WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT: Checks & Balances.

AuthorSmith, Patricia
PositionNATIONAL

The standoff between Congress and the Trump administration is intensifying. Is the Framers' plan for a separation of powers playing out as they envisioned?

Lately, it seems as if the federal government is at war with itself. The House of Representatives has been investigating the White House, and lawmakers have threatened to impeach President Trump over the findings in the Mueller Report. Earlier in the year, the president vetoed a congressional resolution that would have prevented him from building his wall on the U.S.-Mexico border without Congress's approval. And a battle over one of Trump's appointees to the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh, was among the nastiest in memory.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has gone so far as to say that the nation is mired in a "constitutional crisis" over the president's blanket refusal to cooperate with congressional investigations. Trump has responded by vowing not to work with Democrats in Congress on any legislation until the investigations end.

What's going on? Experts say it's a particularly heated showdown involving America's system of checks and balances. The Framers spread power among the three federal branches--executive, legislative, and judicial--and gave each branch the ability to curb, or check, the power of the other two. In many cases, the system works without much fuss, as when Congress approves a president's Cabinet nominee. At other times in American history, two branches have dug in their heels and fought over their respective powers.

"We've had some challenges in the past, and the system responded appropriately," says Norman Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. "But I think we're at a time of enormous and important testing of the system."

Here's what you need to know about checks and balances, and how they might come into play in the year ahead.

  1. Why did the Framers create checks and balances?

    There weren't a lot of functioning democracies to use as examples when the Framers met in 1787 to write the Constitution. Many of them had read the political philosophers of the time and drew on their ideas. They took what they liked from the British system. They borrowed from state governments. And they improvised.

    "What they came up with was what they thought was the best of all worlds," says Corey Brettschneider, a political science professor at Brown University. "The checks are meant to be a way for all the branches to be accountable to the rule of law and the people, without any one branch being able to take over." The reason for the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, scholars say, was the realization that the Articles of Confederation--the new nation's first constitution--were too weak to effectively bind the United States together. The Framers understood that the nation needed an executive with some authority to act on matters of national importance. But lurking in the back of their minds was the experience of being ruled by a tyrant, Britain's King George III. They had fought a revolution to get rid of the king and were leery of putting too much power into the hands of a president.

    "The big innovation of the Founders is that you divide power," says David Azerrad, a political expert at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. "You don't put all the power in one place, and you give the branches some control over one another. The underlying premise is that each branch is going to be [protective] of its power and will check the others."

  2. What does each branch do?

    In a nutshell, the legislative branch makes the laws, the executive branch enforces the laws, and the judicial branch evaluates the laws.

    The three branches of the federal government are designed to work together but also to limit one another. Congress passes laws, but the president can veto bills passed by Congress, preventing them from taking effect. A veto, however, can be overridden if two-thirds of lawmakers in both the House and the Senate vote to do so.

    The president appoints federal judges, including Supreme Court justices, but the Senate has to confirm those choices, a power known as advice and consent. Advice and consent also gives the Senate the authority to approve any treaties the president agrees to with other nations.

    The federal courts can rule whether laws approved by Congress and signed by the president are unconstitutional. But those same courts are appointed by the president, subject to Senate approval.

    The president can issue an executive order and bypass Congress, but the courts can rule that he's overstepped his authority and block it.

    Congress also provides oversight of the federal government--everything from the military and the Internal Revenue Service to the operation of the White House itself.

    In fact, Ronald...

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