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First Session of the Seventy-second Congress, December 7, 1931, to July 16, 19321

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

E. Pendleton Herring
E. Pendleton Herring
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

While hundreds of “hunger-marchers” milled about outside, the first session of the Seventy-second Congress convened on the first Monday of last December. The mob outside lent a tone that was recurrent in a Congress given over to the consideration of national need and budget-balancing. Often lacking either in leadership or in the will to follow, Congress went its muddled way working against great odds and confronted with tasks of great complexity. The delicacy of the party balance as much as the spur of emergency pointed to the desirability of forgetting partisanship in the presence of national distress. Whether this pious attitude rendered less frequent actions dictated by political expediency remains open to question. In fact, special interests were particularly clamorous during this session.

Type
American Government and Politics
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 26 , Issue 5 , October 1932 , pp. 846 - 874
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1932

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References

2 45th Congress: 39 Republicans: 36 Democrats: 1 Third Party

47th Congress: 37 Republicans: 37 Democrats: 2 Third Party

54th Congress: 42 Republicans: 39 Democrats: 5 Third Party

66th Congress: 48 Republicans: 47 Democrats: 1 Third Party

70th Congress: 47 Republicans: 47 Democrats: 1 Third Party

(1 vacancy)

3 See Humbert, W. H., “The Democratic Joint Policy Committee”, in this REVIEW, June, 1932Google Scholar.

4 There were 17 new senators and 90 new representatives. Of the latter, 74 had never before served in Congress. Mrs. Hattie Caraway was the only woman in the Senate, but in the House there were six, evenly divided between the two parties.

5 For a discussion of the proposed changes in the Private Calendar and the Consent Calendar, see article by Congressman Luce in this number of the REVIEW.

6 An idea of how the states divided on this prohibition vote is given in the following analysis published in the New York Times of March 15. The table lists the states as “wet,” “dry,” or “divided,” according to the vote of the majority of the state delegation, and designates the states “D” or “E” that are usually Democratio or Eepublican in national elections:

On January 21, the Senate, by a vote of 55 (26 Republicans, 28 Democrats, and 1 Farmer Labor) to 15 (8 Republicans and 7 Democrats), defeated a resolution offered by Senator Hiram Bingham asking governors to hold prohibition referenda in their states. S. 436 to legalize 4 per cent beer, although favorably voted by a sub-committee of the Senate Committee on Manufactures, was reported adversely to the Senate by the full committee on April 29, together with S. 2473, an act to increase permissible alcoholic content of beer to 3.2 per cent. On May 18, two amendments to the revenue bill proposing a tax on beer were defeated in the Senate, i.e., the Tydings amendment by 61 to 24, and the Bingham amendment by 60 to 23.

7 279 U.S. 655.

8 Thomas C. Edwards v. United States; no. 790.

9 In his message vetoing S. 2179, the President cited some rather startling instances of undeserved grants of pensions in the bill. Investigation disclosed a proposed pension for a man for self-inflicted injuries incurred in attempted suicide; a widow whose husband gave eight days' service, with no disability relating to service; a man who spent most of his service in the hospital, who was shown to have been guilty of malingering by taking soap pills to aid him in appearing anemic, and who was discharged without honor because of diseases not contracted in line of duty; a claimant who lost his leg as the result of lying in a completely intoxicated condition along the line of a street car. In justice to Congress, it might be added that the bill contained hundreds of items, and was designed for claimants unable to comply with the general laws. The bill was referred back to the committee for more careful consideration.

10 The official résumé of the work of the session, as reported in the final calendar of the House of Representatives, is in parts as follows:

The 962 bills and resolutions which became law classify as follows: 598 House bills, 28 House joint resolutions, 321 Senate bills, and 15 Senate joint resolutions.

Of the 166 Senate bills and 15 Senate joint resolutions which became law, 82 bills and 4 joint resolutions were enacted in lieu of an equal number of House bills and House joint resolutions, respectively, which had been reported from committees and were laid on the table to facilitate the enactment of the legislation.

Exclusive of bills vetoed and the proposed amendment to the Constitution, the House passed 216 House bills (including two omnibus pension bills containing 1,488 bills; a total of 1,702 bills) and four House joint resolutions, and one Senate bill which did not become law.

There were introduced in the Senate 4,986 bills, 210 joint resolutions, 35 concurrent resolutions, and 281 simple resolutions. The Senate passed 525 Senate bills and 47 Senate joint resolutions. The Senate committees made 1,002 reports.

Exclusive of bills vetoed and the proposed amendment to the Constitution, the Senate passed 355 Senate bills and 31 Senate joint resolutions which did not become law. Of these, one bill was indefinitely postponed in the House; 123 Senate bills and 5 Senate joint resolutions are pending on House calendars; and 170 Senate bills and 20 Senate joint resolutions are pending in House committees. One Senate joint resolution was recommitted to committee in the House.

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