From an article1:
The founders of the republic took great care to structure a governing system based on checks and balances. The Congress was charged with the task of declaring wars; the president, as commander-in-chief, was given the power to pursue military action.
Each of those duties comes with profound responsibilities. The Congress must analyze all the arguments for sending American troops into combat, review the costs and consider the long-term diplomatic, political and moral consequences of so serious a decision. The president's role, as head of the executive branch, is to serve as a guide and a resource - providing insights on the best approach and assuring that the legislative branch has the information it needs to determine whether war is necessary.
Last fall and winter, as the Bush administration agitated for war with Iraq, Congress failed to live up to its responsibility. Despite demands from millions of citizens, Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate allowed their chambers to serve as little more than rubber stamps for a president who desperately needed to be checked and balanced. They pushed through a vague resolution that was presumed to require the White House to work with the United Nations to address questions of whether Saddam Hussein's Iraq posed a threat to the rest of the world.
Millions of Americans demanded that Congress take seriously its responsibility to advise and consent, and some members of the House and Senate listened. Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chairmen Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, and Barbara Lee, D-Calif., and Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, who is the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, made valiant attempts to get the Congress to act. (
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Checks and balances is one of the basic foundational principles of the American system of government. It keeps any one branch from getting too powerful. Unfortunately, both the judicial and legislative branches have been deferring too much to the executive. The results illustrate why the judiciary and Congress should stand up again for their own self-interests.
Complete text of the article,
Congress has duty to check president, by the Editors of the Capital Times
The founders of the republic took great care to structure a governing system based on checks and balances. The Congress was charged with the task of declaring wars; the president, as commander-in-chief, was given the power to pursue military action.
Each of those duties comes with profound responsibilities. The Congress must analyze all the arguments for sending American troops into combat, review the costs and consider the long-term diplomatic, political and moral consequences of so serious a decision. The president's role, as head of the executive branch, is to serve as a guide and a resource - providing insights on the best approach and assuring that the legislative branch has the information it needs to determine whether war is necessary.
Last fall and winter, as the Bush administration agitated for war with Iraq, Congress failed to live up to its responsibility. Despite demands from millions of citizens, Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate allowed their chambers to serve as little more than rubber stamps for a president who desperately needed to be checked and balanced. They pushed through a vague resolution that was presumed to require the White House to work with the United Nations to address questions of whether Saddam Hussein's Iraq posed a threat to the rest of the world.
Millions of Americans demanded that Congress take seriously its responsibility to advise and consent, and some members of the House and Senate listened. Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chairmen Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, and Barbara Lee, D-Calif., and Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, who is the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, made valiant attempts to get the Congress to act. They were joined by a number of Wisconsin representatives, including Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison, and Ron Kind, D-La Crosse, who emerged as leaders in efforts to get the president to answer questions about his intent, goals and time line for a war. In the Senate, Russ Feingold, D-Wis., asked the right questions and challenged the most absurd assertions of the White House.
Yet leaders of the House and Senate accepted the White House line without question, and steered the Congress out of commission.
Now, as Americans learn that the White House line was crooked, the question is whether those congressional leaders will assert the constitutional authority of their chambers or remain the pawns of the administration. New revelations by security advisers regarding what appears to have been a pattern of deliberate deception by the administration - right up to and including the insertion into the president's State of the Union address of discredited claims about Iraq seeking to buy uranium in Africa - have confirmed the concerns of the millions of citizens who said George W. Bush had failed to make a credible case for war.
There can be no doubt of the intent of the founders. The Congress is required by the Constitution to police the president. The revelations regarding the fabrications, fantasies and falsehoods on which the arguments for war were based must be investigated. Those investigations must be thorough, they must be conducted in the open, they must follow the obvious lines of questioning that have been raised, and they must determine who in the administration was responsible for any and all deceits.
At the heart of the investigation must be an understanding that the Constitution charges the Congress with no greater duty than that of checking and balancing the executive branch. The Congress failed in that duty during much of the past year. Now it must reassert and redeem itself.
The views in this space are provided by The Capital Times, Wisconsin's progressive daily newspaper.
reference=http://www.madison.com/captimes/opinion/editorial/52710.php
The Clipboard: Congress has duty to check president