Post-Veto Authority

The United States Constitution grants the executive the ability to veto legislation passed by Congress, thereby creating a check against abuses of power by a majority that seeks to infringe upon the rights of any number of individuals. Nevertheless, this safeguard is far from infallible. A President who favors the expansion of government is sufficient to bring about a permanent growth in the Leviathan. Theodore Roosevelt's refusal to veto the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, for example, ushered in an era of scrutinizing state controls over the food people ate and the types of products companies were permitted to produce. Woodrow Wilson's refusal to veto the Clayton Anti-Trust Act of 1914 established ex post facto laws by which any company could arbitrarily be declared guilty of "monopolistic practices." Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal programs initiated farm subsidies, halting a rise in the standard of living of American consumers, expanded the size of government some 300%, created a quasi-Hitler-Youth Civilian Conservation Corps, initiated a blatant penalization of the rich for being rich through a monstrously graduated income tax, and destroyed the economy of the Tennessee Valley by means of a government monopoly on electricity in the region. These monstrous violations of individual rights were not only not opposed, but outright devised and promoted by the Roosevelt administration. Most of them, including the social security program, which acts as a black hole for taxpayer funds, still exist today. Loopholes in the current Constitutional system have permitted power grabs by special interest lobbies and demagogic politicians, made at the expense of everyone else, to have lingering effects on the lives of Americans seventy, ninety, or even one hundred years later.