Reason #23: Presidential Overreach

The real “Decider” in Washington is supposed to be the legislative branch.

George W. Bush referred to himself as “The Decider.” One day he even boasted that he was “the ultimate decision maker for the country.” But that kind of presidential bluster would have appalled the authors of the Constitution. The founding fathers were staunchly opposed to giving a solitary executive “ultimate” power. The last thing they wanted was to turn America into a new kind of monarchy. They’d just spent years shedding blood in the Revolutionary War to break free of that kind of system!

If you really read the Constitution, something I’m not sure any of our career politicians bother to do anymore, George W. had it all wrong. The real “Decider” in Washington is supposed to be the legislative branch. The framers gave Congress control of the budget; the power to initiate all legislation and pass all laws; and the power to declare war. Also, Congress is supposed to watchdog the executive branch by exercising crucial “oversight” functions. And if they don’t like what he is doing, they even have the power to boot him out! Now that’s what I call ‘ultimate decision making.’

The framers must be doing cartwheels in their coffins, because the president really does run the show in Washington these days. The president can now deploy our military without consulting the people’s representatives in Congress. He lords over the Supreme Court, stocking it with political cronies. And he controls vast and powerful bureaucracies like the Pentagon, the NSA and CIA, not to mention dozens of behemoth departments.

Congress acts like little more than presidential bankers now. They simply cut him checks for hundreds of billions of dollars and forget about their oversight obligations. In the rare instances where they actually ask the executive branch to explain some decision or open up its increasingly secretive inner sanctum, the White House hides behind a disgraceful legalese invention called “Executive Privilege.” But the Constitution does not mention this so-called “privilege” a single time! It is a modern day excuse to hide things from Congress, the courts, and the American people.

NEXT: Reason #24: The War on Congress’ Power to Declare War