Veto Power

        Ahhh the ever famous presidential veto. Technically speaking, the power to veto is the formal, constitutional authority of the president to reject bills passed by both houses of Congress, thus preventing them from becoming law without further congressional action.
       The power to veto is one of the President's most elite powers that he is given in his position. It is something he (or she, you never know, one day) can use to threaten congress in order to prompt members to rework legislation to the President's liking. Even if they don't veto, just the very threat of a veto can send chills down the spines of the members of Congress. It is amazing what you can tell about a President's term based on the amount of times he uses a veto. Some veto once or twice in their terms, others such as the historic Franklin Delano Roosevelt, used his veto power 635 times!
        Although a veto gives a President further power outside his typical duties, a veto can be overridden by Congress. This can be done with 2/3 majority in each house to override the Executive veto. But, due to party ties and divides,  Congress cannot often get enough votes to override an executive veto. It is so rare that in over 200 years, there have been over 2,500 total presidential vetoes and only about maybe a hundred have been successfully overridden. The President with the most overridden vetoes in history is Andrew Johnson, who was impeached.
     Some recent overridden vetoes occurred during the Bush Presidency which included the Water Resources Development Act of 2007 which was overridden by the House with a whopping 361-54 vote, while only 277 were needed and in the Senate with a landslide of 79-14 with 62 votes needed. This law reauthorized the Water Resources Development Act and authorized flood control, navigation, and environmental projects and studies by the US Army Corps of Engineers. It also proves that vetoes are possible to override, just hard to override.
      In this specific case, Bush cited as his reasons for killing the bill as followed,

"This bill lacks fiscal discipline. I fully support funding for water resources projects that will yield high economic 

and environmental returns to the Nation and each year my budget has proposed reasonable and responsible funding, including $4.9 billion for 2008, 

to support the Army Corps of Engineers' (Corps) main missions. However, this authorization bill makes promises to local communities that the Congress does not have a track record of keeping. The House of Representatives took a $15 billion bill into negotiations with a $14 billion bill from the Senate and instead of splitting the difference, emerged with a Washington compromise that costs over $23 billion. This is not fiscally responsible, particularly when local communities have been waiting for funding for projects already in the pipeline. The bill's excessive authorization for over 900 projects and programs exacerbates the massive backlog of ongoing Corps construction projects, which will require an additional $38 billion in future appropriations to complete.

This bill does not set priorities. The authorization and funding of Federal water resources projects should be focused on those projects with the greatest merit that are also a Federal responsibility. My Administration has repeatedly urged the Congress to authorize only those projects and programs that provide a high return on investment and are within the three main missions of the Corps' civil works program: facilitating commercial navigation, reducing the risk of damage from floods and storms, and restoring aquatic ecosystems. This bill does not achieve that goal. This bill promises hundreds of earmarks and hinders the Corps' ability to fulfill the Nation's critical water resources needs -- including hurricane protection for greater New Orleans, flood damage reduction for Sacramento, and restoration of the Everglades while diverting resources from the significant investments needed to maintain existing Federal water infrastructure. American taxpayers should not be asked to support a pork-barrel system of Federal authorization and funding where a project's merit is an afterthought."

        

But luckily, through the power of democracy and checks and balances, this bill and many others like it have been saved and will continue to get saved regardless of the firm Presidential veto.