7 Key excerpts on "Legislative Power US"

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  eBook - ePub

  Politics USA

  • Robert J. McKeever, Philip Davies(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Congress and the president are rivals for political power generally, and legislative power in particular. To a considerable extent, this rivalry is a ‘zero-sum’ game: any increase in the power of one player inevitably means a corresponding loss of power for the other. Nevertheless, as a responsible national legislature, Congress cannot simply devote itself to institutional self-preservation. It must pass laws to advance the national interest and, to do this, it needs to cooperate with the president. In this chapter, we trace the origins and development of this ambiguous relationship with the presidency and assess the contemporary balance of power between the two. We also ask whether Congress is any longer either willing or able to provide legislative leadership for the country.

  Legislative power: the constitutional design

  Legislative power is the power to pass laws. It lies, therefore, at the heart of the policymaking process and, indeed, is a central attribute of what we more generally call political power. Although the framers of the Constitution were concerned that no single institution should accrue too much political power, it is clear that they entrusted legislative power mainly to the Congress. True, the president was also given a role in the legislative process, but it was not until the twentieth century that he began to expand this role at the expense of Congress and to assume legislative leadership.

  Legislative powers of Congress

  Article I of the Constitution begins by stating that ‘All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives’. Section 8 of Article I goes on to specify the particular powers which the framers wished to transfer from state legislatures to the federal legislature. Among the most important of these enumerated powers are the power to levy taxes; the power to regulate both international and interstate commerce; and the power to declare war.

  Box 14.1

  Functions of Congress

  These are six functions of Congress, categorised by their importance (Keefe and Ogul, 1993, p. 16). The primary and major functions are discussed in this chapter. The minor functions can be briefly summarised: the judicial function consists mainly of the role of Congress in the process of impeachment. This procedure allows for the removal of presidents and federal judges from office for ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’. Rarely used, but dramatic when it is, the most significant instance of impeachment came in 1974, when President Nixon resigned after the House Judiciary Committee investigating the Watergate scandal voted to indict him on three counts. Had Nixon not resigned at that point, the Senate would have acted as the ‘jury’ in his impeachment trial. In December 1998, President Bill Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives, but he was acquitted by the Senate in February 1999. His impeachment sparked a bitter debate about whether the president’s opponents were abusing the impeachment power for partisan ends.

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  Public Budgeting in Context

  Structure, Law, Reform and Results

  • Katherine G. Willoughby(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Jossey-Bass

    (Publisher)

  Wehner’s findings (2008) result in Australia landing in the lowest quartile regarding legislative budget institutions (and thus, legislative budget powers) and Italy in the second lowest quartile. The United States is in the highest quartile, with the highest index of legislative budgeting power of all countries included in this study. “The U.S. Congress has an index score that is more than three times as great as those for the bottom nine cases, predominantly Westminster-type systems. Even allowing for U.S. exceptionalism, the top-quartile legislatures score twice as high on this index as the bottom quartile” (Wehner 2008, 91). Essentially, these findings confirm the US Congress as the most influential legislative policymaking body of the countries studied here and, undoubtedly, one of the most influential such bodies in the world. The separation of powers enumerated in the US Constitution present a marked difference in the detail of expressed legislative versus executive budget powers. Those for the legislative branch are found in Article I, sections 1–10, whereas those regarding executive powers in Article II comprise just four sections. Powers of the president have to do with acting as commander in chief of the military, making treaties (with Senate concurrence), and nominating and appointing various federal officials. In addition, there is a requirement that the president periodically “give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union” (there is no stipulation that this be provided in a speech). The final section of Article II stipulates removal of the president, vice president, and all civil officers of the United States “on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” In fact, there is nothing in the US Constitution about executive budget powers or execution.

  LEGISLATIVE BUDGETING IN SELECT GOVERNMENTS

  The following section explains legislative budgeting in Australia, which has a parliamentary system of governance; in Brazil, which has a presidential, multiparty system; and in the United States, which has a presidential, two-party system. Each presents a distinctive legislative budget process. Then we will consider three US state governments that are representative of different budget power balance across executive and legislative branches. Texas has a budget system that rests most power with the legislature; New York has a strong executive budget process; and Georgia’s budget powers are balanced across the branches. Though it is unclear that such power differences significantly affect budget outcomes in these governments, these states certainly differ in their populations, budget size, and fiscal capacities. Also, of these three states, Georgia has the highest credit rating from Standard & Poor’s (AAA) and New York’s is the weakest of the three (AA). Texas has a credit rating that falls between the two (AA+).

