Download or read book Presidential Spending Power written by Louis Fisher and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-08 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each year billions of dollars are diverted by the President and his assistants from the purposes for which Congress intended them. Billions more are used in confidential and covert ways, without the knowledge of Congress and the public. Here is the first account of how this money is actually spent. Louis Fisher writes: "When it comes to the administration of the budget, we find nothing that is obvious, very little that is visible. Our priorities here are peculiar. We fix upon the appropriations process, watching with great fascination as Congress goes about its business of making funds available to agencies. What happens after that point —the actual spending of money—rarely commands our attention." To unravel the mystery, Louis Fisher has investigated different forms of discretionary action: the transfer of funds that initially financed the Cambodian incursion; impoundment during the Nixon administration; covert financing; the reprogramming of funds; and unauthorized commitments. He describes each of these devices in operation and provides the historical background of Presidential spending power. In conclusion Louis Fisher presents a cogent and timely analysis of what can be done to improve Congressional control. Sufficient control, he maintains, cannot be achieved merely through the appropriations process, and he makes important recommendations designed to preserve discretionary authority while improving Congressional supervision. Originally published in 1975. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book The Spending Power written by Lucius Wilmerding and published by . This book was released on 1943 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Presidential Pork written by John Hudak and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2014-02-27 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presidential earmarks? Perhaps even more so than their counterparts in Congress, presidents have the motive and the means to politicize spending for political power. But do they? In Presidential Pork, John Hudak explains and interprets presidential efforts to control federal spending and accumulate electoral rewards from that power. The projects that members of Congress secure for their constituents certainly attract attention. Political pundits still chuckle about the “Bridge to Nowhere.” But Hudak clearly illustrates that while Congress claims credit for earmarks and pet projects, the practice is alive and well in the White House, too. More than any representative or senator, presidents engage in pork barrel spending in a comprehensive and systematic way to advance their electoral interests. It will come as no surprise that the White House often steers the enormous federal bureaucracy to spend funds in swing states. It is a major advantage that only incumbents enjoy. Hudak reconceptualizes the way in which we view the U.S. presidency and the goals and behaviors of those who hold the nation’s highest office. He illustrates that presidents and their White Houses are indeed complicit in distributing presidential pork—and how they do it. The result is an illuminating and highly original take on presidential power and public policy.
Download or read book Congressional Abdication on War and Spending written by Louis Fisher and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "For thirty years Fisher has observed, informed, and even influenced Congress from his position in the Congressional Research Service. As a scholar, he has studied and published several important books on the separation of powers. Now, for the first time, he not only summarizes the well-informed observations of a distinguished career but also analyzes the reasons for this congressional failure of will and advocates practical ways to redress the balance.".
Download or read book The Powers of the Presidency written by and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2013 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a comprehensive and illustrative work on the historical and contemporary perspective on presidential powers, guiding readers through the presidency as a constitutional office with many updated features from the previous edition.
Download or read book The Law of the Executive Branch written by Louis Fisher and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Law of the Executive Branch: Presidential Power places the law of the executive branch firmly in the context of constitutional language, framers' intent, and more than two centuries of practice. Each provision of the US Constitution is analyzed to reveal its contemporary meaning and in concert with the application of presidential power.
Download or read book To Provide for the General Welfare written by Theodore Sky and published by Associated University Presse. This book was released on 2008-09 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the course of the constitutional controversy over the spending power and the role of that power in driving an expansion in federal activity and authority from 1787 forward.
Download or read book President and Congress written by Louis Fisher and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An analysis of the conflicts between the President and Congress in four areas of shared power--legislative power, taxing power, spending power, and the war power.
Download or read book Borrowing By Any Other Name written by Neil H. Buchanan and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On three occasions since mid-2011, the United States has come perilously close to exhausting its borrowing authority under a statutory limit commonly called the "debt ceiling." In prior work, the current authors argued that, in the event that the debt ceiling is reached, the President will face a "trilemma" in which any realistic action he takes -- defaulting on government obligations, raising taxes, or issuing debt in excess of the statutory ceiling -- would unconstitutionally usurp legislative power. We argued that in such circumstances, violating the debt ceiling would be the "least unconstitutional option." Nonetheless, most pundits and politicians, including the President, appear to assume that if the debt ceiling is reached, default would be necessary. Here, we observe a previously unnoticed deficiency in this assumption: Default would not only usurp congressional power to set spending levels; it would not even satisfy the debt ceiling, because failure to pay money due government obligees is a kind of borrowing, both for statutory and constitutional purposes. A "loan" taken from the lender involuntarily is hardly better than consensual borrowing. The government could avoid this result only by expressly repudiating its obligations, but to do that would violate even the very narrow construction of Section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment advanced by those who treat default as the necessary consequence of congressional failure to raise the debt ceiling.
