Political Quotes

“My colleague has described very well the way this works. In the past, in general, you had military coups. People with guns stormed in, took over, shredded the constitution, tossed it out, had command of the armed forces. Indeed, it was an observation even at the start of our country. I have this quote from Madison during the Constitutional Convention in 1787: A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The temptation to use that military. The means of defence against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. So men with guns charged in and took over, but now we have a very different form in which democracies fail. It is the erosion of the checks and balances of the Constitution. So let's take a look at how those are being eroded. Well, we see that we have changed the rules of the Senate so that we are now doing mass confirmations of the President's list of desired individuals. I think, did we not have a list that was well over 100 the other day? There is no consideration, really, of whether they are suitable at all to serve in the desired positions. That is an erosion. Then we have the power of the purse. And the vision is that, in a democracy, the decisions on what programs should exist, how they will operate, and how they will be funded are made by the Congress. The President executes. So you deliberately fence off those decisions from the President. But what do we have right now?…”