Powers of the President during crisesSmith, J. Malcolm (John Malcolm)
History
Powers of the President during crises
Smith, J. Malcolm (John Malcolm)
Constitutional history -- United States; Executive power -- United States
_Enabling and Requiring Executive Action:_ Aside from action on
reorganization plans submitted to Congress by the President, the sole
striking instance of successful employment of a concurrent resolution
provision incorporated in a delegatory statute concerned initiation of
a postwar highway construction program, under the Federal-Aid Highway
Act of 1944. The Act, it will be recalled, enabled the Congress by
concurrent resolution to stipulate the date the program was to go into
effect. Senate and House concurrent resolutions were introduced in
the Seventy-ninth Congress in 1945 fixing the first post-war fiscal
year under the Act as the year ending June 30, 1946.[642] The House
resolution passed in that chamber and was agreed to by the Senate.[643]
The Neutrality Act of 1939 is the outstanding, in fact the only, recent
instance of congressional effort to exercise power by concurrent
resolution to require executive action.[644] The Act drastically
curbed American carriage to and trade with belligerents. The President
could proclaim the existence of war between two nations; or, upon
passage of a concurrent resolution finding that war existed between
two countries, the President must issue a proclamation identifying the
belligerents.[645] Thereupon the trade restrictions in the Act become
effective and criminal penalty attaches to their violation.
On the theory that Section 1 (a) “places on this Congress a
responsibility corresponding with that which has been placed on the
President in the matter of finding a condition of war to exist,”[646]
individual members introduced concurrent resolutions declaring the
existence of war between the U.S.S.R. and Finland,[647] Japan and
China,[648] and Germany and the U.S.S.R.[649] These were decently
interred in committee.
_The Legislative Veto:_ Although the first Reorganization Act
containing provision for legislative veto of reorganization plans
was enacted in 1939, concurrent resolutions disapproving such plans
were introduced in vain until 1946. In July of that year both houses
agreed to House Concurrent Resolution 155 disapproving President
Truman’s Reorganization Plan No. 1.[650] The next May a new Congress
disapproved Reorganization Plan No. 2 of 1947.[651] The third and
last reorganization plan to be defeated by concurrent resolution was
Plan No. 1, 1948, which incurred congressional disapproved in March
of that year.[652] The Reorganization Act of 1949 permitted veto
of the President’s plans by simple resolution of one house.[653]
President Truman’s efforts to elevate the Federal Security Agency to
departmental status were frustrated by Senate Resolution 147 of 1949,
which was adopted by that body on August 16, 1949.[654] All of the veto
resolutions passed by Congress were favorably reported from committee
to the house of origin.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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