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America was not intended to be a pure democracy. The "checks and balances" of our government are really several different forms of government. We have the demo

America was not intended to be a pure democracy. The "checks and balances" of our government are really several different forms of government. We have the democracy of the public, the plebeian officers of the house, the aristocracy of the senate, the council of philosophers on the court, and the dictatorship of the executive. None of this, however, argues in favor of giving the executive the authority to rewrite legislation. Even the much more mild line-item veto is an absurd workaround for a broken legislative process. If the legislature wants smaller, separable acts, it doesn't need to go crying to King Solomon.

vinay427 7y ago
A similar argument applies to every other country most people recognize to be democratic, even more so to countries with an unelected legislative body like the UK. The checks and balances in the US are relatively strong but not unusually so, as far as I can tell, though bicameral state governments are a little unique.
jfengel 7y ago
Unfortunately, the legislative process may be inherently broken. The bar to pass legislation is 50%+1, and it's very hard to find any issue on which you can get a genuine majority entirely in isolation. What happens instead is that allies are made, and they agree to support each other: I'll vote for your thing if you'll vote for mine. That's most effective when you can lump those votes into one, rather than two bills voted serially. That happens sometimes anyway, but some bills (especially budgets) contain thousands if items each of which is only of interest to a minority. That happens even without bad faith or earmarking. A bill to build a road between two states is most favored by those two states; a weapons system makes jobs where it's made, and the runner-up gets nothing. That's the ordinary give-and-take of trying to run a large country. A line-item veto upsets the ability to do that... which seems appropriate when it runs off the rails, but also prevents legitimate business. I don't have a good solution to that problem, and I'd be very happy if King Solomon were to propose one. Running a country of hundreds of millions of people with diverse, and often competing, interests is hard even under the best of circumstances. And today, I believe, the circumstances are not best.

vinay427 7y ago

A similar argument applies to every other country most people recognize to be democratic, even more so to countries with an unelected legislative body like the UK. The checks and balances in the US are relatively strong but not unusually so, as far as I can tell, though bicameral state governments are a little unique.

jfengel 7y ago

Unfortunately, the legislative process may be inherently broken. The bar to pass legislation is 50%+1, and it's very hard to find any issue on which you can get a genuine majority entirely in isolation. What happens instead is that allies are made, and they agree to support each other: I'll vote for your thing if you'll vote for mine. That's most effective when you can lump those votes into one, rather than two bills voted serially. That happens sometimes anyway, but some bills (especially budgets) contain thousands if items each of which is only of interest to a minority. That happens even without bad faith or earmarking. A bill to build a road between two states is most favored by those two states; a weapons system makes jobs where it's made, and the runner-up gets nothing. That's the ordinary give-and-take of trying to run a large country. A line-item veto upsets the ability to do that... which seems appropriate when it runs off the rails, but also prevents legitimate business. I don't have a good solution to that problem, and I'd be very happy if King Solomon were to propose one. Running a country of hundreds of millions of people with diverse, and often competing, interests is hard even under the best of circumstances. And today, I believe, the circumstances are not best.