it threatened both economic and political stability. In 1946, the Republicans returned their first majority in both houses of Congress since the 1928 election in which Hartley was first elected. With his party in the majority, Hartley served as the chairman of the Committee on Education and Labor in the 80th United States Congress. Along with Senator Robert A. Taft who was chairman of the Labor and Public Welfare Committee, the next year he introduced legislation to curb what he felt were the worst of labor's excesses. The resultant Taft–Hartley Act was a major revision of the 1935 Wagner Act (officially known as the National Labor Relations Act) and represented the first major revision of a New Deal act passed by the post-war Congress. The act placed limits on labor tactics such as the secondary boycott, and gave each state the option to enact right-to-work laws if it so chose (28 states have done so). This provision, known as Section 14(b), was one of the act's most controversial. President Harry S. Truman vetoed the act, but Congress overrode the veto on June 23, 1947, with 20 of the 45 Democratic senators and 107 of the 188 Democratic representatives joining with Republicans to override the veto. It is in the platform of all major U.S. labor unions to call for the repeal of the act, especially Section 14 (b), and at times this has been reflected in the platform of the Democratic Party. However, the only time this has ever seemed likely was when the Democrats had a huge majority in both houses of Congress following the Republican electoral disaster of 1964. Even then, the repeal bill passed 221–203 in the House, but the two-thirds majority it needed in the Senate was never attained, partly because of long filibustering by Republicans such as Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen. Labor allies failed to break the filibuster, and the repeal bill was withdrawn by the Democratic Majority Leader, Mike Mansfield, in 1966. Hartley did not seek any further election to Congress following the term in which the act which bears his name was passed, and his service concluded on January 3, 1949. Later life Hartley ran unsuccessfully for one of the two New Jersey senatorial seats in 1954 and he returned to New Jersey and lived for fifteen more years as a business consultant, seeing the act withstand its toughest test and remain