Presenting Measures to the President for Approval: Possible Delays

Richard S. Beth
Specialist on Congress and the Legislative Process

The Constitution requires Congress to present each measure it enacts to the President for approval. In contrast, the Constitution requires the President to act on measures within 10 days of their presentment and is silent on the amount of time that may elapse before Congress presents each measure to the President. Not being subject to a constitutional constraint, Congress has sometimes temporarily withheld enrolled measures from presentment, either when the President is absent or to avoid a possible pocket veto. 

Before an enrolled measure can be presented to the President, it must be enrolled, or prepared in its final form; the enrolled text must then be verified; and the measure must then be signed by the presiding officers of both houses. For long measures or at times of heavy congressional workload, these processes may take some time. Rules of Congress require that measures be presented "forthwith" after being signed, but do not lay specific constraints on the amount of time that may be taken in enrollment, verification, and signature. 

Generally speaking, data suggest that the time between second chamber passage of a measure and its enrollment and presentment to the President is almost always completed in a timely fashion. For example, over the past 20 years, in no year did the average time between second chamber passage of a conference report and presentment of the enrolled measure to the President exceed 11 calendar days. 

Occasionally in recent years, however, significant delays appear to have occurred between final action by Congress on a measure and its presentment to the President for reasons related not to institutional or administrative considerations, but to policy or partisan disputes. Some of these instances have met with protests, particularly within the House of Representatives. Precedents indicate that in the House, at least, any "unreasonable" delay in presenting a measure to the President, or preparing it for such presentment, might give rise to a question of the privileges of the House, which include matters affecting the integrity of the proceedings of the House. On these grounds a resolution requiring the prompt performance of necessary actions, or directing other remedies, might be privileged for consideration in the House. Such resolutions were presented on at least one occasion in 1888 and one in 1991. Though neither was adopted, one was held to raise a question of privilege, and in the other case, the chair affirmed the principle that such a situation might give rise to a question of privilege.


Date of Report: May 3, 2010
Number of Pages: 15
Order Number: R41217
Price: $29.95

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