The President of the United States was briefly granted this power by the Line Item Veto Act of 1996, passed by Congress in order to control spending in supplementary clauses attached to appropriations bills that included vital spending measures, which had to be signed or vetoed in entirety. Under the line-item veto law, which took effect January 1, 1997, Bill Clinton became the first president empowered to veto specific spending or certain taxing provisions of legislation. The U.S. Constitution previously allowed a president to veto an entire bill only, perhaps containing many provisions of which he approved, in order to strike down one provision he opposed. It was used once before U.S. District Court Judge Thomas F. Hogan decided on February 12, 1998 that unilateral amendment or repeal of only parts of statutes violated the U.S. Constitution. This ruling was subsequently affirmed on June 25, 1998 by a 6-3 decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case Clinton v. City of New York.
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