Hearing Wrap Up: Executive Overreach Task Force Hearing on Congress’ Constitutional Authority

Washington, D.C.  – The Task Force on Executive Overreach today held its first hearing on “The Original Understanding of the Role of Congress and How Far We’ve Drifted From It.” At the hearing, members heard from several experts and examined the House of Representatives’ legislative and budgetary power and how the executive branch has usurped this over the years. The Task Force on Executive Overreach is authorized for six months to study the impact the increase in presidential and executive branch power has had on the ability of Congress to conduct oversight of the executive branch, the lack of transparency that furthers unchecked executive power, and the constitutional requirement of the President to faithfully execute the law. Additionally, the task force will review the tools at the disposal of the Congress to restore the proper balance of powers and hold the executive branch accountable. It will make recommendations where there are deficiencies, including legislative solutions. Hearing Takeaways:

• Keeping legislative power, and in particular budgeting power, close to the will of the people was considered so important that the Constitution specifically provides that the House of Representatives has the exclusive authority to originate revenue bills.
• James Capretta, a Visiting Fellow for the American Enterprise Institute and a Senior Fellow for the Ethics and Public Policy Center, testified before the Task Force that “over recent decades, Congress has chosen to steadily dilute its power over spending authority by granting to the executive branch permanent, and oftentimes unlimited or ambiguous, appropriations.”
• By ceding its constitutional authority to the executive branch, Matthew Spalding, the Associate Vice President and Dean of Educational Programs at Hillsdale College, testified that the “the modern Congress is almost exclusively a supervisory body exercising post-legislative oversight of administrative policymakers.”
• Experts agreed that Congress must exert its authority to restore balance to the separation of powers and to protect individual liberty.

Key Videos: Task Force Chairman Steve King’s (R-Iowa) opening statement: “This is much more than a mundane process problem. It is a tragic result for individual rights and liberties. Policies imposed by federal agencies are crafted by unelected bureaucrats.  Because those bureaucrats don’t have to answer to American citizens over the course of regular elections, they have little understanding of the desires and concerns of those Americans.” 

 House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte’s (R-Va.) exchange with Matthew Spalding on which branch has the authority to change the Constitution:  Goodlatte: “The issue isn’t whether or not the Constitution shouldn’t be changed, the issue is who changes it and how it’s done, isn’t that right?” Spalding: “That’s correct … It is precisely the responsibility of Congress as the legislative branch to make those adjustments … The separation of powers is so crucially important, not as a legal, technical matter, but as a general matter … [Congress] should act as a constitutional institution in reclaiming those powers.”  

  Congressman Ted Poe (R-Texas): “This issue is not about who does it, it’s about what position violates the Constitution … Executive overreach has been debated a long time … and Congress just sits back and lets it happen … The first word of Article 1, Section 1 is ‘all.’ ‘All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States. It does not say all legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States unless the Congress fails to act … There’s no exception clause.”