In his State of the Union address, President Bush once again proposed the line-item veto to Congress as a way to reduce deficit spending. While Bush is touting this "tool of fiscal discipline," in reality unchecked use of the line-item veto by the president would transfer significant power and control from the legislative to the executive branch and effectively allow the president to substitute his spending priorities directly for that of Congress. The proposal would give Bush similar, but not identical, powers to those granted to President Clinton that only achieved minimal savings. Clinton was given use of the line-item veto in 1996 by a Congress concerned over its own lack of fiscal discipline. It granted the president authority to "cancel discretionary appropriations, any new item of direct spending (entitlements and other mandatory programs), and certain limited tax benefits," according to a May 2005 report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS). In 1998 the Supreme Court deemed the Line Item Veto Act unconstitutional, because it violated the constitutional requirement that legislation be passed by both houses of Congress and then presented in its entirety to the president for signature or veto. Bush's line-item veto proposal would be considerably weaker than the version struck down by the Supreme Court. It would require Congress to cast an up-or-down vote on a package of rescissions proposed by the president to spending or tax bills previously passed by Congress. In order to skirt the constitutional problems, Congress would be required to vote within 10 days of the president having proposed such a package. Like reconciliation bills, the package from the president would not be subject to amendment and would be protected from filibuster in the Senate. Unlike a regular presidential veto, which requires a two-thirds majority in Congress to override, a simple majority would be required to adopt the president's changes. Similar proposals have been floated in the past, but have been beaten back in both chambers most often by congressional appropriators. Some congressional supporters are hopeful that Bush's proposal will gain momentum in Congress now, in light of the corruption scandals involving former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham and lobbyist Jack Abramoff, as well as public outcry over the transportation bill passed last year that was chocked full of thousands of earmarks. Bush has made it quite clear that he would like to reinstate the line-item veto. An anonymous White House official recently told the New York Times, that the President will ask Congress for a line-item veto power as early as this week. According to a CRS report and other independent analyses, however, possible savings from the line-item veto are relatively small. A series of 1995 House hearings on the Line Item Veto Act included testimony from OMB and CBO officials that an line-item veto would not have a huge impact on reducing the deficit. CBO Director Robert Reischauer cautioned that, at times, governors, many of whom have line-item veto powers because of state balanced-budget requirements, used the line-item veto to insert their own spending priorities instead of reducing state spending by the legislature. He alluded to the same concern on a national level, where the president could use this power to further his own political agenda rather than cutting unnecessary spending. CRS estimates that giving President Bush this power for FY 2007 would end up achieving approximately $1.5 billion in annual savings, a miniscule reduction of the deficit, currently projected to reach upwards of $400 billion. This hardly seems worth the risks of altering the balance of power among the three branches of the federal government. Similar to other initiatives and budget process changes trumpeted by the president, the proposal is little more that a power grab, put forward under the guise of fiscal restraint but whose real affect would be increased control over the budget process for the White House.