Charles Krauthammer Quotes
You cannot govern the United States from one house of the Congress.
If a party controls one of the two houses of Congress, they can block any legislation. But governing involves passing legislation, and in our bi-cameral Congress, control of one house is not sufficient to pass legislation.
Charles Krauthammer, Political Columnist, PBS Inside Washington, December 31, 2012
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Morris had it wrong. He perceived that the Senate could not be a check on the House or the President because to him, the Senate was the house of aristocrats and America really did not have aristocrats since there was no nobility so that there would be no difference between Representatives and Senators-–they both were drawn from the same egalitarian population. He missed however that the Senate, being elected by states, would represent a broader constituency than a member of the House, and because of this broader perspective, would come to see issues in nationalist and state terms while Representatives would perceive the same issues in local terms. Hence the two houses of Congress became effective checks on each other, and the Senate on the President because not of different social or economic class, but of broader and narrower perspectives. It was not what Senators were but what they would become once they were elected and had to be reelected.
This was the President’s original role regarding legislation. However, in the 20th century, Presidents have become more active and suggest laws and often initiate the process and then end it by signing the law that he suggested and shepherded through the Congress. But this was never the vision of the Founding Fathers, but since it is not addressed in the Constitution is not an unconstitutional process.
His main reason for believing this is that all appropriations bills must be initiated by the House of Representatives. Lobbyists therefore often give the House more attention than the Senate.
In 1628 Parliament, in response to abuses by King Charles I, was about to pass The Petition of Rights–-a type of Bill of Rights. The King gave assurances that the practices—such as forcing nobles to lend him money—would not continue and didn't want to be embarrassed by passage of a law which he claimed would indicate that the Parliament did not trust him and weaken the dignity of the monarchy. The Petition of Rights passed with Cole’s leadership.
President Abraham Lincoln had pocket vetoed his own party's reconstruction bill in the midst of an election year.
This notion seems to have first been expressed by Edward S. Corwin in 1940
A veto power for the President would be absurd because
Charles Krauthammer was an American political columnist. A conservative political pundit, Krauthammer won the Pulitzer Prize for his column in The Washington Post in 1987. His weekly column was syndicated to more than 400 publications worldwide.
