How does the modern president compare to the founders vision?
About this video
A scholar argues that today's presidency is much more powerful than the framers expected in two areas. In ordinary lawmaking, Congress is largely to blame because it passes broad laws that delegate power to agencies like the EPA. In war powers, presidents themselves are to blame, since presidents of both parties, such as in the Obama administration's Libya bombings, have used military force without congressional authorization.
You'll be able to
- explain how broad laws from Congress give the president more power over regulations.
- explain why the speaker blames presidents, not Congress, for growth in war powers.
- give an example of military action without congressional authorization.
Key words
- delegate
- To hand over power or responsibility to someone else.
- administrative state
- The large system of government agencies that write and enforce regulations.
- regulation
- A detailed rule made by a government agency to carry out a law.
- War Powers Resolution
- A law Congress passed to try to limit when presidents can use military force without its approval.
Transcript
There is no question that the presidency today is much more powerful than the framers envisioned it would be in two respects. One with respect to ordinary laws that the president is supposed to execute, and the other with respect to the Commander in Chief power. With respect to ordinary laws, the president is vastly more powerful today. But this is largely the fault not of the president, but of Congress. Today, Congress passes really broad laws that effectively delegate power to the president. The president gets these broad laws that says, we want clean air. Then the president, through the president's agencies, like the Environmental Protection Agency, for example, gets to make regulations that decide how we shall have clean air or clean water, so today with the growth of the modern administrative state,
the president is much more powerful, has much more control over the actual content of everyday regulations and laws. But that's largely because Congress has tended to abdicate its responsibilities over the law-making process, where the president is truly responsible for aggrandizing itself, giving more power to itself. This is where it comes to war powers. Modern presidents rarely have sought congressional authorization for certain actions.
This goes across multiple presidencies of multiple political parties. For example, the Obama administration engaged in bombings in Libya during the civil war in Libya. The leader of one faction, the leader of Libya at the time was killed by one of these airstrikes. There was no congressional authorization for that. There are lots of presidents of both parties that have asserted this right to engage in military conflicts in the absence of congressional authorization.
That is in fact the president's fault, not Congress's fault. Congress sometimes try to reign in the presidents through things like the War Powers Act or the War Powers Resolutions, but in practice, it has been unable to reign in the presidency in this regard.
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