Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T00:38:26.488Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Blending Powers: Hamilton, FDR, and the Backlash That Shaped Modern Congress

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2021

BILL FARLEY
BILL FARLEY*
Affiliation:
Virginia Commonwealth University, USA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt shaped the role of the modern president in part with his relentless pursuit of grand policies and his ability to marshal historic legislation through Congress. In this article, I focus on one legislative tactic employed by FDR that has received little attention—the detailing of Executive Branch staff to select Senate committees. This tactic, effectively a blending of legislative powers, was used to implement FDR’s ambitious postwar domestic agenda as detailed in his Second Bill of Rights. I find that the tactic, used late in FDR’s presidency, was moderately effective, served as a substitute for the personal energy FDR applied to the presidency in his first term, and created a backlash that contributed to the adoption of the Legislative Reform Act of 1946. With these findings I conclude that FDR deserves credit as a transitionary figure for the modernity of Congress, as well as the presidency.

Keywords

FDRCongressLegislative ReformSecond Bill of Rightscongressional committeesLegislative Reorganization Act of 1946
Type
Article
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , January 2021 , pp. 60 - 92
Copyright
© Donald Critchlow and Cambridge University Press 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Rossiter, Clinton, The American Presidency, rev. ed. (New York, 1962), 137Google Scholar.

2. Nichols, David K., The Myth of the Modern Presidency (University Park, PA, 1994), 28–30Google Scholar.

3. Ceaser, James W. et al., “The Rise of the Rhetorical Presidency,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 11, no. 2 (1981): 158–71Google Scholar.

4. Arnold, Peri E. and Roos, L. John, “Toward a Theory of Congressional-Executive Relations,” Review of Politics 36, no. 3 (July 1974): 417CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. Neustadt, Richard E., “Approaches to Staffing the Presidency: Notes on FDR and JFK,” in Perspectives on the Presidency, ed. Bach, Stanley and Sulzner, George T. (Lexington, MA, 1974), 191Google Scholar.

6. Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Annual Message to Congress” (3 January 1934), http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=14683.

7. Francis E. Rourke, “Responsiveness and Neutral Competence,” Public Administration Review 52, no. 6 (December 1992): 539–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. Moe, Terry M., “The Politicized Presidency,” in The New Direction in American Politics, ed. Chubb, J. E. and Peterson, P. E. (Washington, DC, 1985), 239Google Scholar.

9. Polenberg, Richard, Reorganizing Roosevelt’s Government: The Controversy over Executive Reorganization, 1936–1939 (Cambridge, MA, 1966), 11–15Google Scholar.

10. Ibid., 193.

11. Ibid., 91–92.

12. Ibid., 184.

13. Galloway, George B., The Legislative Process in Congress (New York, 1953), 25Google Scholar.

14. Fisher, Louis, “The Efficiency Side of Separated Powers,” Journal of American Studies 5, no. 2 (1971): 115CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15. Hamilton, Alexander, Madison, James, and Jay, John, “Federalist No. 70,” in The Federalist Papers (New York, 2009), 17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16. Fisher, “The Efficiency Side of Separated Powers,” 131.

17. Moe, Terry M. and Howell, William G., “Unilateral Action and Presidential Power,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 29, no. 4 (1999): 853CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18. Harlow, Ralph Volney, The History of Legislative Methods in the Period Before 1825 (New Haven, 1917), 130Google Scholar.

19. Koenig, Louis W., The Invisible Presidency (New York, 1960), 66Google Scholar.

20. Harlow, The History of Legislative Methods in the Period Before 1825, 129–52.

21. Koenig, The Invisible Presidency, 260.

22. Bolton, Alexander and Thrower, Sharece, “Legislative Capacity and Executive Unilateralism,” American Journal of Political Science 60, no. 3 (July 2016): 649–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23. Bailey, Stephen Kemp, Congress Makes a Law: The Story Behind the Employment Act of 1946 (New York, 1950), 40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24. Spritzer, Donald E., Senator James E. Murray and the Limits of Post-War Liberalism (New York, 1985), 103Google Scholar.

25. Key, V. O. Jr., “III. The Reconversion Phase of Demobilization,” American Political Science Review 38, no. 6 (December 1944): 1137–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26. Burns, James M., Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom (1940–1945) (New York, 2012), 426Google Scholar.

27. Franklin D. Roosevelt, “State of the Union Message to Congress” (Washington, DC, 11 January 1944), http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/archives/address_text.html.

28. Spritzer, Senator James E. Murray and the Limits of Post-War Liberalism, 86.

29. Forrest Davis, “Millionaire Moses,” Saturday Evening Post, 8 December 1945.

30. Farley, Bill, “Rocky Mountain Radicals: Copper King James A. Murray, Senator James E. Murray, and Seventy-Eight Years of Montana Politics, 1883–1961,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 66, no. 1 (2016): 39–58Google Scholar; Hubert H. Humphrey, “Senator Hubert H. Humphrey to Leo Perlis,” Telegram, 2 October 1951, AFL-CIO Community Service Activities records, Box 17 Flat, folder 1, University of Minnesota, Elmer L. Andersen Library Social Welfare History Archives.

31. “Franklin D. Roosevelt Day by Day,” FDR Presidential Library & Museum, 2011, http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/daybyday/.

32. George B. Galloway, “Summary of Hearings before the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress,” Legislative History of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 (P.L. 79-601: 2 August 1946 (Washington, DC, 1945), 40–41, http://www.heinonline.org.proxy.library.vcu.edu/HOL/Index?index=leghis%2Flegrga&collection=leghis.

