The Role of the President

Bills passed in identical form in both houses of Congress are sent to the president to be signed or vetoed. If the president signs the bill, it becomes law. However, if the president vetoes the bill, it is rejected, but the Congress may attempt to override the veto. A veto can be overridden if a two-thirds majority in both houses votes to do so.

The president can use the veto power as a bargaining tool in the legislative process. Because it is difficult to secure two-thirds majorities in favor of legislation in both houses, a presidential veto generally means that a bill is dead — the large majority of bills that are vetoed are not overridden. Consequently, by suggesting what provisions are acceptable in a piece of legislation and which ones are not, the president can influence the content of the bills the Congress sends to the president’s desk. Presidents must be careful, however, not to use the veto or the threat of a veto too frequently, because the Congress may refuse to work with a president that attempts to “bully” its members. This is especially true when there is divided party government.

In 1995, the Congress voted to extend the president’s veto power by authorizing the use of a “line-item veto” on appropriations bills. Under the conditions established by the Congress, the president could use the line-item veto to lower or remove objectionable spending requests from a bill. The Supreme Court, however, ruled the Congress’s attempt to alter the president’s constitutionally authorized veto power through legislation (instead of a constitutional amendment) unconstitutional. The president of the United States does not have line item veto authority.

Evaluating the Process

By creating a bicameral legislature with a separate executive branch with the ability to veto legislation, the Framers clearly intended to create a system of government in which it was difficult to act and comparatively easy to block action. Their efforts have proven resoundingly successful. The legislative process in just the House or Senate alone is often mind-numbingly slow and complicated. Guiding a bill through two houses is a seemingly impossible task. However, each year, a sizable number of bills, a few of them significant but most of them less-so, are passed by the Congress and signed into law by the president.