For next Monday, read Davidson, ch. 15.
The magic word is "emergency."
Budget tables: function, subfunction, agency
No, we cannot balance the budget by catching Social Security fraud: only 13 people aged 112 or older are getting checks.Deficit
Pearlstein: " It is harder today for the government to access and analyze independent, unbiased information, and easier to avoid processes that might compel that information’s consideration."
- Congress delegated power to the executive branch.
- Rules applying to agencies do not apply to the White House.
- Congress diminished its own capacity.
What happens, then, when the White House is dysfunctional?
- Failure to appoint officials
- Firing inspectors general
An allusion to Tocqueville: "The constitutional decision to divide government power among three federal branches was not only to protect Americans from tyrannical concentrations of power, but also to give the government a chance at correcting its own mistakes."
BUT IS THE SYSTEM ADEQUATE TO THE TIME?
Does federalism work in a national and global economy?
Do checks and balances work at a time of partisan polarization?
Federalist 62: "The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous. It poisons the blessings of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood: if they be repealed or revised before they are promulg[at]ed, or undergo such incessant changes, that no man who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow."
No comments:
Post a Comment