gatherers to customs collectors; from the mint to air mail; from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing-where they make Mr. Farley's notorious special stamps and Mr. Morgenthau's widely circulated I O U's-to the R. F. D. All and sundry gather under the protecting tent of this one hospitable bill. The President takes it or leaves it as a whole. He has some chance to exercise discriminating control, through the Bureau of the Budget, when the original estimates are sent to Congress. He has none when they make their return trip from Congress to the White House. The latter is a one-way journey.

There yet remains the greatest catchalls-the deficiency bills, so-called. The Government specializes in deficiencies, particularly in the present heyday of the great payoff. Deficiencies have no terrors for spendthrifts. After everything conceivable has been detailed in the general and regular supply bills there always lingers an ultimate residue which neither the executive appetite nor the congressional imagination could forsee. Sometimes real emergencies are precipitously involved. Sometimes it is to refinance profligate Federal spenders who never tried or, in any event, ultimately failed to cut their garment to their cloth. Sometimes it is just a happy afterthought, some new excuse to bash in a corner of the Treasury. But it always is hash-real hash-a mixture of leftovers. We had this particular hash three times during the past fiscal year. The whole system of appropriations, as a matter of fact, is a hash system.

REDUCING MADE DIFFICULT

H. R. 8554, approved August 12, 1935, covered 20,000 words and 91 separate and distinct headings and cost $272,901,516.60. H. R. 10464, approved February 11, 1936, covered 15,000 words and 50 separate and distinct headings and cost $368,232,062.64. H. R. 12624, approved June 22, 1936, covered 30,000 wordsthe granddaddy of them all-and 113 separate and distinct headings and cost $2,375,281,000. The latter bill also covered social security, relief and work relief. Some hash! The President eats it all just as served up to him from Capitol Hill, or he eats none. Inevitably he must eat it all. In the recent Congress, the President has had such complete control of his legislative "rubber stamp" that most of this menu was charted at the White House before Congress ever got the chance to register its complacent approval. But some day some President may want to diet. He ought to be allowed a reducing menu if he wants it. At least, the innovation should not be too difficult.

Of course this inventory merely skims the surface of the problem. Wrapped within the 218,000 words which Congress used up in spending some $10 billion of other people's money during the fiscal year ending last June 30 were literally countless other items dealing with Uncle Sam's swollen payrolls and with the ramifying alphabetical regimenters which the New Deal has spread out across a hitherto free country. For instance, it is said that there are at least 400 highpower press agents-with all their antennae-hidden within the boundaries of this golden dispensation to keep us adequately versed in the blessings of more-abundant life and adequately drugged against the burdens of more-abundant debt. Then there are innumerable ingenuous reappropriations and re-reappropriations of previously unexpended balances which fatten the paymasters without too painful and too obvious notification to the men and women and children of today and tomorrow who must pay the bills. It is all very much of a headache for any inquisitive soul who wants really to know what is happening with the greatest cash register of all time.

I frankly doubt whether the comparatively little matter of an available itemveto power would have changed this present picture in any appreciable degree during the last three Roman-circus years. Most of the time an appropriating Congress has simply been keeping up with the Roosevelts. But a long range view of the problem is something else. An abstract and impersonal analysis must promptly confess that without the power of item veto any President, no matter how thrifty, is relatively powerless, in the final analysis, to cope with the appropriations tide.

A LEGISLATIVE BRAKE

It is not a

It may be said that the President need not subsequently spend an appropriation, after legislation is completed, unless he wants to. But that begs the question. This is a government of laws, not of men or ought to be. personal government-or shouldn't be-in which the President does what he pleases in spite of law. The protection of a democracy must rest in the law itself. Anything else is dictatorship, and dictatorship, no matter how nobly meditated or how temporarily advantageous, is not American.

Someone may say, however, that the item veto trends toward this precise aggrandizement of executive authority. I deny it. The item veto does not give the President one single, additional, affirmative power. He cannot start anything as a result. He can only stop something long enough to focus the attention of the country on it, and long enough to force two-thirds of the House and Senate to agree to it in spite of him and his reasons, if they should persist in their adverse judgments. Its only harm, if any, would lie in the temporary delay while Congress and the country stop, look, and listen. I have never known any lives to be lost by obedience to this familiar injunction. There will be no governmental casualties under similar circumstances. On the other hand, a President who actually wants to economize-not merely in his election platform but also in his subsequent Washington performance-will at least be able, through the medium of the item veto, to put wastrel responsibilities where they belong.

