Bills and Resolutions

Section 7. Clause 1. All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.

Clause 2. Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approves he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law. But in all such Cases the Votes of both Houses shall be determined by Yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons voting for and against the Bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively. If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return in which Case it shall not be a Law.

Clause 3. Every Order, Resolution, or Vote to which the Concurrence of the Senate and House of Representatives may be necessary (except on a question of Adjournment) shall be presented to the President of the United States; and before the Same shall take Effect, shall be approved by him, or being disapproved by him, shall be repassed by two thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives, according to the Rules and Limitation prescribed in the Case of a Bill.

THE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS

Revenue Bills

Insertion of this clause was another of the devices sanctioned by the Framers to preserve and enforce the separation of powers.⁴⁶⁹ It applies, in the context of the permissibility of Senate amendments to a House-passed bill, to all bills for collecting revenue—revenue decreasing as well as revenue increasing—rather than simply to just those bills that increase revenue.⁴⁷⁰

Only bills to levy taxes in the strict sense of the word are comprehended by the phrase “all bills for raising revenue”; bills for other purposes, which incidentally create revenue, are not included.⁴⁷¹ Thus, a Senate-initiated bill that provided for a monetary “special assessment” to pay into a crime victims fund did not violate the clause, because it was a statute that created and raised revenue to support a particular governmental program and was not a law raising revenue to support Government generally.⁴⁷² An act providing a national currency secured by a pledge of bonds of the United States, which, “in the furtherance of that object, and also to meet the expenses attending the execution of the act,” imposed a tax on the circulating notes of national banks was held not to be a revenue measure which must originate in the House of Representatives.⁴⁷³ Neither was a bill that provided that the District of Columbia should raise by taxation and pay to designated railroad companies a specified sum for the elimination of grade crossings and the construction of a railway station.⁴⁷⁴ The substitution of a corporation tax for an inheritance tax,⁴⁷⁵ and the addition of a section imposing an excise tax upon the use of foreign-built pleasure yachts,⁴⁷⁶ have been held to be within the Senate’s constitutional power to propose amendments.

Approval by the President

The President is not restricted to signing a bill on a day when Congress is in session.⁴⁷⁷ He may sign within ten days (Sundays excepted) after the bill is presented to him, even if that period extends beyond the date of the final adjournment of Congress.⁴⁷⁸ His duty in case of approval of a measure is merely to sign it. He need not write on the bill the word “approved” nor the date. If no date appears on the face of the roll, the Court may ascertain the fact by resort to any source of information capable of furnishing a satisfactory answer.⁴⁷⁹ A bill becomes a law on the date of its approval by the President.⁴⁸⁰ When no time is fixed by the act it is effective from the date of its approval,⁴⁸¹ which usually is taken to be the first moment of the day, fractions of a day being disregarded.⁴⁸²

The Veto Power

The veto provisions, the Supreme Court has told us, serve two functions. On the one hand, they ensure that “the President shall have suitable opportunity to consider the bills presented to him. ... It is to safeguard the President’s opportunity that Paragraph 2 of § 7 of Article I provides that bills which he does not approve shall not become law if the adjournment of the Congress prevents their return.”⁴⁸³ At the same time, the sections ensure “that the Congress shall have suitable opportunity to consider his objections to bills and on such consideration to pass them over his veto provided there are the requisite votes.”⁴⁸⁴ The Court asserted that “[w]e should not adopt a construction which would frustrate either of these purposes.”⁴⁸⁵

In one major respect, however, the President’s actual desires may be frustrated by the presentation to him of omnibus bills or of bills containing extraneous riders. During the 1980s, on several occasions, Congress lumped all the appropriations for the operation of the Government into one gargantuan bill. But the President must sign or veto the entire bill; doing the former may mean he has to accept provisions he would not sign standing alone, and doing the latter may have other adverse consequences. Numerous Presidents from Grant on have unsuccessfully sought by constitutional amendment a “line-item veto” by which individual items in an appropriations bill or a substantive bill could be extracted and vetoed. More recently, beginning in the FDR Administration, it has been debated whether Congress could by statute authorize a form of the line-item veto, but, again, nothing passed.⁴⁸⁶

That the interpretation of the provisions has not been entirely consistent is evident from a review of the only two Supreme Court decisions construing them. In The Pocket Veto Case,⁴⁸⁷ the Court held that the return of a bill to the Senate, where it originated, had been prevented when the Congress adjourned its first session sine die fewer than ten days after presenting the bill to the President. The word “adjournment” was seen to have been used in the Constitution not in the sense of final adjournments but to any occasion on which a House of Congress is not in session. “We think that under the constitutional provision the determinative question in reference to an ‘adjournment’ is not whether it is a final adjournment of Congress or an interim adjournment, such as an adjournment of the first session, but whether it is one that ‘prevents’ the President from returning the bill to the House in which it originated within the time allowed.”⁴⁸⁸ Because neither House was in session to receive the bill, the President was prevented from returning it. It had been argued to the Court that the return may be validly accomplished to a proper agent of the house of origin for consideration when that body convenes. After first noting that Congress had never authorized an agent to receive bills during adjournment, the Court opined that “delivery of the bill to such officer or agent, even if authorized by Congress itself, would not comply with the constitutional mandate.”⁴⁸⁹

