[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 1 (Wednesday, January 3, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H56]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               FUNDAMENTAL ISSUE OF SEPARATION OF POWERS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kingston). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Barr] is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. BARR. Mr. Speaker, in all of the debate and the rancor over the 
current budget problems that we are facing, some other more fundamental 
problems seem to be being lost. One of those I was reflecting on today 
and would like to bring to the attention of this body, and that is a 
pattern of conduct on the part of this administration, an attitude, if 
you will, on the part of this administration, to disregard 
constitutional powers involving the separation of powers between the 
different branches of government, namely the Congress of the United 
States and the presidency.
  Mr. Speaker, since assuming my seat in this Congress last year, I 
have witnessed a series of constitutionally suspect acts and 
pronouncements by the current administration, beginning with the 
administration's unilateral and unauthorized bailout of the Mexican 
peso, through the White House's cavalier approach to Congressional 
authorization for approval of U.S. troop deployment in Bosnia, to the 
recent pattern of circumventing Congressional authority over the 
government's power to borrow.
  I have seen, Mr. Speaker, a deeply disturbing and troubling trend, 
raising the specter of an administration overstepping the proper and 
constitutional bounds of executive power.
  It is no secret, Mr. Speaker, that from the beginning many of us in 
this Congress viewed the administration's Mexican peso bailout as 
unwise monetary policy. The practical legacy of that ill-advised 
decision will reverberate to the national detriment through the 
financial community, and indeed our local communities, for many years 
to come. These problems will occupy me and me colleagues on the 
Committee on Banking and Financial Services in the coming months.
  What troubles me, Mr. Speaker, from a constitutional perspective, is 
the way in which the administration finessed the underlying legal issue 
of whether the President and the Treasury Secretary had the authority 
to jeopardize our national treasury in the first instance.
  When I wrote to Treasury Secretary Rubin questioning the legality of 
using U.S. resources to guarantee the government securities of another 
country, I received assurances from his general counsel that ``This is 
a consideration of monetary and foreign policy,'' and that it is ``an 
area that is properly left to the discretion of the President and, 
acting with the President's approval, the Secretary of the Treasury.''
  Mr. Speaker, such a response does worse than insult the intelligence, 
it ignores the Constitution. The administration's attitude on executive 
prerogative was demonstrated again during the debate over the 
deployment of troops to Bosnia. In the November 23, 1995, edition of 
the Tampa Tribune, for example, Clinton spokesman McCurry was asked 
about the funding for this mission. He said ``The importance of the 
mission that we must undertake here will not be circumscribed by 
funding.'' He then assured, Mr. Speaker, reporters that the President 
``Will figure out how to pay for it, one way or another.''
  Mr. Speaker, I worry greatly that ``One way or another'' is a thinly 
veiled reference to move in a way that is constitutionally 
impermissible. Mr. Speaker, it is black letter constitutional law that 
with the Congressional power of appropriation in Article I goes right 
to specify how appropriated monies shall be spent, a congressional and 
parliamentary understanding more than 300 years old.

  This cavalier attitude by the President and his staff on 
Congressional approval represents an entirely unaccountable shift in 
the constitutional understanding that has governed the relationship 
between the several branches of the Federal Government for over 250 
years. This problem with the abuse of executive power has most recently 
been demonstrated by the administration's approach to the debt limit 
and the misuse of government trust funds in violation of Congressional 
power to set borrowing limits, power vested in the Congress by the 
Constitution. The use of government funds by the Thrift Savings Board 
clearly demonstrates, Mr. Speaker, that this Executive Branch is 
issuing new debt instruments and thwarting Congress' exclusive power to 
control the national debt.
  In light of this pattern of conduct, Mr. Speaker, I strongly urge 
that this body, this Congress, and its appropriate oversight 
responsibility, initiate hearings and begin to take strong measures 
that will restore the proper balance between these two branches of the 
government. This looming notion of ``Government by Executive'' has 
plainly gotten out of the control, and the people of the United States, 
in Congress assembled, should not tolerate these such usurpations of 
their authority vested in them by the Constitution.

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