Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 22, 1990 TAG: 9006220195
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Baltimore Sun
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
By a 65-35 vote, the Senate declined to override President Bush's veto of a bill that would have overhauled the Hatch Act, which has prohibited federal employees from participating in a range of campaign-related affairs for more than a half-century.
The House had voted 327-93 Wednesday to enact the law over the president's objections.
But the Senate's margin was two votes short of the two-thirds majority required to override a veto. And so, Bush prevailed once again, as he has with each of his 11 previous vetoes.
The legislation would have allowed off-duty federal workers to attend political conventions and caucuses as delegates and to speak at rallies on behalf of candidates.
It also would have permitted them to hold offices in local, state or national political organizations and to solicit donations from co-workers for federal employee political action committees.
But Republicans, whose political ancestors drafted the Hatch Act in 1939 to prevent civil service workers from being forced to work for President Franklin D. Roosevelt's re-election effort, argued that the new legislation would lead to the politicization of the federal work force.
The partisan flavor of the debate was reflected in the vote. All 55 Senate Democrats voted to override the veto. Of the 35 Republicans who voted with the president, 30 had opposed the bill when it passed, 67-30, last month. John Warner, Virginia's Republican senator, voted to override the veto.
The administration won this latest veto fight when it persuaded three Republicans who had originally backed the measure - Sens. Alfonse D'Amato of New York, Pete Domenici of New Mexico and Trent Lott of Mississippi - to support the president's veto.
by CNB