Second Session of the Sixty-Ninth Congress: December 6, 1926, to March 4, 19271

Arthur W. Macmahon

American Political Science Review, 1927, vol. 21, issue 2, 297-317

Abstract: Short sessions are short enough—sixty-seven days of actual meetings in that of the Sixty-ninth Congress—but the public's memory is even shorter. It thinks of the recent session almost wholly in terms of the colorful Senate filibuster at the end and forgets that such occurrences are the rule rather than the exception in the short sessions of Congress. When Senator Reed of Pennsylvania was chided by Senator Pittman for “putting your will against the rest of the Senate,” he replied: “As I have a right to do”; and he could point his rejoinder by recalling Mr. Pittman's own obstructive action at the termination of Congress two years before. The system itself invites congestion and obstruction. Rapping for order and snapping “sit down” (the printed proceedings do not record this but give the extinguished Pat Harrison's expiring lament, “Oh, it is a shame to spoil a good speech like this!”), Mr. Dawes snatched the last two minutes from the Senate in order to say that “the Chair regards the results of the present legislative session as primarily due to the defective rules of the Senate” (p. 5687) With equal logic, and perhaps more soundly, one may find in the situation on March 4 reasons for sharpening the question why the Norris constitutional amendment to change the scheme of congressional sessions, which passed the Senate on February 14, 1926, and which was favorably reported in the House within the same month, was not allowed to come to a vote.

Date: 1927
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