veto power

The Constitution's framers agreed that a presidential veto could limit legislative encroachments, but they had difficulty agreeing on the form that the veto power would take. Ultimately, they drafted Article I, section 7, which gives the president the power to veto every bill or vote to which both House and Senate concurrence is necessary, except a vote of adjournment. Congressional resolutions proposing amendments to the Constitution are not subject to presidential veto power. The presidential veto is not absolute, but Congress needs a two‐thirds vote of both houses to override it—that is, two‐thirds of a quorum present, not two‐thirds of all the members.7

The veto power gives the president an important role in shaping legislation. Congress over‐rides vetoes only about 3 percent of the time. Given this limited success rate, the mere threat of a presidential veto provides the president with power to mold proposed legislation to his liking.

If the president fails to sign a bill within 10 days (Sundays excepted) after it is presented to him, it becomes law without his signature unless “Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law” (Art. I, sec. 7). This is called a pocket veto. In the Pocket Veto Case (1929), the Supreme Court held that “adjournment” means any time during a session that Congress adjourns and is not limited to the final adjournment of a session.

See also Separation of Powers.

— Ronald D. Rotunda

From the Latin for “I forbid,” the veto is the device Presidents use to reject legislation that Congress has passed. Article 1, Section 7, of the Constitution provides that the President may return any legislation he disapproves of to Congress with an explanation of his objections (although the word veto does not appear in the Constitution). The Constitution provides that all measures that require the concurrence of both chambers are to be presented to the President of the United States. The only exceptions are resolutions to adjourn and constitutional amendments.

The President may sign the measure, allow it to become law if he does not sign it within 10 days, or return it to the chamber in which it originated together with his objections. Congress may pass the law over the President's objection by a two-thirds vote in each chamber.

A President who sends a bill back to Congress may not change his mind and recall it; President Ulysses S. Grant attempted to do so twice but Congress refused to return the bills to him.

One form of Presidential veto, known as the pocket veto, cannot be overridden by Congress. Using this technique, the President in a sense places a bill in his pocket and refuses to sign it or return it to Congress. If Congress has adjourned or is in recess for more than ten days, the absence of the President's signature kills the bill. When Congress returns to session, it must start all over again if it wishes to revive the bill.

The Constitution allows for no item-by-item veto. The President may not veto part of a bill and approve the remainder—a power that 43 state governors do have. His veto strikes down the entire measure. In 1877 President Rutherford B. Hayes recommended that the President be given a line-item veto, and between 1877 and 1888 several such constitutional amendments were introduced in Congress, but none were passed. Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan also proposed the line-item veto for congressional spending bills and were similarly rebuffed. President Bill Clinton also supported the idea, but as part of reforming the budget process, by law, not as a constitutional amendment. In 1995 Congress did pass a law giving the President the line-item veto. President Clinton exercised this power sparingly, but many in Congress–including some who had supported the line-item veto—protested when he used it to veto their projects. In 1998 the Supreme Court declared that the line-item veto was an unconstitutional delegation of Congress's “power of the purse.”

Unconstitutional vs. unwise laws

The practice of government executives nullifying laws was well known to the framers of the Constitution. In colonial times the king and royal governors often vetoed laws passed by colonial legislatures. Indeed, that was one of the reasons for rebelling mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. After the Revolution, New York State had a Council of Revision made up of the governor, chancellor, and state judges who could nullify laws that seemed to violate the state constitution.

The Constitution does not specify the grounds on which the President may exercise his veto. Initially, many commentators believed that the President could veto legislation only if he believed the measure to be unconstitutional. President George Washington agreed and tried to avoid vetoing bills, using the power only twice. He believed that Presidents should defer to the will of Congress and use this power only as an emergency measure. Prior to 1832, only 6 of 21 vetoes were made for other than constitutional reasons. The issue came to a head when Andrew Jackson vetoed a bill rechartering the Second Bank of the United States. Jackson claimed that he could veto the bill because of policy disagreement, while the opposition Whig party proclaimed that a President could veto a bill only on constitutional grounds. When John Tyler vetoed bills of the Whig congressional majority, a select committee of Congress argued that he had misused his power. In 1842 Senator Henry Clay proposed a constitutional amendment to permit Congress to override a President's veto by a majority vote of each chamber. Neither this proposed amendment nor resolutions to impeach Tyler passed the House. Since the Civil War, most vetoes have been exercised because the President believed laws to be unwise rather than unconstitutional.

