How Well Congress Checks Presidential Power
How effective is Congress’s role in checking presidential power?
When the Founding Fathers wrote the American constitution, one of their key aims was to ensure that power would not be concentrated too highly in the hands of one leader. Despite the resultant implementation of checks and balances, it can be argued, as this essay will, that the president’s power has grown to an extent that makes Congress decreasingly effective. Utilising Wildavsky’s idea of a ‘dual presidency’, I will show that in both domestic and foreign policy Congress can never be fully effective in reigning in presidential power.
The questions of how much power the President should have and how the constitution limits him are asked frequently. The constitution defines the powers of both Congress and the president in Articles I and II, but in the two hundred years since the constitution has been written, the interpretations of this framework have varied immensely. The US Congress is often referred to as the most powerful legislature in the world, and it certainly has been remarkably successful in remaining independent from executive branch influence. However, presidential power has grown, particularly in the 20th century.
There have been many types of presidents throughout America’s history. Presidents such as Warren Harding and Herbert Hoover were weak in their executive power: they saw the powers of the president as few and limited and believed that the constitution strictly limited their actions. Compared to ‘strong’ presidents, they used their veto power relatively few times: Franklin Roosevelt alone used his veto nearly fifteen times more than Hoover and Harding did together. The presidential veto used to be a much rarer barrier, but it is now used more often on important legislative items. Attempts to override a veto are also uncommon, making it a very strong presidential tool.
Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt were ‘strong’ presidents who acted in
When the Founding Fathers wrote the American constitution, one of their key aims was to ensure that power would not be concentrated too highly in the hands of one leader. Despite the resultant implementation of checks and balances, it can be argued, as this essay will, that the president’s power has grown to an extent that makes Congress decreasingly effective. Utilising Wildavsky’s idea of a ‘dual presidency’, I will show that in both domestic and foreign policy Congress can never be fully effective in reigning in presidential power.
The questions of how much power the President should have and how the constitution limits him are asked frequently. The constitution defines the powers of both Congress and the president in Articles I and II, but in the two hundred years since the constitution has been written, the interpretations of this framework have varied immensely. The US Congress is often referred to as the most powerful legislature in the world, and it certainly has been remarkably successful in remaining independent from executive branch influence. However, presidential power has grown, particularly in the 20th century.
There have been many types of presidents throughout America’s history. Presidents such as Warren Harding and Herbert Hoover were weak in their executive power: they saw the powers of the president as few and limited and believed that the constitution strictly limited their actions. Compared to ‘strong’ presidents, they used their veto power relatively few times: Franklin Roosevelt alone used his veto nearly fifteen times more than Hoover and Harding did together. The presidential veto used to be a much rarer barrier, but it is now used more often on important legislative items. Attempts to override a veto are also uncommon, making it a very strong presidential tool.
Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt were ‘strong’ presidents who acted in