Record Votes in the Seventy-Second Congress

Report Outline
Measures Voted in the United States Senate
Record Votes in the Senate
Votes of Individual Senators on Leading Measures
Record Votes in the House of Representatives
Votes of House Members on Leading Measures
Special Focus

Measures Voted in the United States Senate

Frequent roll-calls during the first session of the Seventy-second Congress, now drawing to a close at Washington, have placed members of both houses on record on a wide variety of public questions. Issues which were made the subject of record votes in both houses included the foreign-debt moratorium, imposition of a sales tax, full payment of the bonus, various measures for the relief of farm distress and unemployment, reductions in civil and military appropriations, and the Democratic proposal of a policy looking to reciprocal reductions in tariffs.

Among the questions passed upon in the House, which have not yet reached a vote in the Senate, were independence for the Philippines, leasing of Muscle Shoals and the Goldsborough proposal to use the powers of government to restore commodity prices to pre-depression levels. The Senate went on record on a large number of questions which were not made the subject of roll-calls in the House.

Prohibition modification obtained direct votes in both houses for the first time since the passage of the National Prohibition Act. In the House the wets mustered 187 votes, or 43 per cent of the total membership, for a proposal to discharge the Judiciary Committee from consideration of a resolution to amend the Constitution substantially as recommended by the majority of the Wickersham commission. In the Senate 24 votes were mustered on one occasion and 26 votes on another for proposals to legalize and tax 2.75 per cent beer. The House vote was 103 short of the number required to submit a constitutional amendment to the states, with the full membership present and voting, and the highest Senate vote was 23 short of the number required to modify the Volstead act.