Presidential Vetoes of Congressional Legislation
President	Total	Regular	Pocket	Overridden
	Vetoes	Vetoes	Vetoes
George Washington	2	2	0	0
John Adams	0	0	0	0
Thomas Jefferson	0	0	0	0
James Madison	7	5	2	0
James Monroe	1	1	0	0
John Quincy Adams	0	0	0	0
Andrew Jackson	12	5	7	0
Martin Van Buren	1	0	1	0
William H. Harrison	0	0	0	0
John Tyler	10	6	4	1
James K. Polk	3	2	1	0
Zachary Taylor	0	0	0	0
Millard Fillmore	0	0	0	0
Franklin Pierce	9	9	0	5
James Buchanan	7	4	3	0
Abraham Lincoln	7	2	5	0
Andrew Johnson	29	21	8	15
Ulysses S. Grant	93	45	48	4
Rutherford B. Hayes	13	12	1	1
James A. Garfield	0	0	0	0
Chester A. Arthur	12	4	8	1
Grover Cleveland	414	304	110	2
Benjamin Harrison	44	19	25	1
Grover Cleveland	170	42	128	5
William McKinley	42	6	36	0
Theodore Roosevelt	82	42	40	1
William H. Taft	39	30	9	1
Woodrow Wilson	44	33	11	6
Warren G. Harding	6	5	1	0
Calvin Coolidge	50	20	30	4
Herbert Hoover	37	21	16	4
Franklin D. Roosevelt	635	372	263	9
Harry S. Truman	250	180	70	12
Dwight D. Eisenhower	181	73	108	2
John F. Kennedy	21	12	9	0
Lyndon B. Johnson	30	16	14	0
Richard M. Nixon	43	26	17	7
Gerald R. Ford	66	48	18	12
Jimmy Carter	31	13	18	2
Ronald Reagan	78	39	39	9
George Bush	44	29	15	1
Bill Clinton	22	22	0	2

In recent years Presidents have sometimes allowed bills to become law but have indicated that they will not enforce a specific provision they believe to be unconstitutional. President Richard Nixon refused to obey a provision of a 1971 military procurement bill requiring him to declare a cease-fire and negotiate with North Vietnam for a prisoner exchange in return for U.S. withdrawal from Indochina. He claimed that “the so-called Mansfield Amendment is unconstitutional, and without force or effect” because it infringed on his powers as commander in chief.

Presidents have also used “signing statements,” which are released when they sign measures passed by Congress, to provide their own interpretation of the law. When President Reagan signed the Beirut Resolution of 1982, authorizing him to keep a marine contingent in Lebanon for peacekeeping, he issued a statement arguing that nothing in the resolution could have the effect of limiting or interfering with his powers as commander in chief to station troops anywhere he wished.

The President is assisted in making decisions about whether to sign or veto bills by the Office of Management and Budget, which conducts a review of every bill passed by Congress and sent to the President. Often, cabinet secretaries and White House aides comment as well.

The veto power often becomes a threat that the President can use to influence legislation. Because an override requires a two-thirds vote of both houses, fewer than 7 percent of Presidential vetoes have been overridden. So Presidents can intervene early in the legislative process with threats of a veto unless pending legislation is modified to meet their objections, and sometimes more than one-third of a chamber will sign a pledge in advance to back up the President if he vetoes a bill. This makes the White House an integral part of the legislative process from beginning to end.

See also Creation of the Presidency; Jackson, Andrew; Legislative veto; Line-item veto; Office of Management and Budget; Pocket veto

Sources

• Carleton Jackson, Presidential Vetoes: 1792–1945 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1967).
• Robert J. Spitzer, The Presidential Veto: Touchstone of the American Presidency (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988).
• Charles Zinn, The Veto Power of the President (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1951)