Congress Versus President: Implementation Of The Affordable Care Act

Implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on whether the administration surpassed authority in granting waivers and delaying the implementation of requirements in specific cases, hence this led to a partisan motive to damage Obama and the democratic party which then increased investigative activity (Daschle and Nather,2010). This caused the government to be divided which caused conflict and time consumption. A more recent example is the impeachment of Donald Trump due to his accusation of pressuring Ukraine to dig up information on Joe Biden and his son who is his main democratic challenger for the upcoming presidency in 2020. He was also accused of bargaining chips and the refusal to cooperate with the congressional inquiry in which recently in December 18, 2019 Congress succeeded in impeaching Trump. However, all these examples imply that even though Congress has the power to impeach a president it cannot forcefully remove them directly and due to the history of impeachments it is shown that presidents were not removed as Congress failed to get close to the two-thirds backing that is required with the examples of bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson.

The funding power of Congress influences foreign policy in the US in many ways as it controls taxation and the spending of public money for the national government. They also use the power of the purse to influence military action as it involves a lot of costs to deploy troops and operate therefore the national budget and military costs go through the approval of Congress first. It is, however, the president who initially produces the annual budget so then Congress has the opportunity to monitor, approve, and criticize the executives spending plans (Mckay,2017). A recent example of presidents making use of spending is with President Trump through spending two trillion dollars on military equipment after the aftermath of the killing of Iran’s army leader. One of the biggest criticisms of the funding power is the failure of oversight as they are charged with overseeing the executive and holding the president accountable for their actions in addition to supervising the executive’s appointments (Haskell,2018). This indicates how important oversight is as it is essential for Congress’s representative role. An example to why Congress may be biased, is when the Clinton administration had a share of dishonest and incompetent appointees with accusations and with the example of the resignation of attorney general Alberto Gonzalez in 2007, after accusations that he had abused his powers in pursuing the ‘war on terror’ (Mckay,2017). This reveals that Congress failed as it favored appointees and support a particular constituency and group interests rather than benefiting the public interest. Congress also was unable to act decisively in the aftermath of the economic dislocation of the 2008-10 period and therefore we see the Obama administration attempt to build an agreement on bringing the deficit under control due to having a divided government and the inability of both houses agreeing. Hence, it is important to note that over time Congress has failed to act as an institution that represents the public interest and focuses on serving their party’s ideology and the interests of their constituents and lobbyists. Congress has also renounced its power over the purse through modern budgetary practices rather than passing spate appropriations measures and continuing resolutions and taking back its control of budget appropriateness. Congress also managed to prevent Trump’s budget cuts on health, aid, and state departments, however, Congress failed to pass this legislation and replace the law to a new one which is what Trump initially wanted. This shows how Congress is reasserting itself in foreign policy by generally cutting instincts of Trump and the ongoing frustration with Trump’s foreign policy that is seen to be motivating Congress’s reemergence now more than ever. More importantly in situations of crisis presidents are allowed to use a maximization of their power like with the example of 9/11 where later on the president was favored in the support of military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Therefore, it is questioned that due to the legislative and executive branches sharing powers there will always be a struggle for power through the direction of policy (Haskell,2018). Overall, it is without a doubt that one of the main congressional powers is the power of the purse but it can also cause failure to oversight and personal congressional interest rather than considering the interest of the nation.