(2 of 2)
¶ The tenth day passed without the President's signing the Muscle Shoals bill. Ten years had passed while the bill was getting through Congress. The "pocket" method of vetoing saves a President the trouble, or embarrassment, of saying why he disapproves. Presumably, President Coolidge "pocketed" the Muscle Shoals bill because it called for Federal operation of the Government's Wartime power-plant on the Tennessee River and for Federal manufacture of fixed nitrogen, which is used in fertilizer and explosives. President Coolidge had urged that the Government lease or sell the power plant and let private interests make power, fertilizer, explosives, without Federal competition. Keeping-the-Government-out-of-business is a prime tenet of the Coolidge credo.
Senator Norris, who has fought long to keep Muscle Shoals and set it going as a Federal project, declined to respect President Coolidge's unspoken reasons, however, and became bitterly sarcastic. He said: "To have offended this great trust [Power Trust] by approving the Muscle
Shoals bill would have dried up the sources of revenue that we must have in the great campaign just ahead of us."
A rumor even got about that President Coolidge had killed Senator Norris's pet bill out of pique because the Senator blocked the President's nomination of a Federal Judge in Alaska.
Senator Norris talked seriously of having the Muscle Shoals act declared law despite its "pocketing." His argument hinged upon the nature of the adjournment Congress has taken. If it is a thoroughgoing adjournment in the Constitutional sense of the word, then the bill is dead. But if it could be shown that the adjournment is merely ad interim, between sessions of the Seventieth Congress, then perhaps the President's failure to veto will have allowed the bill to become law. On this point the Constitution simply says:
"If any bill shall not be returned [to Congress] 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."
If Senator Norris insists, the Supreme Court may have a nice stickler before it, though there is a precedent in the U. S. Court of Claims which would uphold the Muscle Shoals "pocket veto."
¶ Another bill "pocket vetoed" last week was a $3,500,000 appropriation for Federal fish farms. . . . Another, a bill by Representative Fish of New York providing preferment for War veterans in Civil Service appointments.