Excerpt from Larry Arnn from a conversation with Hugh Hewitt:
- Madison says that the way separation of powers works is that each branch defends its own prerogative. And I actually think they haven’t done that enough. And so I wish they would do more. I think Boehner has tried to do more, and I’ll even list what I think they need to do. Part of this is taken from a really great speech by Chris DeMuth of the Hudson Institute at our Constitution Day celebrations in Washington last week. They need to appropriate. So Congress really does two kinds of bills. One is authorizing things to happen, and the other is assigning the money for them to happen. And they haven’t been doing that second thing. Not only do they seldom have budgets, although the Republicans are better at that, they also need to have appropriations bills that assign in detail where the money goes. And then that sets them up to have oversight hearings to influence what happens in the Executive Branch. Instead, they pass these continuing resolutions, which means basically, the government keeps spending as it did before. And there have been so many of them in a row for so long that now the categories are all mixed up, and the Executive Branch is liberated to do even more than it has the massive power to do. So they should, they didn’t get it done this year. They set out to do it. Boehner announced that he was going to try to do it, and Mitch McConnell, too, but it fizzled, and they didn’t get it done. And that’s one reason why the Obama administration runs rampant.
