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What's old can always be new again. That was President Bush's instinct this week when he dusted off a 40-watt version of the line-item veto and pronounced it a wondrous tool to curb wasteful spending.

The idea, a beefed-up rescissions plan that Congress has kicked around for years, would give the president the chance to cancel specific spending from statutes he's already signed, so long as Congress votes to approve the cuts on a fast-track schedule.

In his budget early this year, Bush told lawmakers that he would seek a more unilaterally endowed version of a veto, one that would permit him to suspend or defer spending he didn't like, without having to go back to Congress for its OK. But the Office of Management and Budget conceded this week that Bush's preferred model never caught on among lawmakers.

Why? Because they were mindful that the Supreme Court in 1998 rejected as unconstitutional a similarly muscular line-item-veto approach -- a version passed by Congress in 1996 and used in 82 instances by President Clinton to save a total of what turned out to be a symbolic $600 million.

Bush also had trouble ginning up congressional enthusiasm for a new unilateral power because members of his party wondered if he should get some practice in vetoing a whole bill before securing the chance to veto sentences in legislation he has already signed. In more than five years, Bush has never officially exercised his veto clout (although the White House argues that his veto threats succeeded in shaping legislation to his liking).

In a tough midterm election year -- during which the majority party has donned a hair shirt over its own record of enlarged government, $400 billion deficits, and a record number of earmarks -- Bush has hastily wrapped his arms around a budget-trimming mechanism already endorsed by a bipartisan assemblage of lawmakers. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who voted along with 18 other Democratic senators (and 50 Republicans) for the 1996 version, eagerly affirmed that Bush's new plan is akin to his own proposal lofted during the 2004 presidential contest.

At least two of the Senate Republicans sponsoring Bush's rescissions model happen to be weighing presidential races in 2008: Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz (who tried as long ago as 1990 to get the Senate to adopt a similar rescission plan).

In the House, the GOP leadership is on board. The Bush proposal, originally introduced by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., had 72 co-sponsors by midweek, including two Democrats.

However, such congressional support doesn't guarantee enactment, for several reasons.

Lawmakers eager to retain their seats plan to be in session less than they are on the campaign trail this year; the bipartisan competition to balance the budget that made a line-item veto possible a decade ago is absent in 2006, and many Democrats would like to weaken -- not strengthen -- Bush's sway over Congress in his final years. Moreover, even if the public swoons over the notion of a line-item veto, the reality could be a letdown.

The record of Clinton's short-lived line-item veto and studies of governors' use of similar clout suggest that resulting savings are puny and that, in practice, such authority can actually bloat spending. Louis Fisher, an expert on separation of powers who was then an analyst with the Congressional Research Service, studied the impact of the line-item veto on spending before and after the 1996 law.

He concluded that presidents are more disposed to browbeat lawmakers into supporting White House spending policies by threatening to cancel members' pet projects than to clear-cut billions of dollars from the bottom line.

In House testimony in 2000, Fisher said, "The record is quite clear that the exercise of item-veto authority by the president is unlikely to produce substantial reductions in federal spending. The likely effect will be to spend more money on programs that the president wants and less money on programs that lawmakers want."

In practice, Clinton found wielding his short-lived veto a headache. Lawmakers who lost their favored projects were furious -- overriding 38 of Clinton's cancellations -- and no clear evidence showed that they modified their spending behavior. Bush's "lite" version of the line-item veto would require congressional approval every time he pulls out his scissors, a hurdle Clinton did not face.

"Yes, the politics can be hard," conceded OMB Director Joshua Bolten this week. "And the president understood that going into this."

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