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Political Body Shop
It’s called checks and balances. I like.
Yeah, a government that can’t get anything done is probably the best we can hope for. When there is mass agreement, the spending is even more insane than when they are fighting.
I think it was Jonah Goldberg who said he liked gridlock on one of the podcasts.
So prefer this model to the ’09 & ’10
I think Checks and Balances refer to one Branch checking on the other. Congress is one Branch. And it is not good when one half is going in one direction and the other half is going is the opposite.
The thing that worries me is that the gas tank is on the House’s end of that contraption.
I’m pretty sure the Founders thought and talked of the two houses as being a check on each other, as well, in part to make sure the two don’t go off in the same direction too easily. Otherwise one legislative body would have been enough.
Under the Articles of Confederation we had just one legislative body. At the convention, the Connecticut Compromise, so-called, provided for a lower house representing the people to be checked and balanced by an upper house representing the states.
The same principle ought to be applied to other governmental institutions, too, now that we have an administrative branch that has legislative, judicial, and administrative functions.
Jokes on them, both cars are rear-wheel drive.
I wouldn’t argue with anything here. I just dislike calling it “checks and balances”. If you want to say that the Senate is a check on the House, go ahead. I wouldn’t, but perhaps it is a samanticle difference. In any case, I really believe that too many people are already confused by what type of government we have. I just think using the phrase “Checks and Balances” confuses them further.
Confuses them about what?
First of all, I disagree with you about the terminology you use. I think the term Checks and Balances should be reserved for, as an example, the Congress calling hearing to check on the actions of various agencies.
But, to answer your question: I believe that many people are confused about the type of government we are. Too much emphasis today is placed on the word “Democracy” (with the growing Populism we seem to be experiencing) instead of the word “Republic”, which we are. I believe that we need to have real leaders. The people we elect to government should be free to vote their consciences. Too many Representatives and Senators are so scared that their constituents will not re elect them, if they get one vote wrong, that they will not do the right thing. We also have too many polls. You know, if it wouldn’t put the country into turmoil, I might favor repealing the 17th. amendment.
But I think I’ll quit now. I could write a whole essay about this, because I feel so strongly that this populist trend is ruining our country, and goes counter to what the founders wanted. And that is what we want to conserve: The type of country the Founders wanted.
I never heard anyone use the term that way before. I think you’d have a hard time getting people tho switch to that definition now, given all the past history of its use.
This is one thing you and I disagree about. I care that people are using the words incorrectly. If I am all alone (and I don’t believe I am, but…..) in using the correct terminology than so be it. Just one example: I’ve heard talk show hosts say that it doesn’t matter between democracy and republic. That is wrong. The fact that we keep repeating mistakes, and not care that they are mistakes, is why our country has come to be the way it is today. I may go down but I’ll go down fighting!
I think that George’s contention is that checks and balances refers to literal mechanisms that branches can affect other branches with—vetoes and nominations for the President, constitutional interpretation for the Judiciary, and veto overrides, confirmation and oversight committees for Congress. In that sense Congress has no literal counter mechanisms against itself, partly because one is not needed since it is a deliberative body. There are no committees called to monitor the Senate from the House and vice versa.
At best I would say that the Senate was designed to mediate the House, more than the other way around, by creating a secondary legislative hurdle that gave all states an equal standing. In that sense the Senate tends to moderate legislation from the House.
Thank you, Anyone. You said that so much better than I could! I was getting at this when I wrote about the Congress overseeing the agencies. But you caught it better. :-)
Too cool for school!
Oops. I was right. The following quote is from Federalist No. 62.
So the Senate was intended to act as a check on the House, and the House, with a large representation from the larger states, is able to act as a check on the Senate, and the two houses were not expected to always pull together. In fact, it’s better that they don’t always want to go in the same direction.
You seem to want to argue against something that I never said. I ain’t playin’.
This doesn’t contradict what I typed. I would however note that this is from the Federalist Papers and not from the Constitution. So it is not the actual instructions from the document but from a commentary on that document, and it doesn’t mention any actual mechanism for either chamber just that the Senate’s structure will affect House orginating bills because most legislation deals with spending and must start in the House.
