Which amendment shortened the lame duck period

Reformers persisted in their Sisyphean efforts to change the congressional meeting schedule. During the fifty-year period from to , for example, over seventy different proposed constitutional amendments were introduced in Congress to change the date for the commencement of terms of the President, Vice President, and members of Congress.

None of these proposals passed Congress even though supporters claimed that there was widespread popular support for them. Efforts by Republican President Warren Harding to push a ship subsidy bill through a lame-duck session of Congress in gave renewed impetus to the cause of limiting such sessions and brought Nebraska Republican Senator George W.

Norris on board. As a result, Republicans lost seven seats in the Senate and 70 seats in the House of Representatives. In an effort to salvage the ship subsidy bill, Harding called a special session of the lame-duck Congress for November 20, , which continued until the regular short session of Congress began in December. He nearly got his way. The legislation passed the House with the overwhelming support of lame-duck Republicans, who voted for the bill by a margin of 84 to 17, with ten of the yes voters later receiving presidential appointments.

The bill, however, ultimately succumbed to a Democrat-led filibuster in the Senate. The episode became Exhibit A in the case for the Twentieth Amendment. He proposed and pushed through his committee a constitutional amendment to shorten the lame-duck period by having both congressional terms and regular sessions start in January.

Although it passed the Senate by a wide margin, the Amendment failed when the House Republican leadership refused to schedule it for a vote. Norris did not give up. He re-introduced his Amendment in five successive Congresses until it finally passed both houses in On each of these five occasions, the Amendment sailed through the Senate Judiciary Committee on which Norris served and of which he became Chair in , and passed the Senate by margins far in excess of the necessary two-thirds majority.

Until , however, it died in the House without a vote. Putting off consideration of the Amendment until the 72 nd Congress worked out for Norris. By the time the new Congress was organized in December , thirteen months after it had been elected in the wake of the stock-market collapse and onset of the Great Depression, enough Republican Representatives had been defeated in the general elections of or subsequently died and been replaced in special elections to give Democrats a one-seat majority in the House.

By now intimately familiar with the proposal, the full Senate passed it just two days after receiving it from committee. The new Democratic House acted almost as swiftly. The Elections Committee reported the measure on February 2, , less than a month after receiving it from the Senate, and adopted only minor changes to the Senate-passed language.

After adding a section limiting the ratification period to seven years, the full House added its approval by a vote of to 56 on February Less than two weeks after the House voted, a Conference Committee of the Senate and House agreed to compromise language accepting most of the technical changes made by the House and its seven-year limit for ratification. Both chambers approved the conference report within days and sent the Amendment on to the States for ratification on March 8, Some of these legislatures were in session at the time but most of them would not meet until the following year.

By the time that the remaining state legislatures had convened in January , it was a race to the finish. Eighteen states ratified the Twentieth Amendment during the first three weeks of , leaving it just one shy of the thirty-six states needed for final approval on Monday, January Jockeying to put the Amendment over the top, four states ratified it that day and three more the next day. By the end of the legislative sessions, all forty-eight states had ratified the Twentieth Amendment, making it one of the few amendments to the Constitution ratified by all the states and the fastest to achieve that feat.

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Read full article. NCC Staff. January 23, , PM. The 20th amendment or the "Lame Duck" Amendment was created so elected officials could take office sooner after their elections, thus eliminating the 4 month period where "Lame Ducks" whose successors had already been chosen, sat in office not doing much.

The time period between being elected and taking office as president is known as the lame duck period. Lame duck. Herbert Hoover. The period between election day November 4th and the inauguration of the next president January 21st. The sitting-president is considered a "lame duck" since the president-elect will be strolling into the oval office within a couple of months. The 20th Amendment is referred to as the "Lame Duck Amendment" because it shortened the amount of time between election and inauguration for elected officials, and eliminated the "lame duck session" of Congress.

Because of the hardship of travel when the Constitution was written, officials who were elected in November didn't take office until the following March. Thus there was a four month period where "lame ducks" sat in office: officials whose successors had already been elected. Further, Congress was required to sit every December, thus every second year there was a "lame duck session" between December and March. The 20th Amendment moved the inauguration dates from March to January.

It also removed the obligation for Congress to sit every December. Instead it obligated them to sit in January, after the newly elected officials took office. Log in. Idioms, Cliches, and Slang. Politics and Government. See Answer. Best Answer. Study guides. Q: Why was the lame duck period shortened? Write your answer Sometimes it's because it hasn't gotten the work done in time. That's especially bad if the federal budget has not yet been approved. Often Congress will approve emergency contingency funding, just to keep the government in business until after the election.

Then, the lame duck session continues the emergency funding until the new officials take office. Other times fiscal policy is deliberately delayed until after the election. That protects Congress members up for re-election from voters but violates the intent of the Constitution. Lame duck members are no longer accountable.

A Senator who was voted out of office can vote for a bill they know their constituents wouldn't like. A lame duck session of Congress is bad for the economy. The outgoing members are unpredictable. They may stall bills to vent their frustration. Some may trade votes for post-election positions. This creates uncertainty that makes it difficult for businesses to plan for the future.

The expression originated in 18th-century London. It referred to someone who could not pay his loans. It also referred to a stockbroker who couldn't pay his losses. He had to "waddle out of the alley like a lame duck. In politics, President Abraham Lincoln first used the phrase lame duck when referring to outgoing President Calvin Coolidge. He said, "[a] senator or representative out of business is a sort of lame duck.

He has to be provided for. Never trivialize the value of lame duck politicians. They still have the power to issue orders, pardons, and edicts that may not be favorable to the platforms of their replacements or to the current voter consensus.

As such, it may be a beneficial move by Congress if it were to dispense with its lame duck sessions. Thankfully, the lame duck amendment of significantly shortened the time an outgoing politician could remain in office before being replaced.