“There are no effective checks on Presidential power” Discuss

One way in which the effectiveness of checks on Presidential power is lacking is war powers. In the Constitution the President cannot declare war only Congress can. Congress has not declared war since 1941, but Presidents have sent in troops without declaring war more than 125 times between between 1941 and today. For example the war on ISIL that has been going on for 2 years and continues to be on going, there was no official declaration from Congress saying that the US had declared war on ISIL. It was Obama who approved air strikes and sending drones to survey what was happening without Congress officially declaring war or approving the use of force against ISIL. Congress did however approve funds to commanding rebels in order to train them and help them find resources to fight ISIL So this check on preventing the President from declaring war has almost disappeared as the President onwards has led all wars from World War 2 with no declarations of war from Congress. So in terms of foreign policy there are very little effective checks on Presidential power as it seems Congress no longer choose where the US intervenes with military action anymore, however due to Congress’ ‘power of the purse’ Congress can limit them financially with wars which could be seen as the only major check here that is effective to an extent. Due to this Presidential powers have almost grown slightly which the founding fathers wanted to prevent. Widavsky has the opinion of the founding fathers goal having failed in terms of Presidential power but only in terms of foreign policy, as there aren’t as many effective checks as when it comes to the Presidential power with domestic policy. There are no effective checks on Presidential power when it comes to foreign policy.

However there are effective and more checks on the Presidential power when it comes to confirmation of appointments since all appointments made by the President need the approval from the Senate. In 2016 when there was a gap left on the Supreme Court, Obama tried to fill it with a judge but by then there was a divided government and the next election was coming up so the Senate didn’t do anything about confirming or rejecting the nomination until it was timed out. The Senate have the power to reject or potentially avoid approving nominations made by the President; this prevents the President from potentially choosing extreme or unpopular nominations, as they want them to be approved by Senate. This is an effective check as a supermajority is needed and depending on the makeup of the Senate at the time the President may need to persuade some members of the opposition to vote in their favour. This idea of the power to persuade being a Presidential power comes from Neustadt and so approval of nominations may require such a power to come into play and the President doing this means that they are weak and what the founding fathers envisioned the President to be and the powers they have. However there have only been 9 cabinet nominees and 12 Supreme Court nominees that have been rejected, the other nominations that failed were either withdrawn or left, so the check isn’t one that is used often in executive nominations and judicial nominations. But overall the check is an effective one that does check the President’s power so they cant just choose whoever they wanted without that person being thoroughly checked and voted on.