IX.                   The Power to Say No

1.         The president’s popularity may drop, but he has a huge power in the veto (which can be overridden by 2/3 majority of Congress); is ability to “say no” can be considered “executive privilege.”

2.         A president can veto a bill in two ways: a veto message is a direct statement that the president sends to Congress within ten days of receiving a bill saying that he vetoes it; he can also pocket veto a bill by not signing it AND Congress has adjourned or recessed ten or less days after the bill was introduced.

                                                                i.      The pocket veto can only be used during certain times of the year.

3.         If a bill is not signed or vetoed within ten days, and Congress is still in session, it automatically becomes law, but a pocket-vetoed bill must be resubmitted through Congress.

                                                                i.      In 1996, Congress passed a bill that let the president “veto” parts of a bill (line-item veto) that he didn’t like within five days of getting it and then sending it back to Congress, which could only overrule that line-item veto w/ 2/3 majority vote, but certain types of bills are exempt from this power and a federal court has ruled this law unconstitutional.

                                                               ii.      Less than 4% of vetoed bills have every been overruled by Congress; such overrule is rare.

4.         The Constitution says nothing about whether a president must divulge private communications between himself and his main advisors, and past presidents have claimed that separation of powers means that other branches don’t have to know what goes on in his executive branch.

                                                                i.      Presidents have claimed executive privilege as reason for not turning over information (i.e. Nixon in Watergate), but in 1973, the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to hand over his Watergate tapes; in 1997, the Supreme Court ruled that the president could be sued by a private person.

5.         Past presidents have sometimes not spent all of the money that Congress appropriated (the Constitution says that the president simply cannot spend non-appropriated money, but it says nothing using already appropriated money), but the Budget Reform Act of 1974 required the president to spend all appropriated funds unless he told Congress which funds he would not spend and Congress agreed to let him do so.

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