Upon this question of enlarged executive power, it is interesting and illuminating to note the observations of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States

in 1916:

"It is the intent of the Constitution that the President shall be free to give his independent judgment upon the merits of bills. Such judgment cannot now in all cases be exercised. To give him the right to do so can hardly be styled an enlargement of his powers. It would but give him the right to apply in a businesslike manner the power which he already possesses. One can hardly assume that the Constitution makers foresaw the practice of riders."

Congress, of course, can restrict its own spending proclivities with rules which squint in the direction of protecting appropriation bills-precisely as the Senate, for example, already has certain rules which flirt with this objective. But it is coming more and more to be the fact that these protective rules are conveniently suspended whenever they collide with some infatuated purpose outside the rules. Congress could, by law, confine itself within the boundaries of the Executive budget. But this would give the Executive too much and too conclusive power. Furthermore, no Congress can bind its successor. The only practical answer seems to be the item veto in the hands of a courageous President. Its mere existence will be even more salutary than its actual use. It will become a Treasury watchdog available to any administration which has any interest in having a Treasury watchdog around the Capitol premises.

The proposed constitutional amendment is a very simple thing. It is contained in Senate Joint Resolution 281, which I introduced on June 3, 1936, and which I shall reintroduce in the approaching 75th Congress. It reads as follows: "Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States:

"ARTICLE

"SECTION 1. The President shall have power to disapprove any item or items of any general appropriation bill which shall have passed the House of Repre sentatives and the Senate and have been presented to him for his approval, in the same manner and subject to the same limitations as he may, under section 7 of article 1 of this Constitution, disapprove as a whole any bill which shall have been presented to him.

"SECTION 2. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress."

President Arthur said it all half a century ago:

"As the citizens of one State find that money, to raise which they in common with the whole country are taxed, is to be expended for local improvements in another State, they demand similar benefits for themselves. Thus as the bill becomes more objectionable it secures more support. The Constitution should be so amended as to give the President power to veto separate items of appropriation bills."

President Arthur said it all; but he did not remotely contemplate the magnified necessities which have overtaken his country in these respects in the present blighting era of the great payoff.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE ITEM VETO

(Supplied by the Legislative Reference Service of the Library of Congress. Compiled by Vernon L. Wilkerson and issued August 13, 1936. Revised by John P. Earner, American Law Division, and reissued by the Library July 21, 1953.)

One

The question of conferring on the President the power to veto items in appropriation bills was nowhere raised in the Constitutional Convention of 1787.1 With the then prevailing distrust for executive authority, this is not surprising. marvels more that the Executive was allowed even a qualified general veto. Respecting the insertion of the veto provision in the Federal Constitution, no less an authority than Lord Bryce once remarked: "Considering that the arbitrary use, by George III and his colonial governors, of the power of refusing bills passed by a colonial legislature had been a chief cause of the Revolution of 1776, it is to the credit of the Americans that they inserted this apparently undemocratic provision *** in the Constitution of 1789." A brief exposition of the origin of the Federal veto provision will add no little credence to Lord Bryce's observation.

THE VETO POWER IN THE COLONIES

In each of the Thirteen Colonies prior to the American Revolution the governor could veto any measure of the legislature.3 As the appointee of the Crown in every colony except Rhode Island and Connecticut, a colonial governor generally registered the views of the King in accepting or rejecting laws passed by the colonial legislature. If, by chance, the wishes of the King or instructions of the Lords of Trade were ignored or misconstrued, the act was still subject to the royal veto (except a measure enacted by proprietary Maryland or by the charter colonies of Rhode Island and Connecticut). When the veto was exercised, either by the governor or the King, it was absolute.*

THE VETO POWER UNDER THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION

The complaints of the colonists against the refusal of the governor and the King to approve colonial measures became more and more bitter. "He [George III] has refused his Assent to Laws ***He has forbidden his Governors to pass laws ***" Thus read the first two grievances set forth in the Declaration of Independence. With this resentment against the royal governor and his prerogatives, it was natural that the State governors after the outbreak of hostilities should be deprived of their veto power. In fact the office of governor was in several States replaced by innocuous executive commissions. Similarly, the Articles of Confederation established a Committee of the States to execute in the recess of Congress such limited powers as Congress might deem expedient. The Committee, of course, had no veto. Actually the Continental Congress was its own executive.

THE VETO POWER IN THE FEDERAL CONVENTION

5

Within a few years the weakness inherent in a "headless" government became apparent. Delegates were finally assembled at Philadelphia in 1787 to propose "amendments" to the Articles of Confederation. The delegates proceeded to violate instructions. Behind closed doors they commenced the drafting of an entirely new constitution.

Three main plans of government were variously pressed. The "Jersey plan,” for example, recognized the prevailing fear of executive power which had not yet been dispelled. It would continue the Confederation without an executive. See Max Farrand, Records of the Federal Convention (New Haven, 1927), 3 vols.; Jonathan Elliot, Debates (Philadelphia, 1859), 5 vols.; William M. Meigs, The Growth of the Constitution (Philadelphia, 1900). 2 James Bryce, The American Commonwealth (New York, 1928), I, 58.

