Veto Power of The President

VETO POWER OF THE PRESIDENT

VETO POWER OF THE PRESIDENT. The writers of the Constitution gave the president the right to veto legislation although that veto can be overridden by the vote of two-thirds of the House and Senate (Article 1, Section 7). The right to veto or to refuse assent to legislation had always been claimed by British kings. However, that right had more or less fallen into desuetude by the late eighteenth century. In the hands of an elected president as opposed to a hereditary monarch, however, the veto power became of great importance.

In fact two types of veto exist. The first is the regular veto in power, through which the president returns the legislation to the Congress unsigned, usually with a message setting out reasons for this action. The second is a quieter, more discreet form of the veto known as the "pocket veto," in which the president fails to sign a bill within the ten days allowed by the Constitution before Congress adjourns. This pocket veto generally attracts less publicity, in part because it does not need to be accompanied by a message from the president giving reasons for the veto. Of the 372 vetoes cast by President Franklin Roosevelt, 263 were pocket vetoes. Exactly half of President Ronald Reagan's vetoes were pocket vetoes. Because so much of the congressional agenda is completed in the last few days of a session, often described as the "rush to adjourn," a pocket veto is more useful than might be supposed.

The power of the regular veto results from the considerable difficulty of overriding it. It is not easy to assemble a two-thirds majority in both the House and the Senate on a contentious issue. Most vetoes are successful. Of the seventy-eight vetoes cast by President Reagan, for example, only nine were overridden. In his first term President Bill Clinton cast seventeen vetoes, and only one was overridden. Some high profile presidential vetoes have been overridden. President Harry Truman saw his veto of the antiunion Taft-Hartley Act fail in 1947, and President Richard Nixon saw his veto of the War Powers Act fail in 1974. In general, however, a president is able to muster the support of one-third of either the House or the Senate to sustain a veto. The president of course can deploy the usual repertoire of presidential weapons to garner votes to sustain a veto, including persuasion, appeals to support the national interest, threats and promises to campaign or not to campaign against a legislator in future elections, help in fundraising, and "going public."

The presidential veto has a particularly great importance, however, in periods of divided government, when one party controls the White House and the other controls all or part of Congress. Presidents whose party is in a minority in Congress are driven to use the veto frequently. This partly reflects their limited ability to persuade the congressional majority from the other party to follow their wishes. It also reflects the presidents' need to force the congressional majority to bargain with them by making it clear that legislation generally will fail if the president is prepared to veto it. Presidential vetoes are therefore most likely when a president confronts a majority in Congress from the other party. President Gerald Ford, a Republican who was not even elected to the White House and who faced a strong Democratic majority in both the House and the Senate, cast sixty-six vetoes in three years. George H. W. Bush cast forty-six vetoes, whereas Jimmy Carter, whose Democratic Party also controlled Congress, cast only thirty-one.

All presidents expect a much higher level of support from members of their own party in Congress than they receive from legislators of other parties. During periods of divided government, however, if the congressional minority is of the president's party, it has a particularly strong incentive to work to sustain the president's vetoes. Creating the appearance that it is almost hopeless to try to override a presidential veto gives the president's party in Congress more leverage. You may have the votes to force your legislation through Congress, the minority party will claim, but you run a substantial risk that our friend in the White House will veto the bill, and you probably won't have the votes necessary to override. Thus even a member of the president's party in Congress inclined to support the legislation can be persuaded that he or she has an interest in sustaining a veto.

A president who casts a veto must anticipate the need to defend it in the face of controversy. In many cases presidents have defended vetoes as a defense of the national interest against congressional logrolling. Presidents can play to popular perceptions of how American government works by portraying themselves as representing the entire nation and Congress as representing merely special and sectional interests. However, in some instances a veto focuses on the president all the passions of a controversial issue, as when Truman vetoed the Taft-Hartley Act. As with all their powers, presidents must remember to use the veto with discretion.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Mayhew, David R. Divided We Govern. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1991.

Miller, Gary J. "Formal Theory and the Presidency." In Researching the Presidency: Vital Questions, New Approaches. Edited by George Edwards, Jon Kessel, and Bert Rockman. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993.

Wayne, Stephen J. The Legislative Presidency. New York: Harper and Row, 1978.

Graham K. Wilson

See also Constitution of the United States ; President, U.S. ; Separation of Powers .