33. Spritzer, Senator James E. Murray and the Limits of Post-War Liberalism, 105.

34. Derickson, Alan, “The House of Falk: The Paranoid Style in American Health Politics,” American Journal of Public Health 87, no. 11 (November 1987): 1836–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35. Bailey, Congress Makes a Law: The Story Behind the Employment Act of 1946, 40; Spritzer, Senator James E. Murray and the Limits of Post-War Liberalism, 103.

36. Wilbur J. Cohen and Jessica H. Barr, “War Mobilization and Reconversion Act of 1944: An Analysis of the ‘George Bill,’” Social Security Bulletin, October 1944; Pepper, Claude Denson, Pepper, Eyewitness to a Century (San Diego, 1987), 111–12Google Scholar.

37. Nourse, Edwin G., Economics in the Public Service (New York, 1953), 341–42Google Scholar.

38. Galbraith, J. K., “Review: Economic Advice and Presidential Leadership: The Council of Economic Advisers,” American Economic Review 56, no. 5 (December 1966): 1249–50Google Scholar.

39. Richard Nixon, “Annual Message to the Congress: The Economic Report of the President” (Washington, DC: Office of the President, 2 February 1970), http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=2591.

40. Poen, Monte M., Harry S. Truman Versus the Medical Lobby: The Genesis of Medicare (Columbia, MO, 1979), 30Google Scholar.

41. Spritzer, Senator James E. Murray and the Limits of Post-War Liberalism, 128.

42. Brinkley, Alan, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (New York, 1995), 259Google Scholar.

43. Pepper, Pepper, Eyewitness to a Century, 121.

44. Lyndon B. Johnson, “President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Remarks with President Truman at the Signing in Independence of the Medicare Bill” (30 July 1965).

45. Bailey, Congress Makes a Law: The Story Behind the Employment Act of 1946, 30–36.

46. Bertram M. Gross, The Legislative Struggle: A Study in Combat, 1953, 281.

47. Neustadt, Richard E., Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents, First Paperback (New York, 1991), 32–34Google Scholar; Milkis, Sidney M., The President and the Parties: The Transformation of the American Party System since the New Deal (New York, 1993), 143Google Scholar; Robert Leon Lester, “Developments in Presidential-Congressional Relationships: FDR-JFK” (PhD diss., University of Virginia, 1968), 134.

48. Holcombe, Arthur, Our More Perfect Union: From Eighteenth-Century Principles to Twentieth-Century Practice (Cambridge, Mass., 1950), 245Google Scholar.

49. Rogers, Lindsay, “The Staffing of Congress,” Political Science Quarterly 56, no. 1 (March 1941): 1–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50. Galloway, The Legislative Process in Congress, 407–11.

51. Macmahon, Arthur W., “Congressional Oversight of Administration: The Power of the Purse. I,” Political Science Quarterly 58, no. 2 (June 1943): 161–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52. Matthews, Donald R., “American Political Science and Congressional Reform,” Social Science History 5, no. 1 (Winter 1981): 91–120Google Scholar.

53. Ford, Aaron L., “The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946,” American Bar Association Journal 32 (November 1946): 741–44Google Scholar.

54. Davidson, Roger H., “The Advent of the Modern Congress: The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 15, no. 3 (August 1990): 357–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harris, Joseph P., “Review: The Reorganization of Congress,” Public Administration Review 6, no. 3 (Summer 1946): 267–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Young, Roland, The American Congress (New York, 1958), 9Google Scholar.

55. Galloway, “Summary of Hearings Before the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress,” 13.

56. “Volume 91, Part 1 (January 3, 1945 to February 23, 1945)” (79th Cong., 1st sess., 23 February 1945), 521–23, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CRECB-1945-pt1/pdf/GPO-CRECB-1945-pt1-16-1.pdf.

57. Galloway, “Summary of Hearings before the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress,” 20.

58. “Proceedings and Debates of the 79th Congress, Second Session,” Congressional Record (Washington, DC, 1944), 7253–54, https://ia600302.us.archive.org/3/items/congressionalrec92bunit/congressionalrec92bunit.pdf.

59. Galloway, “Summary of Hearings before the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress,” 5.

60. Ibid., 17–18.

61. Senate Manual (Washington, DC, 1955), 26.

62. “Volume 91, Part 1 (3 January 1945 to 23 February 1945),” 522.

63. Galloway, “Summary of Hearings before the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress,” 40–41.

64. Murray, James E., “A Practical Approach,” The American Political Science Review 39, no. 6 (December 1945): 1119–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65. Colm, Gerhard, “II. Technical Requirements,” The American Political Science Review 39, no. 6 (December 1945): 1126–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66. Canterbery, E. Ray, Harry S. Truman: The Economics of a Populist President (World Scientific, 2014), 89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

67. Bailey, Congress Makes a Law: The Story Behind the Employment Act of 1946, 106.

68. Galloway, George B., “The Operation of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946,” American Political Science Review 45, no. 1 (March 1951): 41–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69. George B. Galloway, “The Reorganization of Congress: A Report of the Committee on Congress of the American Political Science Association” (Washington, DC, 1945), 49, http://www.heinonline.org.proxy.library.vcu.edu/HOL/Index?index=congrec%2Freorgcon&collection=congrec.

70. Harris, “Review: The Reorganization of Congress.”

71. “Congress Profiles,” Government, History, Art & Archives; US House of Representatives, accessed 25 September 2018, http://history.house.gov/Congressional-Overview/Profiles/.

72. “Proceedings and Debates of the 79th Congress, Second Session,” Congressional Record (Washington, DC, April 1946), 2868–69, https://ia600302.us.archive.org/3/items/congressionalrec92bunit/congressionalrec92bunit.pdf.