Constitutional Checks and Balances
Floor Speech
CONSTITUTIONAL CHECKS AND BALANCES -- (House of Representatives - October 24, 2007)
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Mr. HODES. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Yarmuth, let me start by saying how proud I am to stand with my colleagues, other new Members of the class of 2006, to talk about an initiative which you began, the article I initiative, to talk about reasserting the constitutional balance of power in Washington.
For me, in coming to Congress as a new Member of this House from New Hampshire, it was absolutely fundamental to what I talked about in my campaign that the people of New Hampshire sent me to Congress to restore accountability, integrity, and oversight to government. They sent me here because what I said to them and what we now see is that Congress was a broken branch. Congress had not been exercising its oversight and accountability functions. And when Congress does not exercise its important power, its important right, its important obligation to the people to exercise oversight and accountability over the executive branch and other branches of government, things get unbalanced. It was that sense of checks and balances that our Founding Fathers put into the Constitution, and they put it in there for a reason.
They won a Revolutionary War against an empire, the British empire, with an imperial ruler at the top, the King of England. We wanted to make sure that we had a different form of government; that we had a form of government where the people were the top dog in the fight; that the ruler would never become imperial. That is why we have a President, we have a Congress which is divided between the House and the Senate.
In article I, section 1, our founders were very clear. They said, ``All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.'' What I saw and many of us saw when we ran was a President who was abusing presidential power in an unprecedented way. This wasn't a matter of parties. It was this President abusing power in an unprecedented way, and it could have happened whatever party that President was in, but this is what we saw, and we ran.
The article I initiative, which you began, which we have joined, and which we are spreading, seeks to heighten the public consciousness of the importance of checks and balances in our system. As newly elected Democratic Members of Congress, we feel with particular importance the obligation we have to reassert the power that the Founding Fathers wisely gave to Congress. When we came, we took an oath of office to protect and defend and uphold the Constitution. Article I is the first article, and it is the first article for a reason. And we are well on our way as we have begun to exercise oversight throughout Congress with hundreds of hearings held in this 110th Congress on many issues and especially the war in Iraq and what has happened with this President and this administration. In the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, we have held oversight hearings about administration interference with the work of GSA, the folks who deal with Federal buildings, turning it into an arm of politics; administration interference with science at NASA; administration incompetence with FEMA, delivering formaldehyde-filled trailers to the victims of Katrina; incompetence and mismanagement by the State Department, failing to exercise oversight over contractors in Iraq, the Blackwater scandal that is beginning to emerge now. We have been holding the hearings that constitute the function of Congress not just to make the law but to exercise the oversight that keeps things in checks and balances.
I am delighted to be with you tonight. We are going to talk about numbers of ways in which we are reasserting Congress' power and taking steps to bring the people back to the People's House and serve the interests of the American people.
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Mr. HODES. Thank you. As I have listened to the colloquy we have had here on the floor today in this Chamber where such important issues of war and peace, spending, raising revenue are debated on a daily basis now and thinking about the beginnings of the country, and you have asked about the questions coming up about appropriations, and we have had passed numerous appropriations bills. I think we have passed 12 here in the House of Representatives. The Senate has not yet acted on all of them, because, of course, once we pass the appropriations bills, and they must originate under the Constitution here in the House of Representatives, they go to the Senate. The Senate has to pass them. They come back and forth and they go up to the President. Of course the President has now threatened a veto on the spending necessary to run the Federal Government, to run the program for health and human services, to educate our kids, to heal the sick, all the programs that we have in the Federal Government, he has threatened to veto. And then if he vetoes a bill as we saw with the SCHIP bill, it will come back here where Congress will have the power to vote to override that veto and put it into law despite what the President says. All those powers and all the debates arise out of what my colleague from Florida noted was a living, breathing document. This great democracy of ours comes down to the words and the spirit that are embodied in the Constitution of the United States
Many Americans around the country really have lost sight of the humble beginnings of the country and the need for the powers in article I.
