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Checks and Balances

Currently, there is a lot going down in Washington D.C. amid impeachment inquiries and chaos caused by President Trump’s actions. An article from the U.S. News and World Report talks about how Trump and his administration have not been cooperating with Congress in replying to their subpoenas and failing to show up to hearings. The article makes the point that Congress feels as though the checks and balances system is being violated by the actions of the administration. 

The checks and balances system goes hand in hand with the separation of powers. The separation of powers puts different important responsibilities in the hands of different branches of the government (Adler, Jenkins, Shipan, Chapter 2). Checks and balances works by allowing the three different branches of the government to keep the others in line and not allow them to overstep. As quoted in the Chapter 2 of the book, Adler, Jenkins, and Shipan state, “institutions should have the ability to counteract one another, thereby preventing any one branch of government from becoming too powerful and eventually subsuming the others.” In the case of this article, Congress is worried that the executive branch is becoming too powerful with the actions of the president and his administration. They are worried that he will begin to subsume Congress. The article claims that Trump is “delegitimizing” the House, essentially making them powerless. This is why checks and balances is so important in a presidential governing system. It allows Congress to retain its powers and take action when they feel that the President may be overstepping.

In Federalist 51 Madison states, “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judicial in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many… may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” President Trump has not quite gotten to this point yet. What Madison is saying is that, when the powers that should be separated by the separation of powers fall into the hands of one person or one administration, this is classified as tyranny. If President Trump were to continue to do what he is doing on a much more extreme level, then this could become the case. Exactly for this reason is why the Framers set up the separation of powers and checks and balances. It is important that Congress finds a way to get a handle on their side of the checks and balances so this does not happen.


Data from https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/who-has-congress-subpoenaed-in-the-impeachment-investigation.

In this graph, we can see the number of subpoenas issued by the House of Representatives against the Trump Administration. The total number of subpoenas issues this far is nine. Two of them have not been fulfilled by various members of the administration either because they refuse to, or they are not allowed to provide the requested documents. One person has responded to the subpoena by testifying. The other six that have not been responded to yet have an upcoming deadline of October 15th, 16th, and 18th. We will find out soon how those members respond. Most likely, the awaiting responses will fall into the ignored category. If this is the case, then the checks and balances system may truly be falling apart, and Congress will need to figure out how they can reconstruct it and put it back into place, so that the government has some sense of order again.

https://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2019-10-04/trump-works-to-marginalize-congress-during-impeachment-inquiry

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