The Pittsburgh Press (January 9, 1943)
Background of news –
Congress vs. President
By editorial research reports
Congress in 1943 will reassert its constitutional prerogatives against presidential dictation, according to both Republican and Democratic spokesmen.
In furtherance of the Constitution’s tripartite division of powers, the Founding Fathers provided that the President was to give a lead in legislation only by presenting to Congress an occasional review of the state of the nation and recommendations he deemed expedient.
For more than a hundred years, the President followed both the spirit and the letter of this arrangement. They left it to Congress to formulate the laws. Moreover, they seldom exerted pressure on Congress. True, in 1893, Cleveland intervened actively on Capitol Hill to get the Silver Purchase Act repealed, but he apologized by insisting that that act has taken the nation to the very brink of financial disaster. It is also that after the Civil War, Presidents began to veto legislation solely because they doubted its wisdom, whereas the earlier Presidents (Except Jackson) had used tge veto power only when they through bills unconstitutional or hasty. However, this was hardly an assumption of new prerogatives.
The present style was set by the first Roosevelt. He believed that the people expected the President to formulate and put through a legislative program – that the voters would hold him, not Congress, primarily of an administration – that Congress has become too unwieldy, too beset by partisan and geographical considerations, to lead effectively in legislation, the old practice was reversed; instead of Congress submitting laws to the President for his approval or rejection, Theodore Roosevelt presented “my policies” to Congress for their approval or rejection.
However, despite his great popularity the first Roosevelt got relatively little of his program through Congress, especially in his second term. Most of the Republican majority (in both houses) was conservative, and Senators were still elected by state legislatures. Taft received in part to the pre-Roosevelt conception of the presidency; then came Wilson.
Woodrow Wilson had much liking for the British parliamentary system. In this, major bills are prepared by the executive branch of the government and must be accepted by the legislative branch unless a change of government or a general election is to result. Wilson also believed firmly in party responsibility. He worked incessantly with the party leaders in Congress, presented legislation for the consideration and approval of the party caucuses, freely used members of his Cabinet on members of Congress with whom they had influence.
Coolidge was largely “hands-off” as to Congress; Hoover stood about halfway between Theodore Roosevelt and Coolidge. The second Roosevelt has out-Roosevelted the first. He has used all the methods which his fifth cousin used in order to get the presidential program adopted; he has adopted the Wilsonian technique of having the executive branch draft bills, consulting somewhat less freely than Wilson with the party leaders.