Download or read book By Executive Order written by Andrew Rudalevige and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the executive branch—not the president alone—formulates executive orders, and how this process constrains the chief executive's ability to act unilaterally The president of the United States is commonly thought to wield extraordinary personal power through the issuance of executive orders. In fact, the vast majority of such orders are proposed by federal agencies and shaped by negotiations that span the executive branch. By Executive Order provides the first comprehensive look at how presidential directives are written—and by whom. In this eye-opening book, Andrew Rudalevige examines more than five hundred executive orders from the 1930s to today—as well as more than two hundred others negotiated but never issued—shedding vital new light on the multilateral process of drafting supposedly unilateral directives. He draws on a wealth of archival evidence from the Office of Management and Budget and presidential libraries as well as original interviews to show how the crafting of orders requires widespread consultation and compromise with a formidable bureaucracy. Rudalevige explains the key role of management in the presidential skill set, detailing how bureaucratic resistance can stall and even prevent actions the chief executive desires, and how presidents must bargain with the bureaucracy even when they seek to act unilaterally. Challenging popular conceptions about the scope of presidential power, By Executive Order reveals how the executive branch holds the power to both enact and constrain the president’s will.
Download or read book Who Holds the Purse Strings The President s Authority to Spend Money Without Congressional Authorization written by and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 15 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past two decades, Congress has frequently challenged foreign policy decisions and other actions of the President by either denying funding for specific purposes or attaching qualifying conditions to specific appropriation bills for Executive branch agencies. Occasionally, Congress has failed to pass an appropriation bill before the previous one expired at the end of the fiscal year. Does Congress have the exclusive "power of the purse" for the federal government? Can Congress negate Presidential decisions or shut down the Executive branch by simply not authorizing appropriations? The answer is no. The President may spend money from the general treasury in certain situations without Congressional authorization. This paper examines the constitutional basis for the President's spending prerogatives and the limitations on both the Congress and the President in exercising their respective spending authorities. The Constitutional Framework.
Download or read book Checks in the Balance written by Alexander Bolton and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-14 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Executive power in the shadow of legislative capacity -- Legislative capacity, executive action, and separation of powers -- 'Outmanned and outgunned' : the historical development of congressional capacity -- Pulling the purse strings : legislative capacity and discretion -- Continuous watchfulness? legislative capacity and oversight -- Presidential unilateral policy making -- Unilateral policy making in the U.S. states -- The future of legislative capacity.
Download or read book The President Who Would Not Be King written by Michael W. McConnell and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vital perspectives for the divided Trump era on what the Constitution's framers intended when they defined the extent—and limits—of presidential power One of the most vexing questions for the framers of the Constitution was how to create a vigorous and independent executive without making him king. In today's divided public square, presidential power has never been more contested. The President Who Would Not Be King cuts through the partisan rancor to reveal what the Constitution really tells us about the powers of the president. Michael McConnell provides a comprehensive account of the drafting of presidential powers. Because the framers met behind closed doors and left no records of their deliberations, close attention must be given to their successive drafts. McConnell shows how the framers worked from a mental list of the powers of the British monarch, and consciously decided which powers to strip from the presidency to avoid tyranny. He examines each of these powers in turn, explaining how they were understood at the time of the founding, and goes on to provide a framework for evaluating separation of powers claims, distinguishing between powers that are subject to congressional control and those in which the president has full discretion. Based on the Tanner Lectures at Princeton University, The President Who Would Not Be King restores the original vision of the framers, showing how the Constitution restrains the excesses of an imperial presidency while empowering the executive to govern effectively.
Download or read book Rivals for Power written by James A. Thurber and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2013-07-11 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rivals for Power is a penetrating and up-to-date description of the power struggle between the president and Congress. In it, leading congressional and presidential scholars and knowledgeable former public officials present a vivid explanation of the historical, political, and constitutional complexities of presidential-congressional relations.
Download or read book President Kennedy written by Richard Reeves and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-11-08 with total page 822 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: President Kennedy is the compelling, dramatic history of JFK's thousand days in office. It illuminates the presidential center of power by providing an indepth look at the day-by-day decisions and dilemmas of the thirty-fifth president as he faced everything from the threat of nuclear war abroad to racial unrest at home. "A narrative that leaves us not only with a new understanding of Kennedy as President, but also with a new understanding of what it means to be President" (The New York Times).
Download or read book Checks in the Balance written by Alexander Bolton and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-14 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How access to resources and policymaking powers determines the balance of power between the legislative and executive branches The specter of unbridled executive power looms large in the American political imagination. Are checks and balances enough to constrain ambitious executives? Checks in the Balance presents a new theory of separation of powers that brings legislative capacity to the fore, explaining why Congress and state legislatures must possess both the opportunities and the means to constrain presidents and governors—and why, without these tools, executive power will prevail. Alexander Bolton and Sharece Thrower reveal how legislative capacity—which they conceive of as the combination of a legislature’s resources and policymaking powers—is the key to preventing the accumulation of power in the hands of an encroaching executive. They show how low-capacity legislatures face difficulties checking the executive through mechanisms such as discretion and oversight, and how presidents and governors unilaterally bypass such legislative adversaries to impose their will. When legislative capacity is high, however, the legislative branch can effectively stifle executives. Bolton and Thrower draw on a wealth of historical evidence on congressional capacity, oversight, discretion, and presidential unilateralism. They also examine thousands of gubernatorial executive orders, demonstrating how varying capacity in the states affects governors’ power. Checks in the Balance affirms the centrality of legislatures in tempering executive power—and sheds vital new light on how and why they fail.
Download or read book Presidential Impoundment of Funds and Congressional Control of the Budget written by James P. Pfiffner and published by . This book was released on 1975 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
