Issue 513 Should the President Number 1 January 26, 2015

In this issue we ask if the President should have the power to merge overlapping programs, agencies and departments within the Federal government without congressional approval.  So should the American President have such an ability?

The idea:  So the Federal government wastes a lot of money on the Federal Bureaucracy each year due to overlapping agencies, departments and programs.  Obviously this is a bad thing as multiple groups doing the same exact same job is inefficient and thus wastes a large amount of money.  So the idea is to let the president merge these existing programs, agencies and departments so that efficiency can be maintained without having to resort to relying on Congress to pass a law.  In fact, Presidents used to have this power, but it was later taken away because it was felt that Presidents could corrupt this power to their own ends.  So there is a tradeoff here.

How it would work:  So to prevent corruption while allowing the President and our government more efficiency, we can allow the Congress to have a veto power over the merger of individual programs or departments.  So say the President wants to merge the agencies and their associated programs that oversee the feeding, care and slaughter of poultry (yes each of these departments exists and some exist for specific species of farm animals).  The President can first propose the merger, and what the new agencies organization would look like and levels of responsibilities to Congress.  Then Congress would then look at each individual agency and decide if this merger should or should not be allowed.  Congress would only vote if an objection to an agencies merger was to be voiced and that merger would only not take place if a 50% plus one majority vote was to occur.  However, this would not stop the merger of the other individual agencies from becoming a new singular entity, it would just stop that one particular agency(s) from being merged into the larger one.  As such efficiency can be implemented and Congress can maintain its oversight.

Conclusion:  Obviously this idea has merit as it would make it easier and cheaper (hopefully) to run government and keep an eye out on its activities.  Obviously this grants the President broader powers, but with the Congressional veto in place to usurp it if Congress feels that there is an issue helps to alleviate the President over stepping his/her bounds.