Pocket veto

“ But the veto power, as it stands in the Constitution, goes far beyond this object. It is, in effect, a power in the executive department to forbid all action in any other. It is true that, notwithstanding the veto of the President, a law may still be passed, provided two-thirds of each house of congress agree therein; but it is obvious that the cases are very rare, in which such concurrence could be expected. In cases of plain necessity or policy the veto would not be applied; and those of doubtful necessity or policy would rarely be carried by a majority so large as two-thirds of each house. ”

“ For the reasons fully stated in my last annual message I repeat my recommendation that Congress propose an amendment to that provision of the Constitution which prescribes the formalities for the enactment of laws, whereby, in respect to bills for the appropriation of public moneys, the Executive may be enabled, while giving his approval to particular items, to interpose his veto as to such others as do not commend themselves to his judgment. ”

“ It is in substance his own scheme of a “Fiscal Corporation,” transferred into the Treasury of the United States, and divested of private stockholders. Let me assure gentlemen that their character for consistency will not suffer by supporting this measure.
And yet, with the example of this administration before their eyes, the Whigs dread executive influence so much that they wish to abolish the veto power, lest the President may be able to draw within its vortex all the legislative powers of Congress! What a world we live in! ”

“ The veto has never been allowed to seek out single features in the acts submitted to the executive eye, and even such men as Madison and Monroe, stiff and peremptory as they were in the assertion of their conscientious opinions, and in the performance of what they conceived to be their constitutional duty, and much as they disapproved of stretching the Constitution to such uses as national aid to local and inland improvements, were fain to let an occasional gift of money for such purposes pass unforbidden rather than throw out the general appropriation bill to which it was tacked. ”

“ It does more. It is bad to revive the worst decision in our history; but this veto practically sets aside one of the best decisions in our history. I refer to the case of M’Culloch v. Bank of Maryland, where our great magistrate, Chief Justice Marshall, expended all his marvellous talent in expounding the powers of Congress under the Constitution. ”

“ There's a smarter way to handle taxpayer dollars, and it begins with granting the President a tool called the line-item veto. A line-item veto would allow the President to remove wasteful spending from a bill while preserving the rest of the legislation. Forty-three of our Nation's 50 governors have line-item veto authority, and they have used that authority to remove needless spending from otherwise good bills. ”

“ God speed you in any measure which will serve the country, and preserve or restore harmony and concert between the departments of government. An executive veto of a Bank of the United States, after the sad experience of late years, is an event which was not anticipated by the political friends of the President ”

“ We can hardly assume that a President would invite further congressional action by a return of a bill with his veto to a secretary or other officer of the House concerned, during its adjournment, if, by retention of the bill without signing, he could make the veto absolute. ”

“ Is it not most extraordinary that a bill should be returned with the veto from the President on the ground that it provides for four million people, when, restricted in its operations as it is, and having been in operation since March last, it has never had under its control a hundred thousand? ”

“ They create nothing. Their veto is neither revisory nor corrective. It is merely obstructive. It is, as I have said, a simple blunt negation, oftentimes necessarily spoken without discrimination against a good bill because of a single bad clause in it. In such a contest between origination and negation origination must always win, or government must stand still. ”

“ We may, indeed, if insensible to our own rights and independence, give an undue influence to the veto power; but we shall never produce this effect if we confine ourselves to our own appropriate duties, and leave the Executive to perform his. This example will never, I think, be imitated by any party in the country, and we shall then never again be tempted to make war on the veto power. ”

“ The framers of the Constitution intended that the veto power should be a check, though not an absolute one, upon hasty or unwise legislation. The President may cause a bill to fail by neither signing nor vetoing it during the last ten days of a session. ”

“ It leaked out from the executive chambers that a veto message was being prepared. The Governor had ten days in which to veto the bill, otherwise it became a law by default. It was on the afternoon of the last day, shortly after the Senate had re-assembled, when one of my attorneys, Creed Haymond, said in a musing way, “If the Senate could only be induced to adjourn we would not have to worry about a veto message. Then it could not be delivered to anyone, and by twelve o’clock to-night would become a law.” ”

“ The power to exercise a legislative veto is not the power to write new law without bicameral approval or Presidential consideration. The veto must be authorized by statute, and may only negative what an Executive department or independent agency has proposed. On its face, the legislative veto no more allows one House of Congress to make law than does the Presidential veto confer such power upon the President. ”

“ The result of such an election must mean an alteration of the veto of the House of Lords; if they win they will have asserted their right, not merely to reject legislation of the House of Commons, but to control the finances of the country, and if they lose we will smash to pieces their veto. I say to you that we do not seek the struggle, we have our work to do ”

“ Hence, as we have seen, [1323] the veto pronounced on a decree of the Senate by the colleague or superior of the magistrate who has elicited it, is no exception to the rule that the acts of corporations or of private individuals were not subject to this form of invalidation. So little was this the case that, when the decree had been vetoed, the advice of the Senate still remained unimpaired. The annulled resolution was still drawn up, but it had become an auctoritas merely. ”

“ It is provided by the constitutions of fourteen of our States that the executive may disapprove any item or items of a bill appropriating money, whereupon the part of the bill approved shall be law and the part disapproved shall fail to become law unless repassed according to the provisions prescribed, for the passage of bills over the veto of the executive. ”

