
U.S. Senate: Vetoes - wamatt
http://www.senate.gov/reference/Legislation/Vetoes/vetoCounts.htm
======
kfury
To be fair, recent congresses have actually pushed through so little
significant legislation that there's much less to veto.

Seeing these stats broken out as a percentage of legislation that crosses his
desk would be much more interesting.

~~~
adventured
Part of the reason for it, is the style in which the hyper dysfunctional
modern era US Government passes new laws.

They do it almost strictly as a bundling system to guarantee no laws are ever
vetoed. Which is how they've managed to pass tens of thousands of new federal
laws, with a mere 79 vetoes spanning a quarter century.

~~~
DigitalJack
Line Item Veto is supposed to help with that. I don't know the mechanics, and
if it becomes onerous when a bill has 1000+ pages.

~~~
ahoy
The president was granted line-item veto by congress in the late 90s, when
Clinton was in office. It got challenged in court and ruled unconstitutional.

------
jowiar
One thing this reflects is the growing uniformity within parties. Democrats
have had the Senate for the entirety of Obama's term, so objectionable bills
have hit a previous roadblock. Looking at GWB's vetoes, all but one occurred
with a Democratic Senate. Similarly, all of Clinton's vetoes occurred after
the Republicans took the Senate in 1995.

Edit: To clarify a bit - The Northeastern secular Republican (Lincoln Chafee,
Arlen Specter) and the Southern culturally conservative, pro-social program
Democrat (Zell Miller) are both largely casualties of a system where increased
awareness in the modern news cycle makes it much easier to paint an individual
for the all the actions of their party, leading to a more ideologically pure
Senate where all bills that pass reflect the controlling party's ideology.

------
saidajigumi
Personal observation: data makes history much more interesting. FDR's big lead
compared to other presidents among them. Quick searching turns up only minimal
information on the context surrounding FDR's vetoes (e.g. Wikipedia[1]), but
Google has a book hit with a whole chapter that's on-point[2].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presiden...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_vetoes#Franklin_Roosevelt)
[2] [http://books.google.com/books?id=B4cwTEJIUBQC&pg=PA171&#...</a>

------
andrewljohnson
The reason there are no vetoes anymore is because congress is basically told
it's going to happen beforehand, and both sides can then do the math on
whether the veto will be sustained.

I think Congress used to be more unruly, unpredictable, and less partisan, so
as things got more cut and dried over the years, vetos just stop actually
occurring as a practical matter, unless there are points to score politically
by making the president go through the motions.

~~~
Steko
It's really more the heightened power of the minority caucus of the Senate
which has recently radically expanded what were previously relatively minor
veto points in the path of legislation[1]. It's not quite a liberum veto [2]
yet but it has some of the pathologies.

[1]
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/79/Clo...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/79/Cloture_Voting%2C_United_States_Senate%2C_1947_to_2008.svg/480px-
Cloture_Voting%2C_United_States_Senate%2C_1947_to_2008.svg.png)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberum_veto>

------
rurounijones
what I I supposed to draw from this post? that vetoes are good / bad? that one
prez was better than another?

A little explanation for non-americans would be nice. but even so I am having
trouble understanding why this is on HN

------
quaunaut
Jesus. Can someone explain why FDR's is so high? 635 vetoes, gah.

~~~
amaxerlite
It's most likely because there was a lot of attempts to dismantle and undo his
New Deal. See particularly 1937, I would bet as the year they most occurred,
but I could be wrong on that. I am guessing on that year because things were
starting to look little better from the Great Depression, so as lot of
programs and spending were cut, promptly followed by the economy falling back
down.

An additional thought is that FDR was the first really powerful president who
made a power grab for the executive branch and so faced resistance from a
Congress that was used to being in control.

------
jaggederest
I believe that vetoes are seen as a sign of political weakness in the modern
system.

------
warfangle
And yet Republicans paint Obama as uncooperative?

~~~
bdcravens
Most cooperativeness, nor lack thereof, occurs before the bill touches a
President's desk. A Democratic held Senate more or less means that very little
will ever have an opportunity for ink that has already been discussed via
press conference, media outlets, etc.

