How do presidents influence congress

Even when the president is scoring low in the opinion polls with the public, it is still possible for him to affect the ability of Congress to enact legislation. This is why presidents utilize the threat of a veto more than they actually use a veto. The president also has an array of tools available for influencing Congress that extend beyond the veto. For instance, the president may choose to command public attention and focus it on his agenda.

Ultimately, the president also controls the executive departments. And how do presidents lead the expanded administrative state? Must presidential power increase during times of emergency? Are presidents better guardians of the public interest than Congress?

Is the presidency a more democratic branch of government than the Congress? That is, does the president have closer ties to the people than Congress does? So the house tends to be more local, more parochial, more attuned to public opinion and sentiments than the Senate. It reacts more quickly to popular anger and discontent, for instance. The House has processes that are more efficient.

Less debate time on bills, fewer amendments. The Senate, on the other hand, has unlimited debate, unless 60 of the members vote to close debate. The Senate has unlimited amendments, and their amendments don't even have to be germane to the bills. Thus, we saw the welfare bill pulled from consideration in the Senate because the Democrats were trying to attach non-germane amendments to increase the minimum wage, extend unemployment compensation for workers, a block certain regulations on overtime work.

It's not unusual, therefore, for House and Senate versions of the same bill to be significantly different, and the struggle to resolve differences takes place often in prolonged and heated conference committees between the two houses.

Third, there is a constant struggle between the political parties. The majority party controls the legislative agenda. The minority party tries to obstruct or delay the majority party's bills while trying at the same time to raise its own legislative priorities.

You will hear that things are more contentious and bitter between the parties today than perhaps in years, and that's mainly because neither party has a permanent grip on power. Because the majority has such razor thin margins of control in both houses, power could tip the other way in any given election. This is bound to breed tension, competition, and hostility.

So the fighting is fierce. Everyone is playing hardball -- playing for keeps, struggling for the right to wield power, never ceding an inch to the opposition. Fourth, there is a struggle for power between elected party leaders in Congress and between the majority committee chairmen—even though they are from the same party. Chairmen want to be able to control their committees and the legislation those committees report; party leaders have the responsibility to pass that legislation, and are becoming increasingly involved in influencing the contents of bills to make sure they pass and that the majority party gets credit and retains power.

So leaders intervene more today in shaping the final contents of a bill. Through history, power has swung back and forth between the committee system and the party leadership or caucus system.

When party leaders are strong, committees are weaker, and vice versa. So recent presidents are less successful even while being choosier about bills to endorse. Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson staked out positions on well over half of congressional roll call votes.

Their successors have taken positions on fewer than one-fourth of them—especially when their party did not control Congress. As chief executive, the president can move first and quickly, daring others to respond. Presidents like both the feeling of power and favorable news stories of them acting decisively. Though Congress and courts can respond, they often react slowly; many if not most presidential actions are never challenged. Presidents both hire and with the exception of regulatory commissions fire executive officers.

They also appoint ambassadors, the members of independent agencies, and the judiciary. The months between election and inauguration are consumed by the need to rapidly assemble a cabinet , a group that reports to and advises the president, made up of the heads of the fourteen executive departments and whatever other positions the president accords cabinet-level rank. By contrast, George W.

These presidential appointees must be confirmed by the Senate. If the Senate rarely votes down a nominee on the floor, it no longer rubber-stamps scandal-free nominees. A nominee may be stopped in a committee. About one out of every twenty key nominations is never confirmed, usually when a committee does not schedule it for a vote.

Confirmation hearings are opportunities for senators to quiz nominees about pet projects of interest to their states, to elicit pledges to testify or provide information, and to extract promises of policy actions. Subcabinet officials and federal judges, lacking the prominence of cabinet and Supreme Court nominees, are even more belatedly nominated and more slowly confirmed.

As a result, presidents have to wait a long time before their appointees take office. Five months into President George W. No wonder presidents can, and increasingly do, install an acting appointee or use their power to make recess appointments. In , two nominees for federal court had been held up by Democratic senators; when Congress was out of session for a week, President Bush named them to judgeships in recess appointments.

Bush had no choice but to make a deal that he would not make any more judicial recess appointments for the rest of the year. Presidents make policies by executive orders. Executive orders are directives to administrators in the executive branch on how to implement legislation. Courts treat them as equivalent to laws. Dramatic events have resulted from executive orders. More typically, executive orders reorganize the executive branch and impose restrictions or directives on what bureaucrats may or may not do.

Law of the land. Kind of cool. Executive orders are imperfect for presidents; they can be easily overturned. Moreover, since executive orders are supposed to be a mere execution of what Congress has already decided, they can be superseded by congressional action. Opportunities to act on behalf of the entire nation in international affairs are irresistible to presidents. Presidents almost always gravitate toward foreign policy as their terms progress. Domestic policy wonk Bill Clinton metamorphosed into a foreign policy enthusiast from to Bush was undergoing the same transformation.

President Obama has been just as if not more involved in foreign policy than his predecessors. Congress—as long as it is consulted—is less inclined to challenge presidential initiatives in foreign policy than in domestic policy. War powers provide another key avenue for presidents to act unilaterally. Sometimes, presidents amass all these: in his last press conference before the start of the invasion of Iraq in , President Bush invoked the congressional authorization of force, UN resolutions, and the inherent power of the president to protect the United States derived from his oath of office.

Congress can react against undeclared wars by cutting funds for military interventions. Such efforts are time consuming and not in place until long after the initial incursion. But congressional action, or its threat, did prevent military intervention in Southeast Asia during the collapse of South Vietnam in and sped up the withdrawal of American troops from Lebanon in the mids and Somalia in It established that presidents must consult with Congress prior to a foreign commitment of troops, must report to Congress within forty-eight hours of the introduction of armed forces, and must withdraw such troops after sixty days if Congress does not approve.

All presidents denounce this legislation. But it gives them the right to commit troops for sixty days with little more than requirements to consult and report—conditions presidents often feel free to ignore. And the presidential prerogative under the War Powers Act to commit troops on a short-term basis means that Congress often reacts after the fact. Since Vietnam, the act has done little to prevent presidents from unilaterally launching invasions. President Obama did not seek Congressional authorization before ordering the US military to join attacks on the Libyan air defenses and government forces in March After the bombing campaign started, Obama sent Congress a letter contending that as commander in chief he had constitutional authority for the attacks.

The White House lawyers distinguished between this limited military operation and a war. Public approval helps the president assure agreement, attract support, and discourage opposition. Presidents with high popularity win more victories in Congress on high-priority bills. Presidents face contradictory expectations, even demands, from the public: to be an ordinary person yet display heroic qualities, to be nonpolitical yet excel unobtrusively at the politics required to get things done, to be a visionary leader yet respond to public opinion.

Presidents differ largely in the rate at which their approval rating declines. Presidents in their first terms are well aware that, if they fall below 50 percent, they are in danger of losing reelection or of losing allies in Congress in the midterm elections. Depictions of economic hard times, drawn-out military engagements e.

Under such conditions, official Washington speaks more in one voice than usual, the media drop their criticism as a result, and presidents depict themselves as embodiments of a united America. Short-term effects wane over the course of time.