and a low military budget he could cut the debt and still provide benefits
like more low-cost housing, higher Social Security payments, and federal
aid to education. He expected to have four years of peace in which to reach
his goals.
Actually, Truman “may have been too optimistic about what he could accomplish
with Congress” (McCoy, 1984, p. 178), and the combination of the Korean
War and Democratic defections to the Progressives and Dixiecrats didn’t help.
Ironically, President Truman had his greatest legislative success during the
same period in which he issued the most vetoes over a two-year span–1949-1950.
He “had reason to take pride in the passage of the housing, minimum-wage,
Social Security, and antimerger legislation, as well as the several economy
and efficiency measures” (McCoy, 1984, p. 190).
Some scholars evaluate specific justifications enunciated for President
Truman’s vetoes of public bills by regular means. Metz (1971, p. 330)
finds that several of his vetoes cited “objections to legislative interference with his
power to control the bureaucracy and to establish program priorities for it,” and
that these reasons were “consonant with his Fair Deal program.” Watson (1993)
discovers that, of thirty regular vetoes of public bills which he examined, the
most frequent reason furnished was that the proposed legislation constituted
unwise policy.
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Convention