The two chambers being in contention as a good depends on the context. In the current context I would argue it is sub-optimal because actual reform will not occur and mandatory spending will continue to grow. Current gridlock still favors the left more than the right.
There is not going to be any reform or spending reduction when either party controls both houses. I don’t see how that favors the left more than the right.
I should just leave this alone. But I can’t because of the complete illogic. While it is true that there was not much spending reform in the last Congress, to say that there won’t be any if the Republican Party, for example, controls both houses of Congress fails the logic test, because you need both Houses to agree on legislation in order to get it to the President’s desk. And the reason the Left is helped is because they don’t want spending reform. And they won’t get it with a divided Congress.
Clearly, CBA has the better grasp of things here.
Clearly. Blindingly obvious.
You believe elected Republicans want spending reform? They do when they are out of power. Some few Republicans like Rand Paul rail against spending even when Republicans are in the majority, but most Republican politicians have little taste for cutting spending when they actually have the power to do it. And Republican voters don’t seem to give a damn about it. I wish I had faith in my party to control spending but neither party is made of fiscal grownups.
The Republicans have invested heavily in defeating the reformist wing of their own party, spending money that could instead have been used to defeat Democrats. They take away their committee assignments, and designate the reformers as the most hated members of Congress. So, no, they are not going to reform anything.
I don’t totally disagree with you. This was not my point. I specifically wrote that there was not much spending reform in the last Congress when the Republicans were in charge. My point was what I put in bold above. This whole thing started when I wrote that it is not good when the House and Senate are controlled by different parties. I had objected to the term Checks and Balances, because a divided Congress is not what the Founding Fathers had in mind. I am sorry that this basic point somehow got lost.
This is not the point. I am leaving this stupid thread. Only CBA seems to be paying attention to my point. It is sad.
The left favors considerable public spending, particularly on domestic matter, so as long as mandatory spending remains it will continue to grow which means that a divided legislature aids the goals of the left more than that of the right—current government inertia favors the left.
Randy though is right that currently the public has no desire for reform and so no reform will occur but that again is parallel to my point about congress with inertia. Not only does the current spending structure favor the left but so does the American public. It’s why reformicons get attacked for proposing privatization or other moderate approaches, which compared to the inertia are conservative.
To get back to the argument of the legislature divided and context if we could get a majority of the public to support conservative reform and that led to a united legislature of congressmen working for said reform that would be an unmitigated good because. The question is how can one influence the public to get such a result.
Beats me. Things looked promising during the peak Tea Party era. One thing might be persuasive. People in the news talk about the deficit being a trillion dollars and the national debt being what, 21 trillion now? To many people you may as well be talking about astronomical units and parsecs. It might be more effective if the talker divided it out and told people that every man, woman, child, and infant in the U.S. owes another X dollars in taxes in order to pay for what we are spending just this year. Every single person would have to pay Y dollars to pay off their share of the national debt. Personalize it. Maybe that would wake people up, but I wouldn’t count on it. I’m generally not a pessimistic person but I find our debt to be quite frightening. And as much as we would like to blame those rascally politicians, they are just responding to what the voters want.
I still don’t get this or understand where it is coming from. I’m amazed and surprised that anybody things this way. Is some podcaster from another planet spreading this idea, or something? Does anybody think there is any realistic possibility for the spending to grow less under either party having control of both houses? Nobody to my knowledge is talking it up or preparing the groundwork for it.
Some people talk about “entitlement reform” now and then, but the only way that is going to happen is if there is reform in the corporate welfare system, and neither party wants to change that. It’s the bulwark that protects the system from reform, period.
Something must be going on out there that I’m completely unaware of.
It happened in the 1990s with only majorities. Only 20 years ago.
Well there are people who have proposed spending solutions. Paul Ryan did if I remember correctly but who cares about wonks?
Corporate welfare is not even pocket change compared to the cost of welfare, and I detest both. That and the complaints about corporate welfare are far more bipartisan than that of the welfare system. So I doubt that it protects welfare. It’s just that there is no will to undo any spending.
Always a possibility.