The role of Congress in checking the power of the president (by Pat M. Holt)

(Excellent Commentary piece from the Christian Science Monitor from a few weeks ago.)
from the April 05, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0405/p09s01-coop.html

The role of Congress in checking the power of the president

Legislators' failure to maintain the balance of powers has contributed to present troubles.
By Pat M. Holt

ARLINGTON, VA.

Poor President Bush. He was only trying to defeat terrorists and spread democracy, and here he is up to his neck in Democrats and bad news....

(edit)

...On Capitol Hill, both the Senate and House are wreaking havoc on the Bush policy in Iraq. Bush came to the White House with an exaggerated notion of the powers of the president based on the constitutional provision making him commander in chief. September 11 gave him the opportunity to expand this notion. The Republicans in Congress were cheerleaders for him; Democrats were paralyzed by political cowardice.

But he is commander in chief only of the armed forces, not of the country. The Constitution gives Congress a number of powers to complement the president's role as commander in chief. They include the power "(t)o raise and support Armies ... (t)o provide and maintain a Navy ... (t)o make rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces ... (t)o provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia...."

These powers, plus the congressional power to declare war, considerably modify the role of the commander in chief. Much of American history is concerned with struggles between the president and Congress over where to draw the line between themselves. There has been a back-and-forth swing of the pendulum between the two branches, sometimes accompanied by bitter disputes, as in the cases of Vietnam and now Iraq. The most important congressional power is the control of money. The power of the purse was what ultimately ended US involvement in Vietnam.

Unless Bush makes a sharp change in direction not only in Iraq but especially in how he looks at the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches, his principal legacy could well be a dysfunctional government....

(more at link) <http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0405/p09s01-coop.html?page=2>

(Pat M. Holt is former chief of staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.)

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