The Imperious Executive

Respect for Congress is at an all-time low, and no wonder: check bouncing, pay raises, unpaid restaurant bills, Clarence Thomas hearings. But I'm not celebrating just yet. Our national media normally lick the government's shoes. When they expose part of that government for what it is, I want to know: who benefits?

As usual, it is the executive branch, which has far more influence with the media than Congress, and which is far more dangerous to our liberties.

We laugh when Senators make fools of themselves on national television. But just once I'd like to see a panel of bureaucrats in the same position. We'd see the Senate hailed as a bastion of relative brilliance and good sense.

Congressmen pass out subsidies when they can, and do what they can to get reelected. But for all the bumbling, fumbling, and special-interest favoritism, their concerns are mostly parochial. They aren't designing New World Orders, pushing anti-free-market treaties through the United Nations, or issuing administrative law commands through the Federal Register. That's the president. Nor can Congress compare to the executive in number of employees, budget, or power.

In 1816, the legislature employed 243 people. Today, it employs 40,183. (And the judicial branch grew at about the same rate during this period.) That's a lot, but legislative employment hasn't grown at all in the last ten years, and only half of the legislative branch employees actually work for Congress.

Compare this to the executive. In 1816, this branch, including the military and the post office, employed 4,500 people. (The military had 190 [the troops being state militia], the post office 3,341, and the rest of the government 938.) By 1890, the executive employed as many people as the legislature does now. In 1990, the executive employed three million people. Excluding the military, there are still two million executive branch workers on our payroll.

If legislative growth had kept pace with non-military executive growth, Congress would employ 145,800 people – more than three and a half times its current number.

The executive branch has grown so much that the relatively tiny Railroad Retirement Board, an executive agency, employs as many people as the entire original executive department (excluding the military and post office).

The legislative branch has nine agencies, the judicial ten, and the executive 281. These are not co-equal branches of government. (See the List from Hell.)

Imagine Thomas Jefferson and James Madison being handed a copy of this list and told that this is the executive branch in 1992. They might speculate that the British had reconquered us, and thrown out our Constitution.

In fact, we were conquered, but by Washington, D.C. Roosevelt II doubled the number of civilian employees in his first five years, and executive growth hasn't looked back since.

Why do we hear so much about the evils of the legislature, and virtually nothing about the gargantuan executive? In part, because it is so much more visible and vulnerable. It is easy to ridicule congressional pandering, and scholars study Congress incessantly. But who is making fun of, or even studying, the FCA, FHFB, FLRA, FMC, FMCS, FMSHRC, or FRTIB? Who even knows what they are?

We are all told about Congress's $100,000 for the Lawrence Welk Museum in Nebraska, but the latest $100 million Education Department boondoggle isn't even noticed – it's too small.

Congress is also far more subject to popular pressure. When the public found out about the bounced checks, and protested, Congress immediately closed the House bank.

The executive is different. Outside of a handful of top appointees, the gang of two million is neither seen nor heard as it throttles our freedoms and prosperity.

These days, Congress doesn't even write the key bills. They are drafted by, and lobbied for, the executive agencies and departments themselves, with the help of their special interests. The Treasury, the Federal Reserve, and the bank lobbyists wrote the banking bill now being considered. The EPA and environmental lobbyists wrote the Clean Air Act. HUD and the public housing builders wrote the housing bill. In these proceedings, the legislature concentrates on privileges and subsidies for its interests, of course.

Presidents have long attacked special interests that flock around the legislature, but not because they're opposed to such relationships: they want a monopoly for the White House. A huge executive branch depends on a mixed economy, which Garet Garrett defined as "one in which private enterprise does what it can and government does the rest."

Congress is a problem, a pain in the neck, a racket. It is corrupt, but on a relatively small scale: petty theft as compared with Al Capone. In every vice, it is small potatoes as compared to the executive.

Today there are efforts, some in the name of conservatism and free enterprise, to make the president immune from congressional checks on his power. This has been the goal of every imperial president since Lincoln: a plebiscatory dictatorship.

Whenever such a man is in power, there is a concerted effort to weaken and discredit the institutions that stand in his way, including state and local governments, and the Congress.

The House Committee on UnAmerican Activities (HCUA) warned about this in 1938, noting that the "effort to obliterate the Congress of the United States as a co-equal and independent branch of our government does not as a rule take the form of bold and direct assault. We seldom hear a demand that the powers with which Congress is vested by the Constitution be transferred in toto to the executive branch of our government, and that Congress be adjourned in perpetuity. The creeping totalitarianism by which we are menaced proceeds with subtler methods."

The supporters of presidential power, said the HCUA, seem to assume "that the sole remaining function of Congress is to ratify by unanimous vote whatever wish is born anywhere at any time in the whole vast structure of the executive branch of Government down to the last whim of any and every administrative official."

"The essence of totalitarianism," said the committee, "is the destruction of the parliamentary or legislative branch of government."

Although the Founding Fathers gave the preponderant power to Congress, they knew the dangers posed by the executive. That's why they gave Congress a blunt instrument to discipline it: the power of impeachment and conviction, and they meant for it to be a constant threat. As George Mason told the Constitutional Convention, "No point is of more importance than that the right of impeachment should be continued. Shall any man be above justice? Above all, shall that man be above it, who can commit the most extensive injustice?" Benjamin Franklin pointed out that without impeachment, the only way to get rid of bad presidents was assassination.

Presidents should be impeached and convicted when they govern unconstitutionally. By that rule, FDR should have been tossed out in 1934. What a different country this would be today.

Not that we should send Congress a dozen roses; we should vote them all out, and elect people who would take their oath of office to the Constitution seriously. The first act of such a constitutional Congress would be pruning the executive branch, with a chainsaw.