Analyze with Hubert Humphrey the U.S. Congress's founding and role in America's system of checks and balances
Analyze with Hubert Humphrey the U.S. Congress's founding and role in America's system of checks and balances
When the writers of the Constitution created Congress, they intended for it to be part of the system of checks and balances.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Transcript
HUMPHREY: The men who gathered at Philadelphia to write our Constitution had a unusual degree of foresight, much of it born out of experience. They were, in a sense, students of government, but they were also practitioners of government. Many of them had served in colonial assemblies and the House of Burgesses, for example, in Virginia. And while they were Englishmen and proud of English traditions from the Magna Charta to the House of Parliament and the rights of the people under common law, they began to develop a whole new breed of man. People wanted to govern themselves. This was a new country. It had different problems than the mother country.
It was wild. It was open. It was virgin territory, and English domination seemed out of place. What they really wanted above all was autonomy. That's where they started. But like many revolutions it has its own lifeline--you start with one thing and it progresses to another. It came on to be a declaration for full independence. And they set themselves to that task and produced a system of government known as separation of powers and checks and balances.
[Music]
NARRATOR: So there came into being, in Philadelphia in 1789, a government with three branches, each capable of checking the power of the other two. The first article was designed to create an instrument that would limit the powers that could be exercised by any one man. That instrument would be known as the Congress of the United States, and all legislative matters would be vested in it. Then came Article Two, which created the office of Chief Executive. He would administer the laws. Then the Constitution makers went one step further: to safeguard those inalienable rights granted to the people, the third article was written, creating a federal judiciary headed by a Supreme Court of the United States.
HUMPHREY: The workings of our checks and balances system probably never was more dramatically illustrated than in the case of the Great Depression, when Franklin D. Roosevelt was President: the battle over the NRA, the court fight and the court rejection of Roosevelt's programs, then President Roosevelt's attack on the Supreme Court, and finally congressional rejection of the Roosevelt solution to the problem of the Court.
NARRATOR: The vesting of all legislative power in two houses of Congress instead of one was a result of compromise. When the Constitution was under debate, the larger states favored election of all members to be based strictly on population. Smaller states insisted on equal representation for every state--a deadlock. Then Connecticut proposed a resolution. There should be two houses. One would be composed of two senators from every state. In this way the individual's rights, no matter where he lived, would be balanced off against the power of the state. The second house, the House of Representatives, would be made up of members elected on the basis of population, with every state, no matter how small it might be, entitled to at least one member. The size of representation has grown through the years, but the form has stayed the same. Throughout most of our history, two political parties have contended for political power in America, and power is divided between them. This division serves as still another check--this one outside the Constitution--on unlimited power by any one group or faction. Whichever party has elected the most members controls the machinery. In both houses there is a majority leader and an assistant leader, who is known frequently as the whip. There is a minority leader, whose assistant is known as the minority whip. The majority party in the House elects the Speaker. The Vice-President of the United States presides over the Senate.
It was wild. It was open. It was virgin territory, and English domination seemed out of place. What they really wanted above all was autonomy. That's where they started. But like many revolutions it has its own lifeline--you start with one thing and it progresses to another. It came on to be a declaration for full independence. And they set themselves to that task and produced a system of government known as separation of powers and checks and balances.
[Music]
NARRATOR: So there came into being, in Philadelphia in 1789, a government with three branches, each capable of checking the power of the other two. The first article was designed to create an instrument that would limit the powers that could be exercised by any one man. That instrument would be known as the Congress of the United States, and all legislative matters would be vested in it. Then came Article Two, which created the office of Chief Executive. He would administer the laws. Then the Constitution makers went one step further: to safeguard those inalienable rights granted to the people, the third article was written, creating a federal judiciary headed by a Supreme Court of the United States.
HUMPHREY: The workings of our checks and balances system probably never was more dramatically illustrated than in the case of the Great Depression, when Franklin D. Roosevelt was President: the battle over the NRA, the court fight and the court rejection of Roosevelt's programs, then President Roosevelt's attack on the Supreme Court, and finally congressional rejection of the Roosevelt solution to the problem of the Court.
NARRATOR: The vesting of all legislative power in two houses of Congress instead of one was a result of compromise. When the Constitution was under debate, the larger states favored election of all members to be based strictly on population. Smaller states insisted on equal representation for every state--a deadlock. Then Connecticut proposed a resolution. There should be two houses. One would be composed of two senators from every state. In this way the individual's rights, no matter where he lived, would be balanced off against the power of the state. The second house, the House of Representatives, would be made up of members elected on the basis of population, with every state, no matter how small it might be, entitled to at least one member. The size of representation has grown through the years, but the form has stayed the same. Throughout most of our history, two political parties have contended for political power in America, and power is divided between them. This division serves as still another check--this one outside the Constitution--on unlimited power by any one group or faction. Whichever party has elected the most members controls the machinery. In both houses there is a majority leader and an assistant leader, who is known frequently as the whip. There is a minority leader, whose assistant is known as the minority whip. The majority party in the House elects the Speaker. The Vice-President of the United States presides over the Senate.