretionary budget authority the conferees provide the following example:

The FY ’96 Agriculture Appropriations Act (Public Law 104-37) appropriates a total of $421,929,000 for agricul-tural research and education, of which $49,846,000 is made available for special grants for agriculture research. The conference report accompanying this law contains a table that allocates the $49,846,000 total into lesser dol-lar amounts all of which correspond to individual research programs. This table includes, for example, a $3,758,000 allocation for: “Wood Utilization Research (OR, MS, NC, MN, ME, MI)”.
Assuming the President exercised the authority to can-cel this $3,758,000, this dollar amount would be automati-cally subtracted from the $421,929,000 total and from the $49,846,000 earmark. If the $3,758,000 was included in any other larger dollar amount in the appropriation law, then all such other dollar amounts would likewise be sim-ultaneously reduced by $3,758,000.

[U.S. Congress, Joint Explanatory Statement on the Committee of Conference on S.4; (H. Rept. 104-491), Committee on Government Reform, House of Representatives, 104th Congress, 2d Session, Washington D.C. 1996.]

LEGISLATIVE HISTORY NOTES
PUBLIC LAWS

Pub. L. 93–344, title X. Section §1023 was added to the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 by Section 2 of the Line Item Veto Act (Pub. L. 104–130, 110 Stat. 1200).

 

 

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Section 1022 (ICA-LIV)

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Section 1024 (ICA-LIV)

 

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