Normally, if the
president does not sign a bill, it becomes law after ten days (not including Sundays) as if they had signed it. A pocket veto occurs when a bill fails to become law because the president does not sign it within the ten-day period and cannot return the bill to Congress because Congress is no longer in session. Article 1, Section 7 of the
U.S. Constitution states: If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the same shall be a Law, in like manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its return, in which case it shall not be a Law. The Constitution limits the president's period for decision on whether to sign or return any legislation to ten days (not including Sundays) while the
United States Congress is in session. A return veto happens when the president sends a bill, along with their objections, back to the house of Congress from which it originated. Congress can override the veto by a two-thirds vote of both chambers, whereupon the bill becomes law. If Congress prevents the bill's return by adjourning during the 10-day period, and the president does not sign the bill, a "pocket veto" occurs and the bill does not become law. Congress can adjourn and designate an agent to receive veto messages and other communications so that a pocket veto cannot happen, an action Congresses have routinely taken for decades. If a bill is pocket vetoed while Congress is out of session, the only way for Congress to circumvent the pocket veto is to reintroduce the legislation as a new bill, pass it through both chambers, and present it to the President again for signature.
James Madison became the first president to use the pocket veto in 1812. Of presidents throughout United States history,
Franklin D. Roosevelt had an outstanding number of pocket vetoes, more than anyone before or after him. During his presidency from 1933 to 1945 Roosevelt had vetoed 635 bills, 263 of which were pocket vetoes. All presidents after him until George W. Bush had pocket vetoes while they were in office; the most after Roosevelt was
Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had 108. Since the George W. Bush presidency, no president has used the pocket veto.
Legal status Courts have never fully clarified when an adjournment by Congress would "prevent" the president from returning a vetoed bill. Some presidents have interpreted the Constitution to restrict the pocket veto to the
adjournment sine die of Congress at the end of the second session of the two-year congressional term, while others interpreted it to allow intersession and intrasession pocket vetoes. In 1929, the
United States Supreme Court ruled in the
Pocket Veto Case that a bill had to be returned to the chamber while it is in session and capable of work. While upholding President
Calvin Coolidge's pocket veto, the court said that the "determinative question is not whether it is a final adjournment of Congress or an interim adjournment but whether it is one that 'prevents' the President from returning the bill". In 1938, the Supreme Court reversed itself in part in
Wright v. United States, ruling that Congress could designate agents on its behalf to receive veto messages when it was not in session, saying that the Constitution "does not define what shall constitute a return of a bill or deny the use of appropriate agencies in effecting the return". A three-day recess of the Senate was considered a short enough time that the Senate could still act with "reasonable promptitude" on the veto. However, a five-month adjournment would be a long enough period to enable a pocket veto. Within those constraints, there still exists some ambiguity. Presidents have been reluctant to pursue disputed pocket vetoes to the Supreme Court for fear of an adverse ruling that would serve as a precedent in future cases.
George W. Bush In December 2007, President
George W. Bush claimed that he had pocket vetoed H.R. 1585, the
National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, even though the House of Representatives had designated agents to receive presidential messages before adjourning. The bill had been previously passed by veto-proof majorities in both the House and the Senate. If the president had chosen to veto the bill, he would have been required to return it to the chamber in which it originated, in this case the House of Representatives. The House then could have voted to override the veto, and the Senate could have done likewise. If each house had voted to override the veto, then the bill would have become law. Then-House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi stated: "Congress vigorously rejects any claim that the president has the authority to pocket veto this legislation and will treat any bill returned to the Congress as open to an override vote." On January 1, 2008,
Deputy Assistant to the President and
White House Deputy Press Secretary Scott Stanzel stated: "A pocket veto, as you know, is essentially putting it in your pocket and not taking any action whatsoever. And when Congress – the House is out of session – in this case it's our view that bill then would not become law." By "absolute veto" Fisher was referring to the fact that a bill that has been pocket vetoed cannot have its veto overridden. Instead, the bill must be reintroduced into both houses of Congress, and again passed by both houses, an effort which can be very difficult to achieve. In the end, the House of Representatives did not attempt to override the veto. Instead, in January 2008, the House effectively killed H.R. 1585 by referring the pocket veto message to the Armed Services Committee and passing H.R. 4986, a bill nearly identical to H.R. 1585 but slightly modified to meet the President's objection, which subsequently became law. This was not the first time that a president has attempted to pocket veto a bill despite the presence of agents to receive his veto message. Both
George H. W. Bush and
Bill Clinton made similar attempts, and
Abraham Lincoln used it against the
Wade–Davis Bill in 1864.
State legislatures Across the United States, pocket veto powers are not uncommon in committees of
state legislatures, which allows a committee to "kill" a bill, sometimes without even a public vote; in Colorado, the power was notably repealed in a citizen initiative constitutional amendment in 1988 driven by various reform groups. When a committee refuses to vote a bill out of committee, a
discharge petition can be passed by the broader membership. The specifics vary from state to state; for example, in 2004, a report found that New York State places more restrictions than any other state legislature on motions to discharge a bill from a committee, which led to subsequent reforms.
Indiana After nearly a century of pocket vetoes, the
Indiana Supreme Court ruled pocket vetoes unconstitutional in 1969. Governor
Edgar Whitcomb requested that the General Assembly pass an act repealing all laws that were enacted because of the Supreme Court decision, some of which were nearly a century old. The assembly complied with the request and passed a blanket repeal. ==Other use==