However, in Wright v. United States,⁴⁹⁰ the Court held that the President’s return of a bill on the tenth day after presentment, during a three-day adjournment by the originating House only, to the Secretary of the Senate was an effective return. In the first place, the Court thought, the pocket veto clause referred only to an adjournment of “the Congress,” and here only the Senate, the originating body, had adjourned. The President can return the bill to the originating House if that body be in an intrasession adjournment, because there is no “practical difficulty” in effectuating the return. “The organization of the Senate continued and was intact. The Secretary of the Senate was functioning and was able to receive, and did receive the bill.”⁴⁹¹ Such a procedure complied with the constitutional provisions. “The Constitution does not define what shall constitute a return of a bill or deny the use of appropriate agencies in effecting the return.”⁴⁹² The concerns activating the Court in The Pocket Veto Case were not present. There was no indefinite period in which a bill was in a state of suspended animation with public uncertainty over the outcome. “When there is nothing but such a temporary recess the organization of the House and its appropriate officers continue to function without interruption, the bill is properly safeguarded for a very limited time and is promptly reported and may be reconsidered immediately after the short recess is over.”⁴⁹³

The tension between the two cases, even though at a certain level of generality they are consistent because of factual differences, has existed without the Supreme Court yet having occasion to review the issue again. But in Kennedy v. Sampson,⁴⁹⁴ an appellate court held that a return is not prevented by an intrasession adjournment of any length by one or both Houses of Congress, so long as the originating House arranged for receipt of veto messages. The court stressed that the absence of the evils deemed to bottom the Court’s premises in The Pocket Veto Case— long delay and public uncertainty—made possible the result.

The two-thirds vote of each House required to pass a bill over a veto means two-thirds of a quorum.⁴⁹⁵ After a bill becomes law, of course, the President has no authority to repeal it. Asserting this truism, the Court in The Confiscation Cases⁴⁹⁶ held that the immunity proclamation issued by the President in 1868 did not require reversal of a decree condemning property seized under the Confiscation Act of 1862.⁴⁹⁷

Presentation of Resolutions

The purpose of clause 3, the Orders, Resolutions, and Votes Clause (ORV Clause), is not readily apparent. For years it was assumed that the Framers inserted the clause to prevent Congress from evading the veto clause by designating as something other than a bill measures intended to take effect as laws.¹ Why a separate clause was needed for this purpose has not been explained. Recent scholarship presents a different possible explanation for the ORV Clause — that it was designed to authorize delegation of lawmaking power to a single House, subject to presentment, veto, and possible two-House veto override.² If construed literally, the clause could have bogged down the intermediate stages of the legislative process, and Congress made practical adjustments. At the request of the Senate, the Judiciary Committee in 1897 published a comprehensive report detailing how the clause had been interpreted over the years. Briefly, it was shown that the word ‘‘necessary’’ in the clause had come to refer to the necessity for law-making; that is, any ‘‘order, resolution, or vote’’ must be submitted if it is to have the force of law. But ‘‘votes’’ taken in either House preliminary to the final passage of legislation need not be submitted to the other House or to the President, nor must concurrent resolutions merely expressing the views or ‘‘sense’’ of the Congress.³

Although the ORV Clause excepts only adjournment resolutions and makes no explicit reference to resolutions proposing constitutional amendments, the practice and understanding, beginning with the Bill of Rights, have been that resolutions proposing constitutional amendments need not be presented to the President for veto or approval. Hollingsworth v. Virginia,⁴ in which the Court rejected a challenge to the validity of the Eleventh Amendment based on the assertion that it had not been presented to the President, is usually cited for the proposition that presentation of constitutional amendment resolutions is not required.⁵

The Legislative Veto.—Beginning in the 1930s, the concurrent resolution (as well as the simple resolution) was put to a new use—serving as the instrument to terminate powers delegated to the Chief Executive or to disapprove particular exercises of power by him or his agents. The “legislative veto” or “congressional veto” was first developed in context of the delegation to the Executive of power to reorganize governmental agencies,⁵⁰¹ and was really furthered by the necessities of providing for national security and foreign affairs immediately prior to and during World War II.⁵⁰²

The proliferation of “congressional veto” provisions in legislation over the years raised a series of interrelated constitutional questions.⁵⁰³ Congress until relatively recently had applied the veto provisions to some action taken by the President or another executive officer—such as a reorganization of an agency, the lowering or raising of tariff rates, the disposal of federal property—then began expanding the device to give itself a negative over regulations issued by executive branch agencies, and proposals were made to give Congress a negative over all regulations issued by executive branch independent agencies.⁵⁰⁴