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  Politics: A Complete Introduction: Teach Yourself

  • Peter Joyce(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Teach Yourself

    (Publisher)

  12 The legislative branch of government

  The main purpose of legislatures is to make law but they also perform other important activities. In this chapter we will examine the key functions performed by legislatures, consider the problems that contemporary legislatures face in carrying out these duties and the initiatives that have been put forward in an attempt to overcome these problems.

  The functions of legislatures

  Key idea (1)

  The key role of the legislative branch of government is to approve law which citizens are subsequently required to obey.

  Elected legislatures are viewed as the symbol of representative government: as it is not possible for all citizens to directly share in policy making, we elect persons who perform these duties on our behalf. These representatives convene in the country’s legislature (which is referred to as Congress in America, Parliament in the United Kingdom or the Oireachtas in Ireland). This is thus the institution that links the government and the governed. In addition to this symbolic function, legislatures undertake a number of specific tasks which we consider now.

  LAW MAKING

  Legislatures constitute the law-making body within a country’s system of government. Thus making the law (or amending or repealing it) is a key function that they perform. A specific, although important, aspect of this role is approving the budget and granting authority for the collection of taxes.

  Below we will consider the process of law making in the UK parliament.

  •   Law making in the UK Parliament

  Key idea (2)

  Law making is a complex process that typically involves a number of stages through which a legislative proposal (termed ‘bill’ in the UK and USA) must proceed in order to be transformed into a law that is binding on a nation’s citizens.

  In the UK a difference exists between public and private legislation. The former constitutes the general law of the land, but the latter is limited in jurisdiction (often being promoted by public bodies such as local authorities to extend their powers). A number of stages are involved in translating a proposal into law. The following outline applies to public legislation. We are assuming that this legislation is first introduced into the House of Commons, which is generally (but not exclusively) the case. Money Bills (which raise or spend public money) are required to originate in the House of Commons.

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  Checks in the Balance

  Legislative Capacity and the Dynamics of Executive Power

  • Alexander Bolton, Sharece Thrower(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Princeton University Press

    (Publisher)

  Both policymaking and resource capacities are necessary conditions for legislatures to be high-capacity institutions in our conceptual framework. Lacking either leaves them illequipped to constrict executive power.

  Legislative capacity is by no means a fixed or predetermined entity. It has varied substantially in both historical and contemporary eras, across Congress and state legislatures. These changes, which we explain and leverage throughout the book, have produced significant consequences for the distribution of policymaking power in the United States and for the question of whether executive power is constrained in different contexts.

  Transformations in Legislative Capacity across Time and Context

  Writing in 1888, British statesman Lord Bryce observed, “Congress … has succeeded in occupying most of the ground which the Constitution left debatable between the president and itself” (Bryce 1995 [1888], 203). Presidents in the nineteenth century, particularly after the Civil War, are frequently described as forgotten clerks who left little imprint on the institution (Neustadt 1990 [1960]). Given its constitutional powers and the limited functions of the government in the early republic, Congress naturally became the center of US governance and dominated federal policymaking during this era.

  Yet, by the turn of the twentieth century, Congress found itself outmatched by the growing technological, social, and economic challenges facing the country and an energetic executive branch seemingly better positioned to manage these dramatic developments (Cooper 2017). The federal government undertook unprecedented economic and social interventions that continued through the New Deal and World War II.

  Presidents responded to this shift in the locus of policymaking power by seizing greater control over executive branch agencies, typically with congressional acquiescence. During the first four decades of the twentieth century, Congress responded little in terms of institutional change to the extraordinary policy developments it was itself creating. As the federal government expanded, Congress stayed the same and consequently became relatively less powerful. Legislative staff sizes barely increased, spending on the institution stagnated, and the public showed little appetite for augmenting congressional resources and power. As shown in figure 1.1 , Congress spent $229 million (in 2009 dollars) on itself and employed 225 committee staffers in 1905.12

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  The Constitution of the United States, the Declaration of Independence and The Bill of Rights: The U.S. Constitution, all the Amendments and other Essential ... Documents of the American History Full text

  • Founding Fathers, James Madison(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • AA Press

    (Publisher)

  United States Constitution

   

  Preamble

       

  We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

   

  Article I — Legislative Branch

   

  Section 1 — Congress

        All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.  