“ It was the greatest absurdity in the world, to suppose that the flimsy humbug of calling the discounting of bills of exchange—gamblers' kites, and race-horse bills of exchange—a 'dealing in exchanges' within the meaning of the terms used in the President's veto message. As if the President could be bamboozled by such a shallow artifice. Only look at the operation under this bill. A needy adventurer goes to one of these agencies, and offers his promissory note with securities, in the old-fashioned way, but is told it cannot be discounted—the law is against it. ”

“ The revenues will be managed by a treasury bank. The use of the veto will be considered as sanctioned by the public voice. The Senate, if not "cut down," will be bound down, and, the President commanding the army and the navy, and holding all places of trust to be party property, what will then be left, Sir, for constitutional reliance?
Sir, we have been accustomed to venerate the judiciary, and to repose hopes of safety on that branch of the government. But let us not deceive ourselves. The judicial power cannot stand for a long time against the executive power. ”

“ But it has been urged by those who object to the exercise of this undoubted constitutional power that it assails the representative principle and the capacity of the people to govern themselves; that there is greater safety in a numerous representative body than in the single Executive created by the Constitution, and that the Executive veto is a "one-man power," despotic in its character. ”

“ The veto power has long been in existence in Pennsylvania, and has been often exercised, and yet, to my knowledge, it has never been exerted in any important case, except in obedience to the public will, or in promotion of the interests of the people. Simon Snyder, whose far-seeing sagacity detected the evils of our present banking system, whilst they were yet comparatively in embryo, has rendered himself immortal by his veto of the forty banks. ”

“ And yet how rarely has any Executive had the courage to apply the remedy which the veto power presents?
Let us, for a moment, examine the workings of this system. It is the more dangerous, because it presents itself to individual members under the garb of devotion to their constituents. One has a measure of mere local advantage to carry, which ought, if at all, to be accomplished by individual enterprise, and which could not pass if it stood alone. He finds that he cannot accomplish his object, if he relies only upon its merits. ”

“ Earlier this Term, the Court found it important that Congress failed to act on bills proposed to overturn the Internal Revenue Service's interpretation of the requirements for tax-exempt status under § 501 (c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code. 958, n. 23. This objection appears more properly directed at the wisdom of the legislative veto than its constitutionality. The Constitution does not and cannot guarantee that legislators will carefully scrutinize legislation and deliberate before acting. ”

“ The admission concludes the facts; the decision concludes the law. The forfeiture of the charter is established; the forfeiture is incurred; the application of the forfeiture alone is wanting to put an end to the institution. An impartial President or Congress might let the laws take their course; those of a different temper might interpose their veto. What a crisis for the bank! It beholds the sword of Damocles suspended over its head! What an interest in keeping those away who might suffer the hair to be cut! ”

“ He is not invested with power to defeat legislation by an absolute veto, but only to restrain it, and is charged with the duty, in case he disapproves a measure, of invoking a second and a more deliberate and solemn consideration of it on the part of Congress. ”

“ Depriving the curiæ of a veto was a measure equivalent to a proposition that the measures of the House of Commons should not require the concurrence of the House of Lords; and giving the force of law to a plebiscitum was much the same thing as determining that every resolution of every public meeting should at once be embodied in the statute-book. Such an arrangement in the present day would render our laws a curiosity of legislative mosaic work, laid down without the advantage of uniformity or design. ”

“ July 16, 1866, the President vetoed the bill as a matter of course. He could have pursued no other action without self-contradiction. Congress, moreover, could not have reasonably expected a different result. It framed the bill not with an eye for executive approval, but with regard to its ability to pass it over the disapproval of that official, which it did on the same day the veto message was received, thereby making it a law of the land." O. Skinner, The Issues of American Politics, part 2, chapter 2. ”

“ So true has it ever been, that the delegated power of the people, when abused, has always reverted to their own destruction. Having traced the veto power, from the simple word of the tribune to the imperial exercise of its rights in Rome, we are -prepared to come down to modern times, and cite a few instances of its adoption and influence in European states.
The king of Great Britain possesses the veto right, upon the resolutions of parliament, though no instance of its exercise has occurred since 1692. In fact, constituted as the British government is, the veto is entirely unnecessary. ”

“ Soon after the assembling of Congress at the extra session, called by President Harrison, a bill for a Fiscal Bank was passed by the two Houses. and vetoed by President Tyler. The veto message was so framed as to encourage the Whig leaders to pass a second bill in a form designed to avoid the objections of the President.
In the discussion upon the veto of the first bill, Mr. Clay assailed the President in such terms that a reconciliation was impossible. From that moment it was the purpose of the President to co-operate with the Democratic Party. A second bill was passed. ”

“ There is something in human nature, wonderfully fond of new inventions, and extremely desirous of improving them, if they bring us either power or money.
The political principle, called a veto or negative, has hitherto been applied to collateral political departments, and wherever it has been given to one, it has been balanced or checked by the same responsive or equivalent power, bestowed on another. In England, the king's veto upon laws is balanced by that of the lords and commons. ”

“ The veto message denies the constitutional power of creating or continuing such an institution as our whole experience has approved, for maintaining a sound, uniform, national currency, and for the safe collection of revenue. Here is another power, long used, and now lopped off. And this power, too, thus lopped off from the Constitution, is evidently not within the power of any of the individual States. No State can maintain a national currency; no State institution can render to the revenue the services performed by a national institution. ”