POLSCI 318 Lecture Notes - Lecture 22: Congressional Budget Office, Imperial Presidency, Executive Privilege
4 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Congress and the Presidency
12.07.16 Lecture Notes – Modern Presidency
x Period between imperial presidency and the modern imperial presidency: Vietnam and Watergate
occurred
x After Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution (which gave Johnson wide-ranging war powers),
they started to rein in the executive power
x Nixon argued for the executive privilege during the Watergate court case
x Congressional Authorization for Use of Military Force Resolution – President had to notify Congress
within 48 hours of employing troops to foreign territory
x Passed laws in regards to intelligence, executive prerogative (power of executive to withhold
information from other branches and the American public), ethics
x 1970s – Freedom of Information Act – enables citizens to petition government (particularly the
executive) to request information and receive information on decision-making within the executive
branch
o Ex: Petition the WH to release its understanding of Geneva Convention and its application to
the war on terror
o Ex: Justification for why American citizens treated as enemy combatants
o ACLU had to sue
x Congressional Budget Act that specifies the budget process
o Means by which any branch of government exercises power
o Congress given more control over the budget process
o Congressional Budget Office – independent non-partisan office that is tasked with providing
independent information on the economy, costs of program, etc. to Congress
o Balances asymmetrical information – President has much more information because of his
access to the agency heads more bargaining power
o Also made it illegal for the President to have money appropriated to the executive and then
have the president not actually spend that money – Nixon committed this
▪ Ex: Federal Water Pollution act amendments – Nixon did not spend the money that
Congress had allocated for the implementation of those provisions
▪ Court struck down the refusal to spend funds
▪ Federal judge recently ruled that with the Obama administration, the President also
cannot withhold money that was allocated to him (certain provisions of Obamacare)
x 9-11 had a huge ipat o Bush’s aspiatios to iease poe i the eeutie
x Reorganization effort of 22 agencies into Homeland Security – to facilitate communication between FBI
and CIA who had not communicated before 9-11
o Centralizes control over a variety of domestic issues that had not been considered domestic
security issues prior to 9-11 overall centralized into power in WH
o Also claimed the authority to imprison American citizens indefinitely – no trial by jury, no need
for warrant
o Ignored statutes and treaties prohibiting torture (US statutes and Geneva Convention)
o Warrantless wire-tapping and electronic eavesdropping – violation of the 4th Amendment
o Guantanamo Bay, Cuba – detain foreign enemies indefinitely
x After the subsidence of fear, Congress began to check the aggrandize of the executive power during
the Bush era
o Claimed such powers were unconstitutional
x Then, Obama takes power – campaign promise was to rein in the executive, but also inherits the war
on terror and has his own reasons to aggrandize the power of the executive
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