Political Quotes

“Mr. President, we are currently considering the Defense authorization bill. We have considered this most years annually for many decades. Typically, though, we will have a robust debate, we will have amendments offered, and we will try to have participation by Senators from all over the United States geographically represented in the debate. That won't happen this year. There will be no debate. It will be very controlled and circumscribed, and there won't be amendments. This is disappointing to me because I think there are some very important issues that need to be brought up, and one of those is emergency powers. Our Founding Fathers understood that it was very important to divide these powers between the executive branch, the legislative branch, or the judiciary. Over the past hundred years though, we have had a gradual evolution of these powers toward the executive branch. And we now have a very, very strong executive branch that, in many ways, is able to control the narrative and ultimately to control the country. In the 1970s, Frank Church wrote these words, which I think represent a problem that existed then and even more so now. He wrote: Hundreds of statutes clothe the President with virtually unchecked powers with which he can affect the lives of American citizens in a host of all-encompassing ways. This vast range of powers, taken together, confers enough authority on the President to rule the country without reference to normal constitutional processes.…”