Whether Trump Stays or Goes, We Need To Rein in Presidents and Congress

[EasyAce]

The impeachment process will be nasty, brutish, and long. It also won't cure the problem of expansive government.
By Nick Gillespie
https://reason.com/2019/09/26/whether-trump-stays-or-goes-we-need-to-rein-in-presidents-and-congress/

. . . For decades, the presidency has been getting more and more imperial, with Oval Office occupants openly flouting constraints on their exercise of power and Congress abdicating its role in doing anything other than spending more money and acting out of partisan interests. This process didn't begin with President Donald Trump and it won't end even if he is removed from office . . . impeachment is a distraction from the far more important—and daunting—problem of a government that costs more of our money and controls more of our lives with every passing year.

Does Trump deserve to get the hook? There's no question that he has acted abrasively since taking office, always pushing the envelope of acceptable behavior, decorum, and policy . . . except for sheer coarseness and vulgarity, none of this is new or shocking. Barack Obama was mostly polite and more presentable to the public, but he similarly evinced nothing but contempt for restraints on his desired aims . . . George W. Bush was not particularly different. Though Bush conjured bipartisan majorities for awful and budget-busting programs such as wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Medicare prescription drug plan, and No Child Left Behind, his administration also implemented secret torture programs overseas and mass surveillance programs domestically, all while being "pathological about secrecy," even to the point of urging federal agencies to slow down or deny Freedom of Information Act requests.

To such executive branch flexes we must add the brute reality that Congress has been mostly AWOL for all of the 21st century, apart from taking nakedly partisan jabs at chief executives from the other party . . . . . . On the road to becoming the first female Speaker of the House after the 2006 elections, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) promised she would oversee federal budgets with "no new deficit spending," a pledge that lasted until she actually became Speaker of the House and pushed a budget-busting farm bill.

Republicans spent like drunken sailors and regulated the hell out of the economy when they controlled the purse strings and got to pick winners and losers in the economy. They only talk about cutting spending and limiting government when a Democrat is in charge . . . Without addressing the bigger picture, the battle over Trump's fate will be an exercise in futility, a partisan plot climax that will thrill one set of partisans for a while but give no relief or release to the plurality of Americans who identify as independents.

[OfTheCross]

I was going to post this article too...this impeachment would be helpful in maybe reigning in the Executive branch going forward.

[EasyAce]

I was going to post this article too...this impeachment would be helpful in maybe reigning in the Executive branch going forward.

@OfTheCross
We dare to dream.

Time was, we thought Richard Nixon headed for likely impeachment when he resigned, and Bill Clinton being impeached, might be helpful in maybe reigning in the executive branch going forward, too.

[OfTheCross]

@OfTheCross
We dare to dream.

Time was, we thought Richard Nixon headed for likely impeachment when he resigned, and Bill Clinton being impeached, might be helpful in maybe reigning in the executive branch going forward, too.

The Clinton impeachment might've helped had it not been for 9/11. I feel like since that day the Executive has gotten more powerful.

[EasyAce]

The Clinton impeachment might've helped had it not been for 9/11. I feel like since that day the Executive has gotten more powerful.

It might, it might not. It wasn't exactly or strictly 9/11 that turned George W. Bush and his Republican Congresses into drunken sailors.

(Note again a Gillespie point: Republicans and Democrats discover prudence only when someone from the other party lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.)

Wait, that's unfair---to drunken sailors. Drunken sailors at least spend their own money.

[goatprairie]

Although I will agree with people, libertarians,  like Gillespie on some issues...like the fed. gov. spending way too much taxpayer money,  they are also the people who see nothing wrong with letting in tens of millions of illegal immigrants.
They would also do nothing about terrorism.
So take whatever Gillespie says with a grain of salt, because I tend to look at comments from people like him as skeptically as I look at politicians.

[WhatWouldReaganDo]

I was going to post this article too...this impeachment would be helpful in maybe reigning in the Executive branch going forward.

We need to rein in the executive branch; the problem is that members of both parties want to reign in the executive branch.

[Absalom]

We are where we are because we no longer understand the vision of our Founders.
Our core institutions were birthed by the Declaration and Constitution; whose drivers were
Southerners such as Rutledge, Jefferson, Lee, Madison, Monroe, among several dozen.
Their ruling vision was grounded in the ageless Principle of Subsidiarity which asserted that
issues/matters of governance, whether economic, political or social, should be dealt with at
the most immediate level, consistent w/their efficient resolution.
Hence they promoted decentralized authority via States Rights which had been our governing philosophy till the Civil War.
Sadly that event eradicated the Southern vision, leading to a 75 year Republican ascendancy till 1932, which changed us for the worse by ushering in aggressive centralized government and judicial activism.

[Cyber Liberty]

OK, the Executive Branch needs to be reined in.  Check.  Now, how about the Legislative Branch, as discussed in the article?  Would it be a good idea to rein one in but not the other?  I maintain if one is out of control, the public will demand the other seize that control back.  Rinse and repeat. 

It's not helpful we have two parties more than eager to ruin the country, each in their own way.