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Show Presidential Veto Poses Problems i . . i Roosevelt Said, 1 Forbid' 631 Times for New Record By BAUKHAGE Seu i Aualyil and Commentator. WASHINGTON. -"I forbid!" said President Truman. He said it 74 times to the 79th congress while Democrats were still in control. The score for the Republican-controlled 80th is not quite complete at this writing. Every American president is permitted to say he forbids, but he ha.1-to ha.1-to say it in Latin. The word is "veto " Of course the congress can sa "So what?" right back, as they did so emphatically this session in the case of the Taft-Hartley labor act, but they have to say It two-thirds strong, a strength they aren't always able to muster, as history has shown Why the founding fathers were so generous with presidential power, which they never conceived as expanding ex-panding to its modern breadth, we don't quite know. The veto is written writ-ten down in Roman law, but Latin is a dead language. In England, the crown has a veto power over parliament, but it is almost as dead as Queen Anne, since it hasn't been used since her time. It seems to have nourished on American soil. In fact "We ought to call it National Veto Week." House Majority Leader Halleck is repor'.- ed to have remarked re-marked when the third presidential veto in one week of June bounced back into the lap of the 80th con-gress. con-gress. Others studying headlines head-lines "President Nixes Tax Cut," "Truman Vetoes Labor Legislation," Legisla-tion," "Wool Bill Turned Down," h days, not including Sundays, to act on any bill. Congress sends a bill to him. If congress adjourns before be-fore the president's allotted 10 days are up and he still hasn't acted on the bill, it cannot become a law. That is considered a "pocket veto.") Cleveland, during his two terms in office, used his veto power 584 times, and was overridden only twice. The majority of the Cleveland Cleve-land vetoes were personal pension bills, many based on utterly absurd ab-surd claims growing out of the Civil war. At first, Cleveland's forthright refusal to permit these myriad, lili-puti.in lili-puti.in treasury raids infuriated Civil Civ-il war veterans. Later, however, the GAR came to consider him its friend. Ulysses S. Grhnt, a poor third to Roosevelt and Cleveland, vetoed ve-toed 92 bills, was overridden four times. All told, the veto power has been used more than 1,833 times by presidents. pres-idents. George Washington started it off by killing two important acts-one acts-one having to do with legislative organization; or-ganization; another which would have reduced the size of the army. He was not overridden. There were eight other presidents who never experienced a veto upset by congressional con-gressional action Madison, Monroe, Mon-roe, Jackson, Polk. Biirhanan, Lincoln. Lin-coln. McKinley and Harding. On the other hand, there were several presidents who scorned the veto entirely: John Adams. Jefferson, Jeffer-son, John Quincy Adams. Van Bu-rcn, Bu-rcn, William Henry Harrison, Taylor. Tay-lor. Fillmore and Garfield Perhaps because all was harmonious between be-tween executive and legislators in Ihose days. Perhaps because, as some students suggest today, a sustained sus-tained veto is a contradiction of the principle of majority rule a rule of a minority of one-third of either house plus one, plus the president pres-ident who is not supposed to have a vote. (It takes a two-thirds vote to kill a veto. ) Haukhace shook their heads and opined that Harry S. Truman was the veto-ingest veto-ingest president yet. Nonsense, said capitnl old-timers. Harry Truman, according to the record, has been very sparing of his veto, and has a long way to go before he attains the really big-time veto statistics racked up by Prcs Franklin D. Roosevelt (who had more time than anybody else to exercise ex-ercise his thumbs-down power), Grover Cleveland (the veto runner-up), runner-up), and Ulysses S. Grant. "Why," the old-timers grunt, "when FUR was president, it seemed as if we had a veto on something or other almost every ev-ery day." And the record shows that he said, "I forbid," or achieved the same end by the pocket method in III instances. (A "pocket veto" comes about in this way: The president has 10 |