ered provision is
emphasized by the single exception specified to its operation. Actually,
it was impossible from the first to give it any such scope. Otherwise
the intermediate stages of the legislative process would have been
bogged down hopelessly, not to mention other highly undesirable results.
In a report rendered by the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1897 it was
shown that the word "necessary" in the clause had come in practice to
refer "to the necessity occasioned by the requirement of other
provisions of the Constitution, whereby every exercise of 'legislative
powers' involves the concurrence of the two Houses"; or more briefly,
"necessary" here means necessary if an "order, resolution, or vote" is
to have the force of law. Such resolutions have come to be termed "joint
resolutions" and stand on a level with "bills," which if "enacted"
become Statutes. But "votes" taken in either House preliminary to the
final passage of legislation need not be submitted to the President, nor
resolutions passed by the Houses concurrently with a view to expressing
an opinion or to devising a common program of action (e.g., the
concurrent resolutions by which during the fight over Reconstruction the
Southern States were excluded from representation in the House and
Senate, the Joint Committee on Reconstruction containing members from
both Houses was created, etc.), or to directing the expenditure of money
appropriated to the use of the two Houses.[211] Within recent years the
concurrent resolution has been put to a new use--the termination of
powers delegated to the Chief Executive, or the disapproval of
particular exercises of power by him. Most of the important legislation
enacted for the prosecution of World War II provided that the powers
granted to the President should come to an end upon adoption of
concurrent resolutions to that effect.[212] Similarly, measures
authorizing the President to reorganize executive agencies have provided
that a Reorganization Plan promulgated by him should be reported by
Congress and should not become effective if one[213] or both[214] Houses
adopted a resolution disapproving it. Also, it was settled as early as
1789 that resolutions of Congress proposing amendments to the
Constitution need not be submitted to the President, the Bill of Rights
having been referred to the States without being laid before President
Washington for his approval--a procedure which the Court ratified in due
course.[215