() House Speaker and California Rep. Nancy Pelosi and a team of her fellow Democrats have introduced legislation that would limit the power of the presidency.
by , September 22nd, 2021
The legislation, if passed, would limit the power of future presidents, in an apparent swipe at the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump, MSN reported.
The bill, dubbed the Protecting Our Democracy Act, includes a number of tenets to prevent presidential abuses, restore checks and balances, strengthen accountability and transparency, and protect elections.
It is sponsored by nine House Democrats – all of whom chair committees – and is supported by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). It also includes legislation offered by a number of other Democratic lawmakers.
The group mentioned the Trump administration in its description of the bill on its website, writing that the “aggrandizement” of presidential power “reached new heights” under the former president.
“The Protecting Our Democracy Act (PODA) is a historic package of pro-democracy reforms to create or strengthen guardrails preventing the abuse of executive power, restore Congress as a meaningful check on executive authority, and reinvigorate Congress’s exercise of its own constitutional power. Protect Democracy strongly supports these vital reforms,” the website said.
“Without these important legislative measures, our democracy is at risk of backsliding into a more authoritarian form of government in which the president wields unchecked power — the very danger our constitutional system of checks and balances was designed to forestall,” it said.
Among the changes the legislation looks to tackle, it would limit the president’s pardon power, extend the deadline to prosecute former president and vice presidents for federal crimes that occurred before or during their time in the White House, enforce the Constitutional ban on a president enriching themselves, strengthen congressional subpoena power and reassert Congress’ power of the purse.
It would also mandate disclosing any contacts between the president and the Department of Justice, strengthen protection for inspectors general and federal whistleblowers, ensure the Senate’s role in confirming executive branch officials, strengthen enforcement of the rarely used Hatch Act, ensure transition resources after a presidential election and, in what appear to be direct swipes at Trump, require transparency of tax records for presidential candidates, and clarify the federal prohibition on foreign insistence to presidential campaigns.
California Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff said that Trump had exposed “fault lines” in the democracy of the United States.
“As Congress pursues its mission to strengthen and protect our democracy for future generations, these reforms will help ensure that we can keep our cherished republic,” he said.
But in a press conference with Pelosi, Schiff indicated that the current White House has been involved in the crafting of the legislation but that it did not agree on everything.
“They have been engaging with us for months now very constructively. They have made any number of suggestions for different components in terms of concerns over executive prerogative, and we have made every good faith effort we can to meet the concerns that have been expressed,” he said.
“I can’t say we’ve reached agreement on each and everyone, but we made changes, for example, to some of the provisions that would individually penalize people for refusing Congressional subpoenas, to provide that, that in the case where there’s an explicit claim of privilege, where there is an explicit instruction to someone that – that – that could be stipulated to the court,” he said.
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Source:
https://conservativebrief.com/house-democrats-2-51562/
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