Considering the abuses and scandals swirling around the Obama administration because of the Obama Administration, is now the time to make some substantive changes to protect the American people? Perhaps the solution could be effected by doing the following: 1) Move the IRS from the jurisdiction of the Treasury (perhaps all of the Treasury Department) to that of the House Ways & Means Committee. 2) Move the NSA from the jurisdiction of the Defense Department to the Senate Oversight Committee. Also, give the Senate Oversight Committee control of the CIA. The President would get a cc on all intelligence information. 3) Move the FBI, ICE and ATF from the jurisdiction of the Justice Department to the House Judiciary committee. 4) Move control of the EPA from the President to the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works. These changes would weaken the office of the President but would leave him in control of the Department of Defense and State Department so that he could effectively conduct foreign policy, which is his principal job. Since none of the administrators of any of the above named names stated answers to Congressional questions usually are "I don't know," or "I'll look into that," or some other obfuscation, this will relieve the President of his observation that "the government is too big" for him to control.
Let's make it better by giving it to the least trusted people in America. Congress has the lowest approval ratings of any institution in the history of the US.
So you want the legislative branch to have some executive power? I think the legislative branch has proven it can't execute on almost anything lately. If we want the nation to grind further to a halt, this is a good idea. The check and balance in government has gotten to a point now that progress is not being made for the people. This is a much bigger issue than the "scandals". I think government should change, but in a different way. We have the means and technology that allow us to get away from Representatives government... Qualified folks in the Legislative branch is still needed to craft laws and hold oversight, but perhaps that branch should be changed so that there is direct representation from the public.
Even if I agreed on moving the oversight from the executive to the legislative and judicial branches, they are just as (or more so) partisan. Translation: Congress is a nest of scumbags. Only one scumbag can sit in the Oval Office at a time. You'd be trading one problem for another.
Term limits-- give congressmen/women a focused job to do and then make them leave-- with a small pension!
Goal should always be to decentralize and disperse power as much as possible (especially force-based state power). The Founders understood power is inherently corrupting and set up a scheme of checks and balances and limited, enumerated powers. We've gotten away from that. Federal agencies have enormous money and power. Half the laws these days give administrators the power to simply waive them, a recipe for lawlessness and corruption and disparate treatment. IRS should be figuratively burned to the ground and reconstituted under a Fair/Flat tax scheme. Transparent, applied to everyone the same, simple to comply with, and a minimal invasion of personal privacy to collect. The complete opposite of what we have today.
Why-- and this runs BOTH WAYS-- do we have all this nonsense about a MANDATE with every presidential election. Legislative initiative should come from legislators who are elected by local people. The President is in charge os Executing the law not making it... This is a failure of our Checks and Balances...
Moving jurisdiction for these departments to congress would be idiotic beyond description. Congress is far and away the most dysfunctional of the three branches.
Are you serious? This would make the problem 10 times worse. There is a reason we have the separation of powers. It seems as though you'd prefer the Legislature to execute the laws they create, as well. What we need is for one of the branches of government to act as a check on the injustices of the Executive and Legislative branches. Whether that means a good President who refuses to use the power Congress gives the Executive Branch, or a Judiciary that limits how the Executive is applying the laws Congress makes, so be it.
IMO, the American people would be better off with multiple scumbags watching over key federal operations rather than the one scumbag we have now. With multiple oversight comes two advantages: 1) not all of them would have a sole objective so departments could not be as easily used for partisan purposes as they are currently and 2) the American people could rid themselves of the irresponsible law-makers faster than they can at present. The time is now to end the imperial presidencies. BTW, mc mark, I loathe the current President with twice the intensity that you hated Bush 43. That doubling also applies to the trust level that I have for Obama and you had for Bush 43. Oh, and for the record, race has nothing to do with my opinions -- but political ideology does.
Absolutely not. The changes I propose could not even be implemented until a new President is elected. My concern has more to do with ending imperial presidencies, Republican or Democrat.
In my opinion, the imperial Presidency has a lot more to do with Congress acting outside of their authority by giving up a lot of oversight authority on what the President and Executive Branch are doing. Something like term limits could help in this regard. I'm a proponent of repealing the 17th Amendment (and thus having the Senate made up of representatives chosen by each State in a manner prescribed by the individual States), and I'm also a proponent of getting rid of voting and replacing it with chosing representatives for the House at random from the adult population in each district (with term limits, and procedures for removing and preventing those unfit for office from being chosen as representatives). I think the result would be a House that is more democratic in that it is an actual measure of the political will of the people rather than a measure of those who are seeking power and have been vetted by the Republicans and Democrats, and the Senate would act as a check on the House by keeping in mind the interests of the States. The legislature is the branch that is functioning the worst among the three branches. The executive branch has devolved into a bureaucracy with a lot of centralized power because the legislature has allowed it. The judiciary would be a close second behind the legislature because the people that have been appointed consider their rulings to be law, and by extension they are not ruling on how the law should be applied on a case-by-case basis. Rather, they're setting a precident and standing by it for decades (if not longer -- I'm of the opinion that several of the early court rulings should be ruled on again by modern society).
Congress (legislatures are state "congresses") does need fixing, I agree. However, Congress will not change itself without outside impetus -- namely by Constitutional amendment, which, oddly enough, has to start with Congressional legislation. As far as term limits go, I agree -- three for senators, nine for Representatives and no more than 20 years for any and all federal judges, including justices. That's plenty of time to learn the ropes and not enough time to get so entrenched as to outlast as many as five presidents.
