Report of the Special Committee on the Termination of the National Emergency

The bulk of the report is an inventory of approximately 470 sections in federal law that extend emergency powers to the President and the executive branch.

Roosevelt took a more assertive approach, believing that the executive branch had a public duty to "do anything that the needs of the Nation demanded" except where the Constitution or laws prohibited it.

[4] In responding to the Great Depression and World War II, Roosevelt used declarations of emergency to signal his intent to broaden executive power, with the expectation that Congress (controlled by his own party) would ratify his actions.

[5] Reflecting on the situation, the committee observed:[6] "The 2,000-year-old problem of how a legislative body in a democratic republic may extend extraordinary powers for use by the executive during times of great crisis and dire emergency — but do so in ways assuring both that such necessary powers will be terminated immediately when the emergency has ended and that normal processes will be resumed — has not yet been resolved in this country.

These were: Aside from these particular examples, the committee noted a trend since Roosevelt of transferring broad authority to the President in times of crisis and leaving it in place.