  Section 2 — The House of Representatives

       

  The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislature.

  No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.

  Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by law Direct. The number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.

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  The Constitution of Canada

  A Contextual Analysis

  • Jeremy Webber(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Hart Publishing

    (Publisher)

  6

  The Charter, on the other hand, has indeed restricted parliamentary sovereignty, for neither level of government can enact legislation that offends it. Even here, however, the Charter establishes only the outer limits of legislative power. Within those limits, parliamentary sovereignty continues to operate. Even the limits imposed by the Charter are not absolute. They can, in principle, be changed or abolished using the constitutional amending formula (and indeed, as we will see, parts of the Charter can be set aside using the Charter’s ‘notwithstanding clause’). In a sense, then, all legislation remains possible; it is just that changes to the constitution require the especially demanding legislative process of a constitutional amendment.

  This reveals the one great truth of constitutional law: decision-making is always ultimately vested in human institutions and thus ultimately under human control. The great task of constitutional law is to establish institutions that citizens broadly consider to be legitimate – a task that is not straightforward, given the diversity of ideas regarding legitimacy. Parliamentary sovereignty is founded on the idea that this diversity is best resolved, and the most legitimate arrangements achieved, by vesting ultimate power in the institution that best represents the people. Such an institution should be directly answerable to citizens so that, to the greatest extent possible, the people govern themselves.

  II. CANADIAN PARLIAMENTS

  At both the federal and provincial levels in Canada, legislative power is exercised by Parliaments. Canadian usage tends to attach the term ‘parliament’ to the federal legislature (Parliament of Canada) and to apply ‘legislature’ to the provincial institutions. However, the structure of the law-making branch is essentially the same at both levels (with the notable exception of the Canadian Senate). Indeed, from time to time we will use the collective term ‘legislatures’ to refer to the law-making institutions at both federal and provincial levels.

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  American Constitutional Law, Volume I

  The Structure of Government

  • Ralph Rossum, G. Alan Tarr, Vincent Phillip Munoz(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The order cannot properly be sustained as an exercise of the President’s military power as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. The Government attempts to do so by citing a number of cases upholding broad powers in military commanders engaged in day-to-day fighting in a theater of war. Such cases need not concern us here. Even though “theater of war” may be an expanding concept, we cannot with faithfulness to our constitutional system hold that the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces has the ultimate power as such to take possession of private property in order to keep labor disputes from stopping production. This is a job for the Nation’s lawmakers, not for its military authorities.

  Nor can the seizure order be sustained because of the several constitutional provisions that grant executive power to the President. In the framework of our Constitution, the President’s power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a lawmaker. The Constitution limits his functions in the lawmaking process to the recommending of laws he thinks wise and the vetoing of laws he thinks bad. And the Constitution is neither silent nor equivocal about who shall make laws which the President is to execute. The first section of the first article says that “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.” After granting many powers to the Congress, Article I goes on to provide that Congress may “make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.”

  The Founders of this Nation entrusted the lawmaking power to the Congress alone in both good and bad times. It would do no good to recall the historical events, the fears of power and the hopes for freedom that lay behind their choice. Such a review would but confirm our holding that this seizure order cannot stand. The judgment of the District Court is

  Affirmed.

  JUSTICE FRANKFURTER, concurring in the judgment and opinion of the Court.

  Congress has frequently—at least 16 times since 1916—specifically provided for executive seizure of production, transportation, communications, or storage facilities. In every case it has qualified this grant of power with limitations and safeguards. Congress in 1947 was again called upon to consider whether governmental seizure should be used to avoid serious industrial shutdowns. A proposal that the President be given powers to seize plants to avert a shutdown where the “health or safety” of the Nation was endangered, was thoroughly canvassed by Congress and rejected. No room for doubt remains that the proponents as well as the opponents of the bill which became the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947 clearly understood that as a result of that legislation the only recourse for preventing a shutdown in any basic industry, after failure of mediation, was Congress. Perhaps as much so as is true of any piece of modern legislation, Congress acted with full consciousness of what it was doing and in the light of much recent history.

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