ich case it shall not be a law._

There are then three ways in which a bill may become a law. (1) It may
pass by majority vote in both houses and be signed by the President. (2)
It may, after being vetoed by the President, be passed by two-thirds
vote in both houses. (3) It will become a law if the President neither
signs nor vetoes it within ten days, unless these are at the end of the
session.

The framers of the Constitution intended that the veto power should be a
check, though not an absolute one, upon hasty or unwise legislation. The
President may cause a bill to fail by neither signing nor vetoing it
during the last ten days of a session. The term _pocket veto_ has been
applied to this method of defeating bills.

SUPPLEMENTARY QUESTIONS AND REFERENCES.

1. Copies of the Congressional Record and the Congressional Directory
furnish interesting illustrations of the topics treated in this chapter.

2. What difference is there in the granting of recognition in the Senate
and House? Harrison, This Country of Ours, 45-48.

3. How are obstructive tactics carried on? Alton, Among the Law-makers,
Chapter 20.

4. Reinsch, Young Citizen's Reader, 198-213. Marriott, Uncle Sam's
Business, 8-16.

CHAPTER X.

SOME IMPORTANT POWERS OF CONGRESS.

I. NATIONAL FINANCES.

The Power of Taxation.--When we speak of the finances of a country,
we mean its revenues and expenditures. Revenues have their origin
chiefly[20] in taxation, and the power vested in Congress by virtue of
which taxes are imposed and collected is found in the following clause:

Article I, Section 8, Clause 1. _The Congress shall have power to lay
and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and
provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States;
but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the
United States._

[Footnote 20: Considerable sums are derived by our National government
from the sale of public lands. See Chapter on Territories and Public
Lands.]

Duties on Imports.--The two forms of taxes relied upon by the
United States for its revenues are (1) duties and (2) excises.[21] A
duty is a tax levied upon goods that are imported into the United
States.[22] The merchant doing business in New York, for example, cannot
obtain possession of the goods he has imported until the officers of the
custom-house at that port have examined the _invoice_, or the list of
articles in each pac