Chairman Goodlatte Statement at Markup of Resolution Creating Task Force on Executive Overreach

Chairman Goodlatte: The Constitution grants Congress all legislative powers, leaving the President to execute those laws faithfully, according to the will of the people as expressed through their duly-elected legislative representatives in the House and Senate. Yet presidents from both parties have for too long stretched their powers beyond the limits intended by our Founding Fathers.  And too often their abuses have gone uncorrected.  As law professor David Bernstein has written, “The authors of the Constitution expected that Congress as a whole would be motivated to preserve its authority against presidential encroachment.  The Founders, however, did not anticipate the development of our two-party system.  At any given time around half the members of Congress belong to the same party as the president,” and may not want to “limit ‘their’ president’s authority.” This trend has accelerated through administrations of both parties over the past decades, to the point at which now a president boasts of his desire to use his pen and phone to bypass Congress.  Indeed, just a couple weeks ago, White House chief of staff Denis McDonough said – quote -- “audacious” executive actions are being crafted to “make sure the steps we have taken are ones we can lock down and not be subjected to undoing through [Congress] or otherwise.”  These statements indicate additional unilateral executive actions beyond even those unconstitutional actions the President has already taken. And just last month, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the constitutional challenge brought by a majority of states against the President’s unilaterally-imposed immigration plan, which the people’s legislative representatives never approved.  So far, a federal judge in Texas has issued a preliminary injunction in the case, blocking the enforcement of the President’s unilateral plan.  The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that injunction.  Importantly, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in the case, and rather than limiting the issue the way President Obama requested, it took up the states’ suggestion and requested briefing on the following question: “whether the [President’s action] violates the Take Care Clause of the Constitution, Article II, Section 3.”  That clause of the Constitution requires the President to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” The Founders would have expected Members of the House of Representatives -- known as the “People’s House” for its most direct connection to the will of the people -- to aggressively guard their role in the constitutional legislative process.  The resolution before us today will provide another means of doing just that by creating a Task Force on Executive Overreach, chaired by Representative King from Iowa, that will focus on the dangers of ceding power away from Congress, and the People’s House in particular, and potential solutions. Such dangers can often seem abstract in the midst of intense policy debates in a historically hyper-partisan environment, but this is not a partisan issue.  This is about restoring the separation of powers the Framers enshrined in the U.S. Constitution to protect citizens from the tyranny of a runaway executive branch.  The story of the harm caused by the erosion of the People’s House and Congress can be told vividly, and objectively, by a task force such as this. I urge all my colleagues to support this resolution.

For more on today’s markup, click here.