Mid Term Questions 1.docx

Hefner Mid-term question 1 You hear in the news all the time about the government trying to pass a bill to become law. You also hear about how one political party will attempt to stop the other if the bill is not in their best interests. You see this happening a lot when you have the President and the majority of Congress in separate parties. Most people do not understand that this was done on purpose and “The United States Constitution is deliberately inefficient.” (Mount, 2010) The whole point of this inefficiency is to provide checks and balances within our federal government. Without them one party could take over every aspect of the federal government and rule with an iron fist. The best and most known way of balancing power belongs to the president. New laws a lot of the time come from bills that are debated, inspected and passed in Congress. After the bill has passed in Congress it does not become a law until the executive branch signs off on it. If this bill does not seem like a good fit for the country at the time, then the president has the ability to veto the bill. The president has ten days to veto the bill. If he does not, then the bill becomes law as if he had signed it. (Separation of Powers with Checks and Balances, 2016) The process of the veto seems to be something that could be abused. What if you have Congress and a president that do not see eye to eye? Is congress out of luck for the foreseeable future because the president has the ability to vote down every bill they send his way? No, luckily there is a built in safeguard from this that would allow Congress to get around a veto if they feel it is necessary. “Congress may override any veto except for a pocket veto by a two-thirds majority in each house.” (Wei, 2016) It is believed that since the Congress is made of both parties at the same time reaching a Majority vote of twothirds is fair to overrule a veto allowing the bill to be signed into law. Now that Congress has got the bill passed and it has become law it takes effect. It is now up to the Judicial branch to maintain and carry out this law but what happens if the law after everything it has been through to get passed is not fair. What if this law takes away someone’s basic rights or discriminates against a certain group of people? We the American people are not just stuck with this law because the president and Congress have decided that it is in our best interests. “The Supreme Court can then check both branches by declaring a law unconstitutional” (Separation of Powers with Checks and Balances, 2016) Once the law is declared unconstitutional it will no longer apply to people. This sounds like it is giving the final say on laws to the Judicial branch and the Supreme Court but there are still checks on the Supreme Court in the fact that the President has to appoint individuals to serve on it and the Senate to approve the appointment. This method of making a bill become law is just one detailed example of how the checks and balances work within our government. Without these checks and balances in place we could end up in the exact same spot of why we created this country with one person or group of persons controlling everything we do and believe.

Works Cited Mount, S. (2010, Jan 24). Constitutional Topic: Separation of Powers. Retrieved from U. S. Constitution Online: http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_sepp.html Separation of Powers with Checks and Balances. (2016). Retrieved from Documents of Freedom: https://www.docsoffreedom.org/readings/separation-of-powers-with-checks-and-balances Wei, X. (2016). How the U.S. Constitution Separates National Power. Retrieved from Early America: http://www.earlyamerica.com/early-america-review/volume-13/constitution-separates-power/

Hefner Mid-term question 1