Ex-Precedent

In 146 years 32 Presidents have written 674 veto messages for trusty White House clerks to carry back to Congress. Of these vetoes only 49 have been overridden by a cantankerous House & Senate.* Last week President Roosevelt tossed the custom of the country out the window and made a breezy bit of history by carrying Veto No. 675 up to the Capitol in person and making it stick. Whereas all other Presidents have been content to let Congressional clerks read out their objections to bad measures, nothing less than the rostrum of the House of Representatives would serve him as an eminence from which to thunder his disapproval of the Patman Bill to prepay the soldier Bonus with printing press money.

The Senators filed into the House Chamber two by two. The floor was filled. The 553 available seats for the House gallery were jammed with the lucky spectators who, among 5,000 applicants, had managed to get tickets. Mrs. Roosevelt was there with her knitting (on which she did not work) and Ambassador Josephus Daniels. Then Franklin Roosevelt marched in and up the special gangway to the rostrum. In the hush that followed the outburst of applause, the ice tinkled out as Secretary Marvin McIntyre poured his chief a glass of water. Laying his glasses on the lectern, President Roosevelt, unsmiling, began to read his message, a thorough, unequivocal rebuttal to the advocates of bonus and greenbacks.

Reasons in Person."Mr. Speaker, Members of the House of Representatives. . . . Under the Constitution, I address this message to the House of Representatives, but at the same time I am glad that the Senate by coming here in joint session gives me opportunity to give my reasons in person to the other house of the Congress. . . . With your permission, I should like to continue from time to time to act as my own messenger. . . .

"There has been expended up to the end of the last fiscal year more than $7,800,000,000 ... in behalf of the veterans of the World War, not including sums spent for home or work relief.

"With our current annual expenditures of some $450,000,000 and the liquidation of outstanding obligations under term insurance and the payment of the service certificates, it seems safe to predict that by the year 1945 we will have expended $13,500,000,000. . . .

"The bill before me provides for . . . paying $1,600,000,000 more than the present value of the certificates. It requires an expenditure of more than $2,200,000,000 in cash for this purpose. It directs payment to the veterans of a much larger sum than was contemplated in the 1924 settlement. It is nothing less than a complete abandonment of that settlement. It is a new, straight gratuity or bounty to the amount of $1,600,000,000. . . .

Printing Press Money "The first person injured by sky-rocketing prices is the man on a fixed income. Every disabled veteran on pension or allowance is on fixed income. This bill favors the able-bodied veteran at the expense of the disabled veteran. . . . Every country that has attempted the form of meeting its obligations which is here provided has suffered disastrous consequences. In the majority of cases printing press money has not been retired through taxation. Because of increased costs, caused by inflated prices, new issue has followed new issue, ending in the ultimate wiping out of the currency of the afflicted country.

"The statement . . . that payment will discharge and retire an acknowledged contract obligation of the Government is, I regret to say, not in accordance with the fact. It wholly omits and disregards the fact that this contract obligation is due in 1945 and not today.

"If I, as an individual, owe you, an individual member of the Congress, $1,000 payable in 1945, it is not a correct statement for you to tell me that I owe you $1,000 today. As a matter of practical fact, if I put $750 into a Government savings bond today and make that bond out in your name you will get $1,000 on the due date, ten years from now. My debt to you today, therefore, can not under the remotest possibility be considered more than $750.

"The core of the question is that a man who is sick or under some other special disability because he was a soldier should certainly be assisted as such. But if a man is suffering from economic need because of the Depression, even though he is a veteran, he must be placed on a par with all of the other victims of the Depression. . . .

"I cannot in honesty assert to you that to increase that deficit this year by two billion two hundred million dollars will in itself bankrupt the United States. Today the credit of the United States is safe. But it cannot ultimately be safe if we engage in a policy of yielding to each & all of the groups that are able to enforce upon the Congress claims for special consideration. We can afford all that we need; but we cannot afford all that we want. I do not need to be a prophet to assert that if these certificates, due in 1945, are paid in full today, every candidate for election to the Senate or to the House of Representatives will in the near future be called upon in the name of patriotism to support general pension legislation for all veterans, regardless of need or age. . . .

"I believe the welfare of the nation, as well as the future welfare of the veterans, wholly justifies my disapproval of this measure.

"Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I return, without my approval, House of Representatives Bill No. 3896, providing for the immediate payment to veterans of the 1945 face value of their adjusted service certificates."

322-to-98. So saying, Franklin Roosevelt swung around to the desk above him where Vice President Garner and Speaker Byrns had sat in sphinxlike pomp and handed Speaker Byrns the vetoed Bonus Bill and the original of his speech. While applause rang through the House Speaker Byrns wrung the President's hand, congratulated him.

"Thanks, thanks," said the President.

When he departed, the Senate filed out. A few minutes later, Speaker Byrns put the question: Should the Bonus Bill be re-passed, the President's objections thereto to the contrary notwithstanding? President Roosevelt had hardly got back to the White House before the Speaker announced the result: 98 to sustain the veto, 322 to override. Net effect of the President's speech on the House--six votes switched against the Bonus.

Thirty-six Senatorial votes--three more than necessary--had long since been counted to sustain the veto and the margin of error in this calculation was conceded to be very small. Nevertheless, up to the Capitol, day after the House vote, marched Postmaster General Farley to lunch with Majority Leader Robinson, help hold the Administration lines. With him went ex-Representative Charles F. West, now Presidential contact-man, and in the cloak rooms of the Senate they and Whip Harrison proceeded to buttonhole doubtful members. Only one clear victory did they gain: New Mexico's Dennis Chavez, successor to the late Bronson Cutting, whose vote bonuseers had counted on, listened obediently to Boss Farley's words.

54-to-40. The final Senate debate, like the President's veto message, was a theatrical fiction to appease the audience. After a dozen Senators had spoken for five hours, the Senate finally put its members to the test in the three-cornered inner battle between their economic theories, their social consciences and their understanding of political expediency. Result: 54 votes to override the veto; 40 to sustain. Veto No. 675 had been made to stick.

*Most vetoing President was Grover Cleveland, who wrote 350, had only two overridden. Most overridden President was Andrew Johnson, who had 15 vetoes beaten. Records of recent Presidents: Woodrow Wilson, vetoes 33, overridden six; Warren Gamaliel Harding, vetoes five, overridden none; Calvin Coolidge, vetoes 20, overridden four; Herbert Hoover, vetoes 33, overridden three; Franklin Delano Roosevelt, vetoes 27, overridden one.

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