For copies of the early charters see Poore, Federal and State Constitutions and Charters (Washington, 1877), 2 vols. In Maryland the burgesses disputed the power of the governor to veto bills.

On the subject matter of this paragraph see Edward C. Mason, The Veto Power (Boston, 1890), Ch. I, passim.

Articles IX and X of the Articles of Confederation.

Roger Sherman, for instance, thought that the executive should be the mere agent of the legislature to carry out its will. Randolph of Virginia believed that the executive should not only be thus controlled, but in order to protect against a possible abuse of power, such functions should be vested in a number of persons. There would be no veto. The "Virginia plan" and the "Pinckney plan" on the other hand contained veto clauses. Hamilton and even Madison advocated the restoration of many of the royal prerogatives-under less odious nomenclature. The delegates, for the most part, reluctantly recognized the necessity of providing for a chief executive and of conferring upon him a limited veto power. But the veto was not to be absolute. Such power might again prove tyrannical. At most the President was to have a "qualified negative."? The debate turned chiefly on the form this veto power should take. Should it be exercised by the executive alone or should it be entrusted jointly to the executive and the judiciary (as in New York)? Should the veto be overridden by a majority, by two-thirds, or by three-fourths of Congress? Article I, section 7, paragraphs 2 and 3, modeled closely after the veto provision in the Massachusetts constitution, were finally adopted, vesting the veto power exclusively 10 in the President, but with power in Congress to override his veto by the vote of two-thirds of each house.

THE ITEM VETO IN THE STATES

Following the lead of Massachusetts and the Federal Government, the States, as they revised their constitutions in the next several decades, generally restored to their governors the veto power." But it was not until the time of the Civil War that the principle of item veto found expression in an American Constitution. The provisional Constitution of the Confederate States, adopted on the 8th of February 1861, permitted the President to "veto any appropriation or appropriations, and approve any other appropriation or appropriations, in the same bill." 12 This same provision in slightly altered form was adopted in the permanent constitution of March 11, 1861.13 "Georgia and Texas in 1865 and 1866, respectively, included this power in their proposed constitutions under the presidential plan of reconstruction. These same two States again included it in their constitutions of 1868, adopted under the congressional plan of reconstruction." 14 Since the Civil War, with a single exception, every new State admitted to the Union and many of the older States have granted their governors this power. In fact the governors of 38 States may now disapprove items in appropriation bills. 15

The Governors of Nebraska and West Virginia formerly exercised this power, and in theory may still possess it. However, the exercise of the item veto power has been made substantially inoperative by the introduction of the budget system for appropriations. The Governor of Nebraska may not veto items in the budget submitted by himself after it has passed the Legislature with a three-fifths vote.16 And in West Virginia the budget (appropriation) bill is not submitted to the Governor after passage.17

Furthermore, the Constitutions of the States of South Carolina and Washington authorize the governors to veto sections of any bill, whether it be an appropriation

Hamilton and Reed seem to have favored the restoration of the absolute veto-Elliot, Debates, IV, 623; V, 385.

The word "veto" was not used in the debates at the Convention, at least as reported. The word was impolitic. This power was referred to as a "qualified negative".

The New York constitution of 1777 gave the veto to the Governor and the judges of the highest court acting together.

Massachusetts had restored to the Governor in 1780 the veto in qualified form.

10 From the debates it appears that the judiciary was excluded lest it be subjected to political influence of the executive, and be unable to render subsequently an impartial judicial opinion on constitutional questions.

The veto power, however, was not restored in Rhode Island until 1909; and the Governor of North Carolina to this day has no veto power.

12 Article I, sec. 5, of the provisional Constitution of the Confederacy.

13 Article I, sec. 7, cf. Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (New York, 1881). I, pp. 641, 654.

14 Niels H. Debel, The Veto Power of the Governor of Illinois (Urbana, 1917), p. 23.

15 See typewritten list compiled by the Legislative Reference Service, Library of Congress, on March 24, 1936, entitled "Item Vetoes: Text of State Constitutional Provisions." The States with item-veto provisions are: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. The Council of State Governments has listed 38 States with the item veto on appropriations, omitting West Virginia from those enumerated in the Legislative Reference Service report. The Book of the States, 1952-53, The Council of State Governments, Chicago, Ill., vol. IX, p. 103.

16 Nebraska. Constitution, Article IV, Sec. 7 (1920).

17 West Virginia. Constitution, Article VI, Sec. 51. (The Budget Amendment 1918.)