In INS v. Chadha,⁵⁰⁵ the Court held a one-House congressional veto to be unconstitutional as violating both the bicameralism principles reflected in Art. I, §§ 1 and 7, and the presentment provisions of § 7, cl. 2 and 3. The provision in question was § 244(c)(2) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which authorized either House of Congress by resolution to veto the decision of the Attorney General to allow a particular deportable alien to remain in the country. The Court’s analysis of the presentment issue made clear, however, that two-House veto provisions, despite their compliance with bicameralism, and committee veto provisions suffer the same constitutional infirmity.⁵⁰⁶ In the words of dissenting Justice White, the Court in Chadha “sound[ed] the death knell for nearly 200 other statutory provisions in which Congress has reserved a ‘legislative veto.’”⁵⁰⁷

In determining that veto of the Attorney General’s decision on suspension of deportation was a legislative action requiring presentment to the President for approval or veto, the Court set forth the general standard. “Whether actions taken by either House are, in law and in fact, an exercise of legislative power depends not on their form but upon ‘whether they contain matter which is properly to be regarded as legislative in its character and effect.’ [T]he action taken here . . . was essentially legislative,” the Court concluded, because “it had the purpose and effect of altering the legal rights, duties and relations of persons, including the Attorney General, Executive Branch officials and Chadha, all outside the legislative branch.”⁵⁰⁸

The other major component of the Court’s reasoning in Chadha stemmed from its reading of the Constitution as making only “explicit and unambiguous” exceptions to the bicameralism and presentment requirements. Thus the House alone was given power of impeachment, and the Senate alone was given power to convict upon impeachment, to advise and consent to executive appointments, and to advise and consent to treaties; similarly, the Congress may propose a constitutional amendment without the President’s approval, and each House is given autonomy over certain “internal matters,” e.g., judging the qualifications of its members. By implication then, exercises of legislative power not falling within any of these “narrow, explicit, and separately justified” exceptions must conform to the prescribed procedures: “passage by a majority of both Houses and presentment to the President.”⁵⁰⁹

The breadth of the Court’s ruling in Chadha was evidenced in its 1986 decision in Bowsher v. Synar.⁵¹⁰ Among the rationales for holding the Deficit Control Act unconstitutional was the Court’s assertion that Congress had, in effect, retained control over executive action in a manner resembling a congressional veto. “[A]s Chadha makes clear, once Congress makes its choice in enacting legislation, its participation ends. Congress can thereafter control the execution of its enactment only indirectly—by passing new legislation.”⁵¹¹ Congress had offended this principle by retaining removal authority over the Comptroller General, charged with executing important aspects of the Budget Act.

That Chadha does not spell the end of some forms of the legislative veto is evident from events since 1983, which have seen the enactment of various devices, such as “report and wait” provisions and requirements for various consultative steps before action may be undertaken. But the decision has stymied the efforts in Congress to confine the discretion it confers through delegation by giving it a method of reviewing and if necessary voiding actions and rules promulgated after delegations.

The Line Item Veto.—For more than a century, United States Presidents had sought the authority to strike out of appropriations bills particular items, to veto “line items” of money bills and sometimes legislative measures as well. Finally, in 1996, Congress approved and the President signed the Line Item Veto Act.⁵¹² The

law empowered the President, within five days of signing a bill, to “cancel in whole” spending items and targeted, defined tax benefits. In acting on this authority, the President was to determine that the cancellation of each item would “(i) reduce the Federal budget deficit; (ii) not impair any essential Government functions; and (iii) not harm the national interest.”⁵¹³ In Clinton v. City of New York,⁵¹⁴ the Court held the Act to be unconstitutional because it did not comply with the presentment clause.

Although Congress in passing the Act considered itself to have been delegating power,⁵¹⁵ and although the dissenting Justices would have upheld the Act as a valid delegation,⁵¹⁶ the Court instead analyzed the statute under the presentment clause. In the Court’s view, the two bills from which the President subsequently struck items became law the moment the President signed them. His cancellations thus amended and in part repealed the two federal laws. Under its most immediate precedent, the Court continued, statutory repeals must conform to the presentment clauses’s “single, finely wrought and exhaustively considered, procedure” for enacting or repealing a law.⁵¹⁷ In no respect did the procedures in the Act comply with that clause, and in no way could they. The President was acting in a legislative capacity, altering a law in the manner prescribed, and legislation must, in the way Congress acted, be bicameral and be presented to the President after Congress acted. Nothing in the Constitution authorized the President to amend or repeal a statute unilaterally, and the Court could construe both constitutional silence and the historical practice over 200 years as “an express prohibition” of the President’s action.⁵¹⁸

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Last modified: June 9, 2014