Episode

In What Areas Does the Executive Have Too Much Power? (29:17)

The framers of the United States Constitution created three branches of government—the legislative, the executive, and the judicial—with powers distributed among the branches. To guard against tyranny, each branch was granted specific powers to check the powers of the other two branches. As James Madison wrote in Federalist Paper No. 51, “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” Yet the authority of the president and the executive branch has expanded dramatically since the American founding, largely with congressional permission. In this episode, join Sarah Binder, senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, Chris DeMuth, distinguished fellow in American thought, B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at the Heritage Foundation, and Gene Healy, senior vice president for policy at the Cato Institute to consider “In what areas does the executive have too much power?”