The bill drafted for this purpose made the removal of all officers, appointed by and with the consent of the Senate, except only members of the President's Cabinet, subject to the consent of the Senate. This consent might be given in the form of a ratification of the nomination of a successor to any officer. It allowed the President, during a recess of the Senate, the power of suspension for misconduct in office, crime, legal disqualification or incapacity, and of making appointment of a suitable person to discharge temporarily the duties of such suspended officer, but it required of the President a report of all such suspensions to the Senate within the first twenty days of the next meeting of the Senate, with the reasons therefor, and reinstated the suspended officer in case the Senate {125} should not concur in the suspension. If the Senate should concur, the President must remove the officer, and appoint, with the advice and consent of the Senate, another person in his place. [Sidenote: Discussion of the bill.] From the point of view of the present this would seem, in all conscience, to have been a sufficient usurpation of the President's constitutional powers to have satisfied the most radical and reckless interpretation of the organic law. But the bill had hardly come under discussion when Senator Howe moved to strike out the clause excepting the Cabinet officers from its operation, and although the Senate refused to pass this amendment, the House of Representatives did so when the bill came before it. The Senate, however, refused to concur on the ground, of course, that the intimate and confidential relations which should exist between the President and the members of his Cabinet made it necessary that the President should have only the men of his own choice in these positions. The strenuous insistence of the House, however, forced the Senate to a compromise upon the subject, and the bill was finally made to provide that the members of the Cabinet should "hold their offices, respectively, for and during the term of the President by whom they have been appointed, and for one month thereafter, subject to removal by and with the consent of the Senate." That is, that a Cabinet officer might hold his position against the will of the President who appointed him during the entire term of the President and for one month of the term of his successor unless the Senate should agree to such officer's removal either directly or by ratification of the nomination of a successor. [Sidenote: The provisions for enforcing the measure.]