Executive power · the veto

Vetoes issued, by president

The number of bills each president vetoed, from the official U.S. Senate tally, with the count Congress overrode. It is a clean, binary, historically consistent measure of willingness to confront the legislature, though a low number usually means alignment with Congress, not weakness.

Clinton

Faced a Republican Congress for six of eight years; 2 overridden

Bush

4 overridden, the most of any president in the window

Obama

1 overridden

Trump I

All in the final two years, after Democrats took the House; 1 overridden

Biden

0 overridden

Trump II

Both in Dec 2025, both sustained; little reaches his desk that he opposes, with a unified Republican Congress

The veto count tracks divided government, not strength. A president whose party controls Congress rarely needs to veto, because Congress does not send him bills he opposes; that is why Trump II (unified control) has 2 and Clinton (a Republican Congress for six years) has 37. Trump I's ten vetoes all came after the 2018 midterms handed the House to the opposition. A low count signals alignment, not weakness. Overrides are the harder test of a veto's staying power, and there Bush (4) leads.