Obama trying to be clear:
"To leave no doubt that the bill is being vetoed, in addition to withholding my signature, I am returning H.R. 3808 to the clerk of the House of Representatives, along with this Memorandum of Disapproval."
Does this qualify as a pocket veto?
Obama Vetoes...
No, apparently Congress is playing a game with whether Congress is actually adjourned, a necessity for a pocket veto, so Obama is forced to take no chances that the bill is not vetoed. If the Extreme Court decided that Congress was not adjourned, then even though Obama didn't sign the bill it would be law.
Presidential Pocket Vetoes: The Original Paperwork Reduction Act | Foxnews.com
Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution requires the president to sign every bill to make it law. If the president opposes the legislation, the Constitution says "he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated."
But that same portion of the Constitution indicates that "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 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 Law."
That's a pocket veto.
In other words, if Congress is out of town, the president doesn't have to sign a bill into law. Nor does he have to veto the package and sent it back to Congress. If lawmakers are away, the president can in essence stash the bill in his pocket and walk away. That effectively dispatches the issue into legislative oblivion.
This is the essence of the dispute now brewing between the White House and Capitol Hill.
Congress may SEEM like it's out of session. But it's really not. The House adjourned last week until after the midterm elections. The Senate's truly not back in action until November 15. But every few days, a handful of senators meet in what's called a "pro forma" session. Senate Democrats carved a deal with Republicans to technically keep the Senate running in this fashion through next month. It's an effort to bar Mr. Obama from making recess appointments to the federal bench, his cabinet or to ambassadorships. If Congress is open for business, the president has to send such appointments to the Senate for "advice and consent." But the president can bypass the Senate if senators are adjourned for more than three days.
So the Senate is "here." The House is not. Thus, Congress isn't fully adjourned. So the president would have to just veto the foreclosure bill the old-fashioned way, right?
Apparently not. The White House contends it won't send any paperwork to Congress since it's out of session. And the president will just "pocket veto" the bill.
That's the problem.
The housing foreclosure bill is H.R. 3808. "H.R" doesn't stand for human resources or home run. It refers to the "House of Representatives." That means the bill in question originated in the House. Therefore, if the president uses a traditional veto on this measure, he would have to, as the Constitution says, "return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated."
If the bill started in the Senate, the White House would direct its veto message to that side of the Capitol.
But, House rules dictate that even when the House is out of session, it has provisions in which to always receive a "normal" veto from the president. The Clerk of the House is always available to receive such vetoes even if the House is not operating.
This issue came up before the Supreme Court in the 1920s and 1930s.
In 1926, Congress approved a bill that granted native Americans the right to sue the government for loss of ancestral territory. President Calvin Coolidge declined to either sign or veto the bill. Congress adjourned for the summer. Thus, the bill died with Coolidge's pocket veto.
Six Indian tribes then filed another suit against the government asserting Coolidge's maneuver was unconstitutional. The High Court eventually ruled against the tribes, 9-0. Justice Edward Terry Sanford penned the decision, asserting that the Founders intended a broad interpretation of "adjournment," which allowed Coolidge to use his pocket veto.
The Supreme Court revisited the pocket veto issue in the 1938 case Wright v. U.S. In Wright, the Court partially overruled its earlier decision. It found that Congress could designate people to receive veto messages when it was not in session. That's what the House does when its Clerk is on call. Thus, a president couldn't use a pocket veto to reject bill during a short recess. He would instead be compelled to issue a traditional veto and dispatch that document to Capitol Hill. But the Court decided that longer adjournments (potentially like the one Congress is operating under now) permits a president to deploy a pocket veto.
In the Wright case, the House remained in session but the Senate was away. And the legislation in that instance originated in the Senate.
So there's ambiguity of what constitutes an adjournment.
