Federalist 73 is an essay written by Alexander Hamilton to the people of New York, as part of the Federalist Papers, a series of 85 essays, written in 1788, defending the United States Constitution. Federalist 73, titled “The Provision for the Support of the Executive and the Veto Power,” discusses the presidential veto power as well as the congressional control of the president’s salary. Before any bill becomes a law, it needs to be first signed by the president. If the president refuses to sign it, he vetoes it, and usually sends it back to Congress with his objections.
Contents
Background
The Federalist Papers were written with the intentions of persuading New York citizens to approve the US Constitution and also to develop future understanding of the constitution.
The Federalist Papers were meant to help people understand how to interpret the constitution and to help people understand how the ideas of the constitution came about. Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison worked together to give an outline of the constitution and to explain the arrangement of government that the Constitution would hopefully create.
The 73rd Federalist Paper was written mainly about the veto power and why it is needed and how it will work in the constitution. Hamilton's argument was that the veto power would help distribute power over the government. This way the president or any one branch does not have complete power over the country and the bills passed.
Publication
The essays were published between, October 1787 and August 1788, and weren’t originally called “The Federalist Papers”; instead they were called “The Federalist”, and 77 were published as a series in The Independent Journal, The New York Packet, and The Daily Advertiser. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay originally published “The Federalist” under the name Publius; the authors were kept a secret, and weren’t revealed to the public until after Hamilton’s death, in 1804.
The Presidential Salary
In No. 73, Alexander Hamilton discussed the power Congress has on the president’s salary, and argued that Congress should not be able to adjust the president’s salary, while he is in office as stated in the Constitution; “The president shall, at stated times, receive for his services, a compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the period for which he shall have been elected, and he shal not receive within that period any other emolument from the United States, or any of them.” (Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution). Instead, Congress can vote on the president’s salary for the next term of office. Hamilton thought that if the president’s salary were to be adjusted while in office, then that would lead to corruption. Congress recently changed the presidential salary in 2001, from $200,000 to $400,000. There are also a number of benefits the President receives in addition to the salary.
The Executive Veto Power
One of the main powers of the president and the executive branch, is to veto any bill before it becomes a law.The constitution of massachusetts was one of the first states to adopt the veto power into their government. Hamilton says this is where he got the idea for the veto from (Presco. tt). Within this power, mentioned in both the Constitution and in Federalist 73, there are two different types of vetoes the president can make: the qualified and the absolute veto. The absolute veto is when the president vetoes the law and there are no revisions made or proposed. The bill has failed and is no longer going to become a law and its process is over. The other type of veto is the qualified veto. This is when the law is sent back to Congress with the president’s rejection and revisions.he qualified veto is more effective than the absolute veto because the absolute veto can be seen as too much of a monarchical concept
The Override Policy
When a law is vetoed with a qualified veto, it gets sent back to Congress with objections to be revised. If Congress disagrees with the president’s choice to veto, they can override the veto with “two thirds of each of the component members of the legislative body”. In other words, it can be overridden with a two-thirds majority in both sections of Congress: the Senate and the House of Representatives. This idea was first proposed with the veto power itself in Article I, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution.The purpose of this for the reconsideration of laws and to make sure that Congress is passing fair laws. It operates under the assumption that Congress as a whole has better judgement than the individual president and “there is no point in returning a bill for reconsideration if the executive's judgment is presumed to be better than the legislature’s”. The judgment of one single person is not going to be more fair than the judgement of hundreds of people.
During the Constitutional Convention, the founding fathers debated whether the override should be a three-fourths majority or a two-thirds majority. Alexander Hamilton and the rest of the Convention Committee ruled in favor of the two-thirds majority and it has stayed that way ever since. However, another author of the Federalist Papers, James Madison was against the two-thirds rule in favor of the three-fourths rule saying that the “two-thirds rule made the veto too weak to accomplish its purposes”
An Example of Checks and Balances
Hamilton argues, that the veto power is an example of how checks and balances works between the branches, and that without it, the president would have no way to defend oneself from, or balance the power of Congress. As Hamilton says in No.73, “It not only serves as a shield to the Executive, but it furnishes an additional security against the enaction of improper laws. It establishes a salutary check upon the legislative body, calculated to guard the community against the effects of faction, precipitancy, or of any impulse unfriendly to the public good, which may happen to influence a majority of that body.” (Federalist Paper No.73). The veto power is limited, but also limits the power of Congress. When Congress proposes a bill, the president can either veto, or pocket veto the bill. If the president chooses to veto a bill, then the bill will get sent back to congress, to be revised and proposed again. If Congress still thinks the bill should become law then, a vote will be held; if a two-thirds majority of the House of Representatives, and the Senate agree, then the bill will become law. When the president chooses to pocket veto a bill then, the president will hold on to the bill for 10 days; after 10 days, if Congress is in session, then the bill will become law, and if Congress is not in session then, the bill will not become law. (How Laws are Made)
The Modern Veto
The veto system in current politics operates in a very similar way to the veto system when it was first proposed. The main difference is the a qualified veto is now considered to be a regular veto and an absolute veto is called a pocket veto. The pocket veto is a veto when a bill is presented after the legislative term, so Congress does not have the chance to override the veto. The system is almost identical to that of the Constitutional Convention, the major differences are the names and the addition of the item veto. The item veto is when the President can veto specific lines of the bill, but pass the rest of the bill. This was added long after the Constitutional Convention and it was not included within Federalist 73.
When first proposed, the two-thirds referred to the total seats in Congress, but, with the case of Missouri Pacific Railroad v. Kansas in 1919, the law changed to be two-thirds of the members of Congress present. It does not matter if the number of Congress members present is far less than the total amount of Congress members in total, it only matters that there are two-thirds of the members voting in favor of the override. This rule applies to both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Counterarguments
The anti federalists were a group of people who opposed the US Constitution. Yeomen farmers were also a large group that did not agree with the ratification of the Constitution; they joined the anti federalists. The antifederalists were not as organized, and were much more diverse than the federalists; however, all of the anti federalists had common thoughts that the possibility of the government becoming corrupt and gaining too much power over the people was a threat to the United States. Federalist No. 73 gives reassurance that the checks and balances set up in the Constitution will not allow for the government to gain dangerous control over the people nor will congress be able to make unfair laws.