Political Quotes

“The consequences of the failure of oversight are enormous. This is not only checks and balances people often talk about. We talked about Congress having a responsibility to define which programs will be funded and how much and under what rules they will operate on, and the President has to execute those programs--therefore, separation of powers. By holding on to that responsibility, we serve as a check on the effort for an authoritarian to be the force that decides which programs are funded and how much they are funded at and how many rules or what the rules would be they operate under. We are seeing that transfer of power right now from the Congress to the President, because the President is deeply engaged in essentially the equivalent of a line-item veto by slow-walking funds, by freezing funds, by impounding funds, by slowly getting to the end of the year and then by filing a rescission request at the end of the year-- watching them magically evaporate when the last day of the fiscal year comes--this fancy term called a pocket rescission. Absolutely all of these are part of a line-item veto strategy and the President just implementing the programs willy-nilly, the way he wants, as opposed to following instructions from Congress.”