CHAPTER XIV
CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS AND THE PRESIDENTIAL
SUCCESSION BILL
When I entered the Senate, I found one very serious inconvenience
and one very great public danger in existing conditions.
The great inconvenience grew out of the fact that by the Constitution
the session of Congress must end on the fourth of March every
other year. A third of the Senate goes out at the same time,
and every fourth year the Presidential term ends. That session
of Congress meets, according to our usage, on the first Monday
of December. The meeting cannot well come much earlier without
preventing the members of the two Houses of Congress from
taking part in the political campaign, where they are justly
expected by the people to give an account of their stewardship,
and to discuss the questions to be considered by the people
in the election. So there are but thirteen weeks in which
to pass fourteen or fifteen great Appropriation Bills, making
it impossible to deal with any other great subject except by
unanimous consent. The result is also that the Appropriation
Bills are put in the power of a very few men indeed.
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