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Breyer, J., dissenting
efit, estimating annual "value" of benefit, in terms of revenue loss, at about $20 million) and Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997, § 1701, 111 Stat. 1099 (identifying only 79 "limited tax benefits" subject to cancellation in the entire tax statute).
(5) Because the "tax benefit" provisions are part and parcel of the budget provisions, and because the Act in defining them, focuses upon "revenue-losing" tax provisions, 2 U. S. C. § 691e(9)(A)(i) (1994 ed., Supp. II), it regards "tax benefits" as if they were a special kind of spending, namely spending that puts back into the pockets of a small group of taxpayers, money that "baseline" tax policy would otherwise take from them. There is, therefore, no need to consider this provision as if it represented a delegation of authority to the President, outside the budget expenditure context, to set major policy under the federal tax laws. But cf. Skinner v. Mid-America Pipeline, supra, at 222-223 (no "different and stricter" nondelegation doctrine in the taxation context). Still less does approval of the delegation in this case, given the long history of Presidential discretion in the budgetary context, automatically justify the delegation to the President of the authority to alter the effect of other laws outside that context.
The upshot is that, in my view, the "limited tax benefit" provisions do not differ enough from the "spending" provisions to warrant a different "nondelegation" result.
V
In sum, I recognize that the Act before us is novel. In a sense, it skirts a constitutional edge. But that edge has to do with means, not ends. The means chosen do not amount literally to the enactment, repeal, or amendment of a law. Nor, for that matter, do they amount literally to the "line item veto" that the Act's title announces. Those means do not violate any basic separation-of-powers principle. They do not improperly shift the constitutionally foreseen balance of power from Congress to the President. Nor, since
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