Having by constitutional grant the last word as to foreign relations, the control of the finances, and even the oversight of executive appointments, Congress exercises what powers of direction and management it pleases, as fulfilling, not…
Woodrow Wilson
The Public Record
Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, serving from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, he was born in Virginia and raised in Georgia before moving to New Jersey, where he became a prominent political figure. Wilson was a key leader of the Progressive Movement, advocating for reforms such as antitrust legislation and the establishment of the Federal Reserve System. His presidency is also noted for significant events such as the United States' involvement in World War I and his efforts to promote the League of Nations, an international organization aimed at preventing future conflicts.
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Government lives in the origination, not in the defeat, of measures of government.
The President obstructs by means of his ‘No;’ the houses govern by means of their ‘Yes.’ He has killed some policies that are dead; they have given birth to all policies that are alive.
Congress, in effect, parcels out its great powers amongst groups of its members, and so confuses its plans and obscures all responsibility.
British legislation is for the most part originated and shaped by a single committee, acting in secret, whose proposals, when produced, are eagerly debated and freely judged by the sovereign legislative body.
Our legislation is framed and initiated by a great many committees, deliberating in secret, whose proposals are seldom debated and only perfunctorily judged by the sovereign legislative body.
Their reports stand in the way of each other, and so the complaint is warranted that Congress can get nothing done.
In the state legislatures, as in Congress, the origination and control of legislation by standing committees has led to haphazard, incoherent, irresponsible law-making, and to a universal difficulty about getting anything done.
The question is not merely, How shall the methods of Congress be clarified and its ways made purposeful and responsible?
There is this greater question at stake: How shall the essential arrangements of the Constitution be preserved?
Congress is the purposing, designing, aggressive power of the national government.
Congress in its composition is the country in miniature.
It realizes Hobbes’s definition of liberty as political power divided into small fragments.
Congress is better fitted for counsel than the voters simply because its members are less than four hundred instead of more than ten millions.
It has been impossible to carry out the programme of the Constitution; and, without careful reform, the national legislature will even more dangerously approach the perilous model of a mass meeting.
There are several ways in which Congress can be so integrated as to impart to its proceedings system and party responsibility.
I am strongly of the opinion that such changes would not be too great a price to pay for the advantages secured us by such a government.
Ministerial responsibility supplies the only conditions which have yet proved efficacious, in the political experience of the world, for vesting recognized leadership in men chosen for their abilities by a natural selection of debate in a…
Such survival of the ablest in debate seems the only process available for selecting leaders under a popular government.
If we borrowed ministerial responsibility from England, we should, too, unquestionably enjoy an infinite advantage over the English in the use of it.
We should sacrifice by its adoption none of that great benefit and security which our federal system derives from a clear enumeration of powers and an inflexible difficulty of amendment.
If we are really attached to these principles, the concentration of responsibility in government will doubly insure their preservation.
If we are not, they are in danger of destruction in any case.
Questions of vast importance and infinite delicacy have constantly to be dealt with by Congress; and there is an evident tendency to widen the range of those questions.
Under such circumstances, some measure of legislative reform is clearly indispensable.
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