We were a ragtag country, mostly woodsmen and woodswomen that were fighting against this imperial monarchy. We won a revolution and were then immediately faced with terrible challenges. We had no Navy. We had no commerce. Our Army was weak because we had just been through a revolution. We didn't have much money. We had no trade. We had few ambassadors. We had very few friends. It was the Constitution that had to lay out all the powers that would serve as the basis for what is now a $1 trillion a year appropriation in terms of what the Federal Government raises and spends, or borrows and spends in past Congresses.
The challenges we faced coming in here, we are faced with fiscal irresponsibility, in which Congress was borrowing and spending. In fact, the war in Iraq is a perfect example. That war, which is now suggested will cost $2.4 trillion when all is said and done and all is added up, has been done with borrowing. It has been done by putting it on the backs of our children and our grandchildren. Fiscal irresponsibility. Just waste of taxpayer money, which we were sent here to deal with.
The Constitution lays out clearly that it is Congress's duty to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, words these days that don't mean very much. They are fancy, old-fashioned words. We have got to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare. We are allowed in Congress to borrow money on the credit of the United States because it was very important at the very beginning of the Nation that this government be given the power to deal commercially and get the money it needed in a responsible way to run the affairs of the country. But it was up to Congress to appropriate the money to run the programs, provide for the common defense and general welfare.
Today, we are faced with a tough situation and it will probably take us all through the fall as we deal with the President, who has threatened to veto the responsible measures that we, in Congress, coming together as voices of the people, have decided are necessary to run this country. It is up to Congress, really, to say what those programs should be because that is the power the Constitution gives us.
Mr. Speaker, I heard with great interest the quotes from Madison, the quotes in the book. There is another quote from Madison that really talks about why Congress is the place that provides for the welfare and defense of the country. Madison wrote in Federalist Papers No. 52, and the words, it's a little old-fashioned, but folks will get it, ``As it is essential to liberty that the government in general should have a common interest with the people, so it is particularly essential that the branch of it under consideration,'' the Congress, ``should have an immediate dependence on, and an intimate sympathy with, the people''. In other words, it was clear from the founding of this Nation that this body, this hall, this place where we stand before there was C-SPAN, before there was television, this place is the place of the people.
The 435 people who gather here, each representing 650,000 or so people of the United States, are the folks who, in what I have described to my constituents as the hurly-burly of democracy, come together to decide how things should be governed, what kind of money do we need, and how are we going to spend it.
So that is what we are going to be seeing this fall play out. We don't know how it will end, where it is going to go. The Senate will have a role, certainly the President has a role. But so far it appears that with this President, the role now, unlike the past 6 years of the 109th, 108th, 107th, which, with all due respect for my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, the Republicans, were Republican-dominated Congresses where the veto word was never mentioned, all of the sudden the President has now decided that it is time to veto almost everything that is coming out of Congress. He vetoed SCHIP, a bill to ensure 10 million of our neediest children for health care. Vetoed. We are going to send it back. Threatened vetoes for our appropriations bills to run the Federal Government. He is going to send them back.
This is a new light, apparently, that has dawned on this President, that suddenly a Democratic Congress sending him legislation is all of a sudden going to be subject to vetoes. With this initiative, we are here to reassert the importance, the power, the responsibility of this Congress to act for the people who sent us here.
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Mr. HODES. Mr. Speaker, I can't help but think about the importance of the power of the purse. James Madison said, ``The House of Representatives can not only refuse, but they alone can propose the supplies requisite for the support of government.''
The power over the purse is our weapon to use, and I am hoping that this Congress will no longer be the President's enabler when it comes to his misguided policy in Iraq. Earlier this week, he asked for an additional $46 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, bringing the total request this year to almost $200 billion. By the time we are done, we are going to be at $2.4 trillion in Iraq. That is enough to provide college educations for every student who wants to go to a 4-year college for free at a private college or university. We could provide health care for every American for a year for the money we are spending.
It is going to be up to Congress to make tough decisions on whether or not we are going to use the power of the purse to take charge of this President's misguided policy.
So I am in contact and intimate sympathy with my constituents in New Hampshire who have said to me loud and clear, ``Do something to stop this President's policies in Iraq.''
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