Congress Messes Up Everything

From the Constitution

U.S. Constitution: Article I
Section 7. Legislative Process

Clause 1. Revenue Bills

Insertion of this clause was another of the devices sanctioned by the Framers to preserve and enforce the separation of pow ers. 426 It applies, in the context of the permissibility of Senate amendments to a House-passed bill, to all bills for collecting revenue-- revenue decreasing as well as revenue increasing--rather than simply to just those bills that increase revenue. 427
Only bills to levy taxes in the strict sense of the word are comprehended by the phrase ''all bills for raising revenue;'' bills for other purposes, which incidentally create revenue, are not included. 428 Thus, a Senate-initiated bill that provided for a monetary ''special assessment'' to pay into a crime victims fund did not violate the clause, because it was a statute that created and raised revenue to support a particular governmental program and was not a law raising revenue to support Government generally. 429 An act providing a national currency secured by a pledge of bonds of the United States, which, ''in the furtherance of that object, and also to meet the expenses attending the execution of the act,'' imposed a tax on the circulating notes of national banks was held not to be a revenue measure which must originate in the House of Representatives. 430 Neither was a bill that provided that the District of Columbia should raise by taxation and pay to designated railroad companies a specified sum for the elimination of grade crossings and the construction of a railway station. 431 The substitution of a corporation tax for an inheritance tax, 432 and the addition of a section imposing an excise tax upon the use of foreign-built pleasure yachts, 433 have been held to be within the Senate's constitutional power to propose amendments.

U.S. Constitution: Article I
Clauses 11, 12, 13, and 14. War; Military Establishment
THE WAR POWER
Declaration of War
In the early draft of the Constitution presented to the Convention by its Committee of Detail, Congress was empowered ''to make war.''1412 Although there were solitary suggestions that the power should better be vested in the President alone,1413 in the Senate alone,1414 or in the President and the Senate,1415 the sentiment of the Convention, as best we can determine from the limited notes of the proceedings, was that the potentially momentous consequences of initiating armed hostilities should be called up only by the concurrence of the President and both Houses of Congress.1416 In contrast to the English system, the Framers did not want the wealth and blood of the Nation committed by the decision of a single individual;1417 in contrast to the Articles of Confederation, they did not wish to forego entirely the advantages of executive efficiency nor to entrust the matter solely to a branch so close to popular passions.1418

The result of these conflicting considerations was that the Convention amended the clause so as to give Congress the power to ''declare war.''1419 Although this change could be read to give Congress the mere formal function of recognizing a state of hostilities, in the context of the Convention proceedings it appears more likely the change was intended to insure that the President was empowered to repel sudden attacks1420 without awaiting congressional action and to make clear that the conduct of war was vested exclusively in the President.1421

An early controversy revolved about the issue of the President's powers and the necessity of congressional action when hostilities are initiated against us rather than the Nation instituting armed conflict. The Bey of Tripoli, in the course of attempting to extort payment for not molesting United States shipping, declared war upon the United States, and a debate began whether Congress had to enact a formal declaration of war to create a legal status of war. President Jefferson sent a squadron of frigates to the Mediterranean to protect our ships but limited its mission to defense in the narrowest sense of the term. Attacked by a Tripolitan cruiser, one of the frigates subdued it, disarmed it, and, pursuant to instructions, released it. Jefferson in a message to Congress announced his actions as in compliance with constitutional limitations on his authority in the absence of a declaration of war.1422 Hamilton espoused a different interpretation, contending that the Constitution vested in Congress the power to initiate war but that when another nation made war upon the United States we were already in a state of war and no declaration by Congress was needed.1423 Congress thereafter enacted a statute authorizing the President to instruct the commanders of armed vessels of the United States to seize all vessels and goods of the Bey of Tripoli ''and also to cause to be done all such other acts of precaution or hostility as the state of war will justify . . .''1424 But no formal declaration of war was passed, Congress apparently accepting Hamilton's view.1425

Sixty years later, the Supreme Court sustained the blockade of the Southern ports instituted by Lincoln in April 1861 at a time when Congress was not in session.1426 Congress had subsequently ratified Lincoln's action,1427 so that it was unnecessary for the Court to consider the constitutional basis of the President's action in the absence of congressional authorization, but the Court nonetheless approved, five-to-four, the blockade order as an exercise of Presidential power alone, on the ground that a state of war was a fact. ''The President was bound to meet it in the shape it presented itself, without waiting for Congress to baptize it with a name; and no name given to it by him or them could change the fact.''1428 The minority challenged this doctrine on the ground that while the President could unquestionably adopt such measures as the laws permitted for the enforcement of order against insurgency, Congress alone could stamp an insurrection with the character of war and thereby authorize the legal consequences ensuing from a state of war.1429

The view of the majority was proclaimed by a unanimous Court a few years later when it became necessary to ascertain the exact dates on which the war began and ended. The Court, the Chief Justice said, must ''refer to some public act of the political departments of the government to fix the dates; and, for obvious reasons, those of the executive department, which may be, and, in fact, was, at the commencement of hostilities, obliged to act during the recess of Congress, must be taken. The proclamation of intended blockade by the President may therefore be assumed as marking the first of these dates, and the proclamation that the war had closed, as marking the second.''1430

These cases settled the issue whether a state of war could exist without formal declaration by Congress. When hostile action is taken against the Nation, or against its citizens or commerce, the appropriate response by order of the President may be resort to force. But the issue so much a source of controversy in the era of the Cold War and so divisive politically in the context of United States involvement in the Vietnamese War has been whether the President is empowered to commit troops abroad to further national interests in the absence of a declaration of war or specific congressional authorization short of such a declaration.1431 The Supreme Court studiously refused to consider the issue in any of the forms in which it was presented,1432 and the lower courts gen erally refused, on ''political question'' grounds, to adjudicate the matter.1433 In the absence of judicial elucidation, the Congress and the President have been required to accommodate themselves in the controversy to accept from each other less than each has been willing to accept but more than either has been willing to grant.1434


Connecting to the Constitution

This shows that Congress is in charge of everything that is wrong with the U.S. today. The political cartoon exoress seperation of powers. It shows that the in the government congress makes all the decisions; which are bad decisions. The cartoon drawn is Barak Obama-- our current president , and George Bush-- our former president. Bush is giving Obama torches that are burning which represent all the problems in America.

I think this relates to congress because it displays their power to declare war. Its showed in this picture by the wourch that sats Middle East, which is the war we are currently in. It also shows their power to approve and declare bills laws. It shows this because of the torch that says economy. The touch that says ecomomy respresents powerr to make bills laws because congress has to approve the bills that made the ecomnomy bad today.