Legislative Power over the Executive Branch

Many people may be inclined to think that the Executive branch led by the President is the most powerful and important branch in the U.S. Government. But in fact, checks and balances makes it so that the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches are not more powerful then the other. Also, the Legislative Branch is the most important one out of all three. One instance of this occurred in 1993, right after President Bill Clinton took office. He created a task force to come through on his statement that he would, "prepare health care reform legislation to be submitted to Congress within one hundred days of our taking office." The task force was chaired by his wife, Hillary Clinton, and she was the main force behind a health care plan that would of given all of Americans universal health care. It then went to Congress where heated discussions took place but to no avail for the Clinton's. Bill Clinton's big health care plan was completely shut down by the Legislative Branch.

Another, more recent, example of the Legislative Branch being more powerful would be going on right now. President Bush proposed a bailout plan for our nation's economy because of the collapse to the market. It called for 700 billion dollars to be used by the national government to buy distressed mortgages. It went to the legislative branch where both the Senate and the House of Representatives voted on the bill proposed by the president. While it was approved by the Senate, the House rejected the original bill. The President had no choice but to revise the plan and fix it so it could get passed. He said, "There are disagreements on aspects of the recovery plan, but there is no disagreement that something substantial must be done," He did revised the plan to the House of Representatives liking and it was eventually agreed to by the Legislative Branch. But they have the power to stop any bill that the President wants to instill into law which in turn makes them a more powerful branch. This wasn't the first instance during our current President's term where the approval of Congress was needed for him to accomplish what he was trying to do. Another instance during his term was after he sent troops overseas to Iraq. Under his powers as Commander in Chief he was allowed to do this but he had no funding for the war. Without the approval of the Legislative Branch he would have to undo everything he had done. The troops would have to come home because they had no money to continue the war. The Legislative Branch did approve funding for the war that enabled the war to go on but they had a decision to make. They could have overturned a decision that the President made or gone along with it. They have a choice to prevent or agree with anything that the President wants to do and that makes them the more important branch. The President is not the one allowing the war to go on at first. The responsibility of allowing the war to get funded and payed for belongs to the more important Legislative Branch.


http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/may96/background/health_debate_page1.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/business/21qanda.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/3086775/Financial-crisis-George-W-Bush-urges-economy-bail-out.html