Understandably, most of the attention being paid to Brett Kavanaugh\u2019s Supreme Court confirmation hearing in the U.S. Senate has focused on allegations of sexual misconduct.<\/p>\n
But before those stories made headlines, a far more inspiring moment took place during an otherwise routine day of questioning.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s predictable that every confirmation hearing now is going to be an overblown, politicized circus and it\u2019s because we\u2019ve accepted a new theory about how our three branches of government should work, \u201d Republican Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) said in his opening remarks.<\/p>\n
He then unexpectedly took a step back from grilling Kavanaugh to lecture his fellow lawmakers about what he sees as the biggest reason Washington, DC is failing in so many people\u2019s eyes: Congress continues to hand over its authority to the White House.<\/p>\n
And not just this White House. Every White House.<\/p>\n
Sasse explains the problem as he sees it in four points:<\/p>\n
\u201cNumber One: In our system, the legislative branch is supposed to be the center of our politics.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNumber Two: It\u2019s not. Why not. Because for the last century, and increasing by the decade right now, more and more legislative authority is delegated to the executive branch every year. Both parties do it. The legislative is impotent. The legislature is weak. And most people here want their jobs more than they really want to do legislative work.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThird consequence is that this transference of power means that people yearn for a place where politics can actually be done and when we don\u2019t do a lot of actual big political debating here, we transfer it to the Supreme Court and that\u2019s why the Supreme Court is increasingly a substitute battleground in America. It is not healthy but it is something that happens and something that our Founders would not be able to make any sense of.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFourth and finally, we badly need to restore the proper duties and the balance of power from our Constitutional system.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sasse went on to give a brilliant but easy to follow civics lecture on how outside groups and White House offices are increasingly dictating the laws that pass through Congress.<\/p>\n
As he explains, the American government was intentionally founded in a way that gave most of the power to Congress to make laws and control budgets. The executive branch, i.e. the President, was intentionally held in check as a way to avoid dictatorships or monarchies — the very thing America\u2019s Founding Fathers had escaped from.<\/p>\n
Instead, we now live in a society where most of the power derives from the White House and members of each political party either blindly do the bidding of their president or blindly oppose him. The result is increasingly political polarization and legislative stagnation. It\u2019s all controversy and very little progress.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople shouldn\u2019t be protesting in front of the Supreme Court, they should be protesting in front of this body,\u201d Sasse says. And he\u2019s absolutely correct.<\/p>\n
\nSo, if you\u2019re watching the Kavanaugh hearings and getting increasingly worked up either because you can\u2019t believe this man is potentially about to take a seat on the nation\u2019s highest court, or outraged because you think he\u2019s been unfairly maligned, sit down and watch Sasse\u2019s speech in full.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not every day, or every year, that a long talk on policy goes viral to the tune of 10 million views. And that\u2019s because it\u2019s a message most Americans are desperate to hear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Understandably, most of the attention being paid to Brett Kavanaugh\u2019s Supreme Court confirmation hearing in the U.S. Senate has focused on allegations of sexual misconduct. But before those stories made headlines, a far more inspiring moment took place during an otherwise routine day of questioning. \u201cIt\u2019s predictable that every confirmation hearing now is going to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}