United States
A pocket veto is a presidential veto, but of a particular type. The U.S. Constitution limits the President's period for decision on whether to sign or veto any legislation to ten days (not including Sundays) while the United States Congress is in session. The Constitution provides for two types of vetoes: a regular or return veto, when the president sends a bill, along with his objections, back to the house of Congress in which the bill originated. Congress can override the veto by 2/3 vote of both houses, whereupon the bill becomes law. A pocket veto only comes into play when Congress by its adjournment prevents return of the bill. Thus, a pocket veto can only occur under two circumstances: a) if Congress is adjourned, and b) if bill return to Congress is not possible (bill return is possible when Congress has adjourned, but has designated an agent to receive veto messages and other communications, an action Congresses have taken routinely for decades). If, under these circumstances, the president withholds his signature, the bill dies instead of becoming law. That is the pocket veto. (If the president neither signs nor vetoes a bill when Congress is in session, the bill becomes law without his signature after 10 days.) Article 1, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution states:
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.
Since Congress cannot vote while in adjournment, a pocket veto cannot be overridden (but see below). James Madison became the first president to use the pocket veto in 1812.
Read more about this topic: Pocket Veto
Famous quotes related to united states:
“There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration.... The United States does not concede that those countries are under the domination of the Soviet Union.”
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“The United States must be neutral in fact as well as in name.... We must be impartial in thought as well as in action ... a nation that neither sits in judgment upon others nor is disturbed in her own counsels and which keeps herself fit and free to do what is honest and disinterested and truly serviceable for the peace of the world.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“... while one-half of the people of the United States are robbed of their inherent right of personal representation in this freest country on the face of the globe, it is idle for us to expect that the men who thus rob women will not rob each other as individuals, corporations and Government.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
“The rising power of the United States in world affairs ... requires, not a more compliant press, but a relentless barrage of facts and criticism.... Our job in this age, as I see it, is not to serve as cheerleaders for our side in the present world struggle but to help the largest possible number of people to see the realities of the changing and convulsive world in which American policy must operate.”
—James Reston (b. 1909)
“The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth. A Galileo could no more be elected President of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both posts are reserved for men favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of soft illusion.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)