It seems to me the the powers of the presidency are ever-growing, particularly in committing US military forces to combat, but in all kinds of other ways as evidenced by “signing statements” explaining why the President is going to choose not to obey whatever laws he doesn’t want to.
I think in large part this is due to the fact that the only available punishment for his actions or lack thereof is impeachment. Nearly everyone in Congress apparently sees this as simply too draconian a punishment for any single small thing, and so the President gains more and more power as Congress is unable to reign him in. It’s like the death of a thousand cuts.
There have been a few legislative attempts to reign in presidential powers that have had almost no effect, because the whole issue is about the President exercising powers with a lack of or in spite of Congressional action.
The only solution that comes to mind is that Congress actually begins to use its big impeachment gun, and rather liberally. The biggest argument against it, AFAIK, is that it might paralyze government for long periods of time – but if this administration has proved anything, it’s that we as a nation can survive a government paralyzed into almost complete inactivity. And I imagine that Congress could get through a trial, which in these cases would be more political than legal, in reasonably short order, if they put their minds to it.
Personally I think almost every president since Nixon has committed acts that could reasonably be interpreted as impeachable, maybe excluding Ford and Carter.
As a final benefit, it might make candidates think more seriously about Vice Presidential candidates.
I just picked those two because I couldn’t think of a specific impeachable thing they did. Probably, if I did more reseach, I could find something for them too.
The thing is, as far as expanding war powers go, most of that was done with the tacit assent of Congress. If Congress was truly opposed to a given military operation they could pass a resolution refusing to fund it. For the most part, the president goes through the motions of getting congressional approval for their major military campaigns, even GW Bush got approval for his military intervention into Iraq. While its true that we no longer formally declare war, that may have more to do with the current world diplomatic environment than it does with domestic power sharing. I don’t recall any other country formally declaring war on anyone since WW2.
It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. Checks and balances were intentionally written into the Constitution. The idea is that no single branch can act independently or dominate another branch.
Yeah. You don’t limit the President’s powers by impeaching him every time he does something you (actually, the Congressmen in the opposing party) don’t like. You limit the President’s powers by limiting the President’s powers.
I’m not convinced that the President is actually becoming ever more powerful, and the Congress becoming ever more incapable of reigning him in.
I see Congress passing a lot more absurdly complicated laws that leave implementation up to the Executive Branch, or are sufficiently ambiguous that they can legitimately be interpreted in many ways, and the President chooses how to enforce them. There are a lot of reasons for that, but one of them is that it provides political cover. If the law is complicated enough, you can say almost anything you want about it. And if it has bad effects, well, then you can point the finger at some other branch of government, since they must have screwed it up.
The only solution that comes to my mind is to scrap our whole presidential/separation of powers system and replace it with a parliamentary system. Then Congress can dismiss the president at any time for any reason.
Congress has two major ways to sanction the President.
Passing a law and overriding the veto, which takes a two-thirds majority of each house.
Impeachment and removal from office, which takes a simple majority of the House and a two-thirds majority of the Senate.
With due respect to the founders, they got the majority requirements wrong. They were probably thinking about how votes of confidence work in Parliament. Congress has a similar power: any on bill that they can override the veto of, they could remove the President with the same number of votes. Not that they’re linked in practice, obviously.
But the point remains–it should be easier to override a veto than to dismiss the President. Personally, I’d require a three-fifths majority in both houses to override a veto, and a two-thirds majority to first impeach and then remove from office.
I’d rather see Congress more frequently overriding vetos then dismissing Presidents.
Limiting the power of the Executive branch sounds like a great idea when you do not approve of what the current president is doing. Turns out to be a lousy idea that should be repealed when someone you approve of is in office.
Since the VP would become pres, that would mean at least 2 impeachments (maybe more depending on the makeup of Congress at the time) for that to happen. You think it’s possible the opposing party would even give the VP time to do something to be impeached for?
Your argument provides its own fallacy. You believe that every recent President (except maybe Ford and Carter) deserved impeachment. Yet Congress chooses to impeach only one of them, and that was clearly for the purposes of Righteous Indignation rather than upholding some Constitutional principle.
Before Clinton there was only one President who was impeached. What was his crime? Firing a Cabinet member, something which before and since had always been considered a legitimate power of the presidency.
In other words, Congress has always had the power to impeach, but has chosen to use it for the worst reasons. It’s like giving a shotgun to an infant and expecting the infant to use it only for home protection.
Is a “signing statement” an Executive Order? And can’t executive orders be over-ridden by passing a law? I realize it would require a veto override, too, but if there were an executive order that directly contradicted a law, the law would win in the courts, right?
