There are then three ways in which a bill may become a law. (1) It may pass by majority vote in both houses and be signed by the President. (2) It may, after being vetoed by the President, be passed by two-thirds vote in both houses. (3) It will become a law if the President neither signs nor vetoes it within ten days, unless these are at the end of the session.
The framers of the Constitution intended that the veto power should be a check, though not an absolute one, upon hasty or unwise legislation. The President may cause a bill to fail by neither signing nor vetoing it during the last ten days of a session. The term pocket veto has been applied to this method of defeating bills.
SUPPLEMENTARY QUESTIONS AND REFERENCES.
1. Copies of the Congressional Record and the Congressional Directory furnish interesting illustrations of the topics treated in this chapter.
2. What difference is there in the granting of recognition in the Senate and House? Harrison, This Country of Ours, 45-48.
3. How are obstructive tactics carried on? Alton, Among the Law-makers, Chapter 20.
4. Reinsch, Young Citizen's Reader, 198-213. Marriott, Uncle Sam's Business, 8-16.