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Ryan Young is a senior economist at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.
The American experiment can be summed up in one big idea: don’t put too much power in one place. That is why the federal government has three branches — executive, legislative and judicial.
Unfortunately, the modern presidency undermines that separation of powers and concentrates as much power as possible in itself. The best thing President Joe Biden can do as he leaves office is to cut the presidency back down to size.
Perhaps people forget why it’s essential to keep the president in check. Presidential scholar Gene Healy observes that the public imagines the president as “a combination of guardian angel, shaman and supreme warlord of the earth.” People expect the president to say healing words at every tragedy or natural disaster, cure diseases, manage business cycles, and fight injustice worldwide. He is supposed to create millions of jobs and reimagine entire industries.
No human being can meet those expectations. No wonder presidents often leave office deeply unpopular. As Biden experiences the downside of this cycle, his parting legacy could be a legitimate effort to restore the presidency and break the unpopularity curse.
Biden did the same thing most presidents do: give himself more power. That meant more spending and more regulations. Not only did this not solve many problems — the national debt is more than $36 trillion, inflation is still too high, and annual regulatory burdens are now more than $15,000 per household. Biden would win the lasting respect of the people with a bold parting gesture: returning legislating powers back to Congress.
The executive branch now does most of the legislating. Congress passed 65 bills in 2023, but executive branch agencies issued 2,018 regulations. The difference is a factor of 46. Additional executive branch legislation comes from utterances from regulatory agencies: guidance documents, notices and press releases. The regulatory system is opaque, expensive, unfair and counterproductive. Congress’s lack of involvement is part of the reason.
Biden should return judiciary powers to courts. More than 40 regulatory agencies have their in-house court systems called administrative courts that operate outside the proper judicial branch. These agencies select their judges and pay their salaries. They set the rules for procedure and evidence and often stack the deck in their favor. In these in-house agency courts, the government wins 90 percent of the time against only about 60 percent of cases in regular courts.
That is what it looks like when the president takes over other branches’ powers. We have checks and balances for good reason. They prevent abuse of power.
Where there isn’t abuse, there is incompetence. Washington can’t even build what its bill requires because the regulatory permits and environmental reviews take 4.5 years to finish before a shovel can break ground.
Another problem is mission creep. Executive branch agencies may start with a clear purpose but can’t resist expanding those missions. Biden initiated a “whole-of-government” management philosophy. That meant the Federal Reserve was tasked with slowing climate change and the Environmental Protection Agency with addressing economic inequality, for example. Neither agency is suited to those new tasks, I believe.
Realistically, Biden wouldn’t want to lose face by acknowledging this was a bad idea. So this reform — forcing agencies to stick to their original missions — must be left to the Trump administration.
Still, Biden should encourage people to expect less from their politicians. This cultural shift will take far more than a president’s speech, but it must start somewhere. It might as well be now.
The more power a president has, the more damage he can do. Each party warns about this when the other side takes power, but neither does anything about it. The least-followed rule in politics is not giving yourself any power you don’t want your opponents to have.
Trump’s rhetoric on executive power is even grander than Biden’s. He has made it plain that he will use his powers to raise import taxes, go after political opponents, pressure the Federal Reserve to loosen monetary policy, and grow federal debt even more.
Here is a novel idea. Triumphing Roman generals traditionally had a man stand behind them on parade who whispered into his ear that he was a man, not a god. American presidents could use a similar aide. So, too, could the public.
