Word: vetoes
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...various appropriations. Each year a number of appropriations bills are passed, and the total expenditure is not entirely clear. Among the many proposals to correct this situation, Senator Byrd's two bills offer the best solution--an omnibus bill for a whole year's appropriations and an item veto...
...aware of the extent of their expenditures. Responsibility for the public debt would be more sharply focussed on one all-important vote. Realizing this, Congressmen would hold pressure groups in much less regard. An omnibus appropriations bill, however, would hamstring the President completely, unless he were allowed an item veto...
Government critics have requested an item veto for some hundred years, but Congress has always rejected the idea, fearing permanent loss of its purse power to the President. The Byrd bill, however, provides for flexible but strong control of the President, since the Constitution would be amended only to enable Congress to confer the item veto power by statute. If the President got out of hand, Congress could pass a new law to meet the situation; if the legislature did not choose to withdraw the power completely, it could restrict the executive merely by redefining the scope of the words...
Other critics have feared that an item veto might result in Congressional irresponsibility: representatives might allow pork-barreling to run rampant, knowing that the President would veto rediculous measures favoring exclusively sectional interests. Representatives, however, win elections on actual appropriations, not on futile attempts registered in the Record. Responsibility would ultimately rest with Congress, since any veto would have to be over-ridden by a two-thirds majority, and according to the Byrd bill, vetoed items would be reconsidered separately...
Legislative action on the vetoed bill will begin again in a few days, but Ward predicted that the veto would stand. It is "very unlikely" that the two-thirds vote necessary to override the veto can be mustered, he said...