Cite as: 524 U. S. 417 (1998)
Breyer, J., dissenting
Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act requirement that, when Congress enacts a "budget busting" appropriation bill, automatically reduces authorized spending for a host of federal programs in a pro rata way; (2) notes that cancellation of an item (say, a $2 billion item) would, absent the "lockbox" provision, neutralize (by up to $2 billion) the potential "budget busting" effects of other bills (and therefore potentially the President could cancel items in order to "save" the other programs from the mandatory cuts, resulting in no net deficit reduction); and (3) says that this "neutralization" will not occur (i. e., the pro rata reductions will take place just as if the $2 billion item had not been canceled), so that the canceled items truly provide additional budget savings over and above the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings regime. See generally H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 104-491, pp. 23-24 (1996) ("lock-box" provision included "to ensure that the savings from the cancellation of [items] are devoted to deficit reduction and are not available to offset a deficit increase in another law"). That is why the Government says that the Act provides a "lockbox," and why it seems fair to say that, despite the Act's use of the word "cancel," the Act does not delegate to the President the power truly to cancel a line item expenditure (returning the legal status quo to one in which the item had never been enacted). Rather, it delegates to the President the power to decide how to spend the money to which the line item refers—either for the specific purpose mentioned in the item, or for general deficit reduction via the "lockbox" feature.
These features of the law do not mean that the delegated power is, or is just like, a power to appoint property. But they do mean that it is not, and it is not just like, the repeal or amendment of a law, or, for that matter, a true line item veto (despite the Act's title). Because one cannot say that the President's exercise of the power the Act grants is, literally speaking, a "repeal" or "amendment," the fact that the Act's procedures differ from the Constitution's exclusive pro-
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