protect unit banks, and bank depositors, by establishing federal deposit insurance, thereby eliminating the advantage larger, more financially secure banks had in attracting deposits. 150 separate bills providing some form of federal deposit insurance had been introduced in the United States Congress since 1886. The House had passed a federal deposit insurance bill on May 27, 1932, that was awaiting Senate action during the 1933 "lame duck" session. After several states had closed their banks in what became the banking crisis of 1933, President Hoover issued a February 20, 1933, plea to the House of Representatives to pass the Glass bill as the "first constructive step to remedy the prime weakness of our whole economic life". On March 4, 1933, however, the lame duck session of the 72nd Congress adjourned without either the Glass bill or the House deposit insurance bill becoming law. On the same day, the Senate reconvened in a special session called by President Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated as the new President. 1933 extraordinary session of Congress Glass bills President Roosevelt called both Houses of Congress into "extraordinary session" on March 9, 1933, to enact the Emergency Banking Act that ratified Roosevelt's emergency closing of all banks on March 6, 1933. On March 11, 1933, Senator Glass reintroduced (as S. 245) his Glass bill revised to require banks to eliminate securities affiliates within 2 years rather than the 5 years permitted by the compromised version of the Glass bill the Senate had passed in January. Roosevelt told Glass he approved most of the bill, including the separation of commercial and investment banking, that he shared Glass's desire for a "unified banking system" with state and national banks regulated by a single authority, but that he only approved countywide, not statewide, branch banking, and that he opposed deposit insurance. On March 7, 1933, National City Bank (predecessor to Citibank) had announced it would liquidate its security affiliate. The next day, Winthrop Aldrich, the newly named chairman and president of Chase National Bank, announced Chase would do the same and that Chase supported prohibiting banks from having securities affiliates. Aldrich also called for prohibiting securities firms from taking deposits. According to Aldrich and his biographer, Aldrich (a lawyer) drafted new language for Glass's bill that became Section 21 of the Glass–Steagall Act. Contemporary observers suggested Aldrich's proposal was aimed at J.P. Morgan & Co. A later