Statutes of the United States authorizing the appointment or payment of general or special deputy marshals for service in connection with elections or on election day until an appropriation sufficient to meet such contract or pay such liability shall have first been made by law.

This section of the bill is intended to make an extensive and essential change in the existing laws.  The following are the provisions of the statutes on the same subject which are now in force: 

SEC. 3679.  No Department of the Government shall expend in any one fiscal year any sum in excess of appropriations made by Congress for that fiscal year, or involve the Government in any contract for the future payment of money in excess of such appropriations.

SEC. 3732.  No contract or purchase on behalf of the United States shall be made unless the same is authorized by law or is under an appropriation adequate to its fulfillment, except in the War and Navy Departments, for clothing, subsistence, forage, fuel, quarters, or transportation, which, however, shall not exceed the necessities of the current year.

The object of these sections of the Revised Statutes is plain.  It is, first, to prevent any money from being expended unless appropriations have been made therefor, and, second, to prevent the Government from being bound by any contract not previously authorized by law, except for certain necessary purposes in the War and Navy Departments.

Under the existing laws the failure of Congress to make the appropriations required for the execution of the provisions of the election laws would not prevent their enforcement.  The right and duty to appoint the general and special deputy marshals which they provide for would still remain, and the executive department of the Government would also be empowered to incur the requisite liability for their compensation.  But the second section of this bill contains a prohibition not found in any previous legislation.  Its design is to render the election laws inoperative and a dead letter during the next fiscal year.  It is sought to accomplish this by omitting to appropriate money for their enforcement and by expressly prohibiting any Department or officer of the Government from incurring any liability under any of the provisions of title 26 of the Revised Statutes authorizing the appointment or payment of general or special deputy marshals for service on election days until an appropriation sufficient to pay such liability shall have first been made.

The President is called upon to give his affirmative approval to positive enactments which in effect deprive him of the ordinary and necessary means of executing laws still left in the statute book and embraced within his constitutional duty to see that the laws are executed.  If he approves the bill, and thus gives to such positive enactments the authority of law, he participates in the curtailment of his means of seeing that the law is faithfully executed, while the obligation of the law and of his constitutional duty remains unimpaired.