Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Grover Cleveland

According to Richard Beth (1995: 1627), “private bills rest on practices of the British parliament that have roots in Roman law.” Under American law, the statutory definition includes all bills for the relief of private parties, bills granting pensions, bills removing political disabilities, and bills for the survey of rivers and harbors. Additional categories include private bills excepting individuals from certain immigration and naturalization requirements (“Private Bills in Congress” 1966), correcting military service records, and permitting citizens to accept foreign honors (Beth 1995). Marc Yacker (1979: 5) observes that “[t]hroughout the 19th and well into the 20th Century the majority of private bills concerned pensions for veterans and their wives, and relief for those from whom the Government had made a claim. Questions of military status (discharge, rank, salary, etc.) were also entertained.”

     Like public bills and joint resolutions, private bills must be approved by both chambers of Congress in identical form, then either be signed by the president or enacted over his veto. However, changes in procedures for dealing with private bills have occurred throughout American history. Beth (1995: 1626) asserts that by “1810 the House had established special procedures for private bills; from 1839, private bills were listed on a separate calender; and from 1900, practices were instituted that allowed one objection to block passage.”

     Richard Watson (1993) reviews other actions pertaining to private bills. The Court of Claims was established in 1855 to recommend action on private bills. The powers of that court were expanded in 1883 and 1887. A 1962 Supreme Court decision prohibited the Court of Claims from issuing non-binding advisory opinions, after which the latter court refused to take any more congressionally­ referred cases. A 1946 section of the Legislative Reorganization Act shifted responsibility for dealing with pensions and military records to executive branch agencies or the U.S. district courts. Congress enacted laws in 1957 and 1958 which authorized the attorney general of the Justice Department to handle most immigration appeals. Finally, a 1966 law transferred remaining tort claim responsibility to the executive branch.

     Yacker (1979) discovers that the number of private bills enacted reached its peak in the early part of the 20th Century, declined thereafter, and stabilized after 1968. Jeffrey Hill and Kenneth Williams (1993: 1017) hold that “the explanation for the decline in private claims bills is quite simple: legislators no longer see claims bills as an advantageous opportunity.”

     The pattern of private bill vetoes by U.S. presidents differs in several ways from that of public bill vetoes. First, chief executives did not begin to reject such legislation regularly until after the Civil War. Whereas there were fifty­-five regular vetoes of public bills from 1789-1869, only five private bills were vetoed by regular means. In fact, Carlton Jackson (1967: 135) states that President “Grant established the precedent by which private bills would be handled.” A second distinction, caused by the revisions in private bill practice delineated above, is that there have been only five presidential vetoes of private bills since 1969, while 166 public bills were rejected by regular means between 1969 and 1997 (Hoff 2001). Nevertheless, overall there have been almost twice the number of private bill vetoes by regular means as public bill vetoes and about a third more pocket vetoes of private bills than public bills (Presidential Vetoes, 1789-1988 1992; Presidential Vetoes, 1989-1996 1997). Jackson (1967: 135) describes trends in presidential private bill veto use below:

... most of the vetoes from 1870 to 1945 were on private bills of one sort or another. The greatest numbers came, of course, under Grover Cleveland and Franklin D. Roosevelt. On the whole, these vetoes reflected the desire of Presidents to guard the Treasury against unwarranted intrusions, since it was estimated by the Courant that twenty-five percent of claims were fraudulent. The vetoes, too, sometimes reflected the political battles between Republicans and Democrats, or among factions within one party.

Robert Spitzer (1987) finds that few public bills have been rejected since the 1950s.

     A final distinction in private-public bill veto patterns is that due to their content and procedures adopted to check the merit of claims, only seven private bill vetoes have been overridden in American history, less than one percent of all such bills approved by Congress. On the other hand, the controversial, political, and broader nature of public bills has led to ninety-five overrides, or almost 20 percent of such bills since the presidency of George Washington. Jackson (1967: 135) explains the reasons for private bill veto behavior below:

Possibly one reason for so many private bill vetoes is that the lawmakers rarely refused to sponsor a bill for one of their constituents, although they fully expected a presidential veto. Thus, the President would suffer the onus of having prevented a pension, while the congressman would gain support for at least having tried to secure passage of the bill. This may also explain Congress' failure even to reconsider the vast majority of such vetoed legislation.

Berdahl (1937: 531) finds that “private bills are passed in default of serious opposition rather than because of enthusiastic affirmative support.” Spitzer (1987: 82) explains that when a recommendation to veto a private bill is made by an executive department, “it is perceived, in many ways, as a nonpartisan judgement, unlike most public-bill vetoes.”