Legislative Record of the Seventieth Congress

Report Outline
Government Finances
Foreign Relations
National Defense
Agricultural Legislation
Public Works Legislation
Shipping and Railroad Legislation
Regulatory Legislation
Labor and Immigration Legislation
Prohibition Legislation
Political and Electoral Questions
Special Focus

The Seventieth Congress, which met for its first session December 5, 1927, expired by constitutional limitation at noon on March 4, 1929. Daring its two sessions, the Congress placed more than a thousand new laws upon, the statute books. The most important of these were the following:

	House		Senate
Measure	Date of passage	Vote	Data of passage	Vote
Revenue Act of 1928	12:15:27	366 to 24	5:21:28
Alien Property Settlement Act	12:20:27	223 to 26	2:21:28
Mississippi Flood Control Act	4:24:28	254 to 91	3:23:28	70 to 0
Merchant Marine Act of 1928	5:14:28		5:16:28	31 to 20
Colorado River (Boulder Dam) Act	5:25:28	(219 to 137)	12:14:28	65 to 11
Fifteen Cruiser Building Program	3:17:28	287 to 57	2: 5:29	68 to 12
No record vote on passage.
Vote rejecting motion to recommit the bill.

One of the outstanding events of the Seventieth Congress was the granting by the Senate of its consent to ratification of the General Pact for Renunciation of War. The treaty was signed by the President, January 17, 1929, and when the Coolidge administration went out of office it had been ratified by twelve of its fifteen original signatories. Three additional-ratifications -those of Belgium, France and Japan-are necessary to bring the treaty into force. The most important treaty left without action by the Senate was the convention for compulsory arbitration negotiated at the recent Pan American conference at Washington.

Legislative measures that failed with the final adjournment included the bill to authorize the taking of the 1930 census, the bill for reapportionment of representation in the lower house on the basis of that census, and a resolution to postpone for an additional year the effective date of the national origin provisions of the Immigration Act of 1924. All of these measures had been approved by the House but were blocked in the Senate. Nominations left without action by the Senate included those of former Secretary of the Navy Curtis D. Wilbur to be a United States circuit judge; former Senator Irvine L. Lenroot to be a member of the Court of Customs Appeals, and former Tariff Commissioner Henry H, Glassie to be a member of the District of Columbia Supreme Court. The long-pending case of Senator-elect William S. Vare of Pennsylvania failed to reach a final settlement during the Seventieth Congress and was passed on to the Senate of the Seventy-first Congress for final determination.