Fight for Democracy, Part 4: Checks and Balances

Since we do live in a two-party nation, it’s important to understand how that relates to the actual functioning of our government. Perhaps the most important, but least focused on aspect, is the way it allows control of Congress.

Both the House of Representatives and the Senate rely on committees to do much of the heavy lifting of governance: they introduce bills, review and investigate them (and other matters), and refer them to the rest of the chamber for actual votes. The Senate also approves judicial and executive appointments which gives them a large amount of control over the other two branches of government, and again, a lot of the review and the confirmation hearings for these judges are in committee. And the leadership of the committees, decided by majority control, determines what even gets discussed in the first place. That means whichever party is in control gets to determine the agenda, not just the outcome of that agenda.

So having even a slight majority gives one party a significant power advantage over the other. While this does make a difference in what laws actually get passed, perhaps it’s biggest impact is on the idea of checks and balances upon which our three-branch system is designed. If one party controls all three branches there is fundamentally no mechanism to reign in corruption and abuse in the government. [note: this idea should terrify those people who think government is a bad thing, but right now those are the people supporting this situation.] Congressional committees are the ones who investigate fraud, who investigate potential crimes and cover-ups, who review government policies for legality and effect, who censure violators of ethics rules, who can subpoena information and release it to the public. The only hope to check a corrupt and immoral Executive Branch is a Legislative Branch who views it as a competitor. Sure, partisanship might lead to a waste of time, money, and attention like the Benghazi hearings, but that’s a better alternative than the ignoring of real matters of life and death - like the 3000 Puerto Ricans who died because of the Administration’s inept response to Hurricane Maria, or the 500 children still separated from their parents due to immoral border policies.

If you see the rampant corruption in the current Administration and think the Democrats should do something about it, you need to realize only the party in the majority has any tools to do anything of substance. The Democrats need a majority. That’s why it isn’t necessary for all those Democrats to be perfect, why we don’t need a universally progressive slate, or everyone advocating for the exact same policies and ideas. Even ‘bad, neo-liberal, DINO’ Democrats count towards that majority and will give the party power. No one seat, no one race, is separate in its consequences from the system as a whole, so it’s important to vote for Democrats at every level in order to return our government to an approximation of what it was meant to be: a system that represents everyone and limits the power of those in charge in order to protect everyone.