Record of the Seventy-First Congress

Report Outline
Drought and Unemployment Relief
Taxation, the Tariff, and Appropriations
Foreign Relations and National Defense
Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929
Regulatory Legislation and Muscle Shoals
Labor, Immigration, and Law Enforcement
Political and Electoral Questions
Special Focus

The Seventy-first Congress, which ended by constitutional limitation March 4, 1931, was called into special session by the President early in 1929, and corresponded with the first two years of the Hoover administration. The special or first session began April 15, 1929, and adjourned November 22, 1929, after enacting the administration's farm relief program and beginning work upon a revision of the Fordney-McCumber tariff. Tariff revision dominated the second session which opened on December 2,1929, and adjourned July 3,1930. The third session, from December 1, 1930, to March 4, 1931, was occupied principally with measures for drought and unemployment relief. It ended with the President's veto of the Muscle Shoals bill and his pocket veto of the Wagner employment exchange bill.

Appropriations during the first session totaled $199,310,597, during the second session $4,872,401,096, and during the third session $5,178,107,522—a grand total of $10,249,819,215 for the Congress.

Leading Measures Enacted by 71st Congress

The most important measures enacted during the Seventy-first Congress were the Agricultural Marketing Act; the Hawley-Smoot tariff; the Census and Reapportionment Act; the Wagner public works planning measure; and acts establishing a pension system for all disabled World War veterans, authorizing loans to veterans on the basis of adjusted compensation certificates, providing for loans of $65,000,000 to drought-stricken farmers, and appropriating a $116,000,000 emergency fund for public works.