Congressional Government A Study in American Politics

"The legal processes of constitutional change are so slow and cumbersome that we have been constrained to adopt a serviceable framework of fictions which enables us easily to preserve the forms without laboriously obeying the spirit of the Constitution, which will stretch as the nation grows. It would seem that no impulse short of the impulse of self-preservation, no force less than the force of revolution, can nowadays be expected to move the cumbrous machinery of formal amendment erected in Article Five." -Woodrow Wilson This distinguished work of political scholarship addresses the difficulties ingrained into the American Constitution's separation of legislative and executive powers. In his first book, a young Wilson argues that in the years following the Civil War, the legislature received unjustifiable advantages from the system of checks and balances, threatening the effectiveness of the constitutionally mandated separation of powers. "Its argument was as simple as it as dramatic. Congress had indisputably become the most powerful branch of American government - 'the predominant and controlling force, the center and source of all motive and all regulative power' - but it was poorly structured for this preeminent role. For the U.S. government to function with efficiency, responsibility, and accountability, Congress's de facto power would have to be made de jure. Wilson proposed that executive powers be transferred into the hands of a cabinet chosen by and accountable to Congress. The president, according to this scheme, would serve as a kind of republican monarch, faithfully executing the laws Congress passed but no more." -Fareed Zakaria, From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America's World Role, 1998 CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTORY II. THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES III. THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. REVENUE AND SUPPLY IV. THE SENATE V. THE EXECUTIVE VI. CONCLUSION FOOTNOTES