This special veto, declared unconstitutional after 16 months, allowed a president to nullify certain lines of spending within a bill but leave others.

• A. Proclamation
• B. Pocket veto
• C. Line-item veto
• D. Veto

Answer: (C)

The key idea here is line-item veto power—the ability to strike out specific spending items within a budget bill while leaving the rest of the bill intact. This is exactly what the description describes: the president can zero out particular appropriations without vetoing the entire bill.

This power was controversial and was ruled unconstitutional because it would let the president rewrite laws by removing only parts of a bill, bypassing Congress’s role in crafting and approving legislation. The Constitution requires that a bill as a whole be presented to the president and either signed or vetoed; altering specific lines would upset the balance of lawmaking between the two chambers and the executive.

So the best fit is the line-item veto: it targets spending lines, not the entire measure, and its constitutional challenge explains why such a tool isn’t recognized as valid. The other terms describe broader or different actions (a proclamation’s just an official declaration, a pocket veto happens when Congress adjourns and the president doesn’t act on a bill, and a veto generally rejects an entire bill), none of which match the described scenario.