Question

What did Congress authorize in 1996, which was later declared unconstitutional?

Answer 1

The Line Item Veto

Explanation:

The way the budgetary process works in the US was designed by the Founding Fathers to be inherently inefficient and tedious. But it's vital because the negotiations that result are important to achieve the best budget possible, given the state of the government at that time.

The way the process works is that the Executive Branch (the President) sends a request to the Legislative Branch (Congress - one each to the House of Representatives and to the Senate). The two branches of the Legislative Branch take the President's draft, add some things, delete some things, and end up with their own draft.

The those 2 drafts of the budget go to a committee and the members there start to work on taking the 2 budgets and, through discussion and compromise, come up with one budget. That budget is then sent to the President who can sign it or veto it - and here's the important part - in its entirety.

So what happens when a President sees things in the budget he doesn't like? He can make the decision that what is in there that he likes is more important than what he doesn't like, or he can decide there are too many things he doesn't like and so says "no" - or vetoes - the entire thing.

The Line Item Veto law was passed as a tool to allow Presidents to veto certain lines of the budget - essentially to get rid of the stuff he didn't like. The law then said Congress had the power to put the stuff back in (but with a 2/3 majority vote) and the President had the power to reject that through his veto power, etc.

As soon as the Line Item Veto law was passed, in 1996, it was sent up for judicial review. The Supreme Court affirmed the findings of the Federal District Court of New York that the law was unconstitutional because it shifted the balance of power too strongly to the Executive Branch.

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/02/13/us/us-judge-rules-line-item-veto-act-unconstitutional.html
http://uspolitics.about.com/od/presidenc1/a/line_item_veto.htm