Quotes about Independent Agencies

Jimmy Carter

I don't have any influence over the Fed [Federal Reserve System], none at all. It's carefully isolated from any influence by the President or Congress.

Trent Lott

I’ve always been a little nervous about the Fed. Quite frankly, I’m a little nervous about the degree of their independence.

The ‘Fed’ refers to the Federal Reserve Board, the strength of which lies in its independence from politics. Some, however, believe that there should not be any entity that performs a major function in our society which is not accountable to the Executive Branch or the Congress or both.

Slade Gorton

The associations inside the group become more important than those outside.

Neil Barofsky

The financial interests have captured the government institutions.

Rhett B. Dawson

Once you create a commission, it’s like watching a hog learning to ice-skate. That hog is going to go wherever it wants to go.

Arvind Kejriwal

The CVC and CAG are independent but merely recommendatory. The government often ignores their advice.

John Locke

[Legislators] can have no power to transfer their authority of making laws and place it in the hands of others.

James M. Landis

Modern administrative government springs from the inadequacy of a simple tripartite form of government to deal with modern problems …. It vests the necessary powers with the administrative authority it creates, not too greatly concerned with the extent to which such action does violence to the traditional tripartite theory of government organization.

Jordan Tama

Far from being an empty gesture, appointing a commission is full of risks. Presidents may appoint such bodies but they cannot control them.

Jeffrey Eisenach

[Independent Federal] agencies, like other bureaucracies don’t like being transformed.. They have cultures and they want to preserve those cultures.

Larry Diamond

Counter-corruption agencies cannot make a difference unless they are independent of the government actors they are supposed to monitor, restrain, and punish.

Andrew Jackson

The power which the General Government would acquire within the several States by becoming the principal stock-holder in corporations, controlling every canal and each 60 or 100 miles of every important road, and giving a proportionate vote in all their elections, is almost inconceivable, and in my view dangerous to the liberties of the people.

The construction and operation of Federal lighthouses and Post Office facilities was accepted, but at the time there were no Federal roads or canals. Some thought that the development of these would be good for the economic development of the country. Jackson and most other politicians could not even conceive of such a thing. However, creative legislators of future generations would create a legal framework for having private, local, state and Federal roads and canals all coexisting. This quotation also dramatically illustrates the problem the Federal Courts would have later when the Constitutionality of Federal Regulations of Billboards on Federal Highways would arise. Not only had the Founding Fathers never conceived of Federal roads, but they never imagined billboards. Yet the Supreme Court had to determine the intent of the Framers regarding billboards on Federal roads.

Carter Glass

... an altruistic institution ... a distinctly nonpartisan organization whose functions are to be wholly divorced from politics.

Describing the intention for the Federal Reserve System:

Independent Agencies Quotes