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Growth of Executive Power, December 1963
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Growth of Executive Power, December 1963
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The original documents are located in Box D16, folder "Growth of Executive Power,
December 1963" of the Ford Congressional Papers: Press Secretary and Speech File at the
Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.
Copyright Notice
The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of
photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. The Council donated to the United
States of America his copyrights in all of his unpublished writings in National Archives collections.
Works prepared by U.S. Government employees as part of their official duties are in the public
domain. The copyrights to materials written by other individuals or organizations are presumed to
remain with them. If you think any of the information displayed in the PDF is subject to a valid
copyright claim, please contact the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.
Digitized from Box D16 of the Ford Congressional Papers: Press Secretary and Speech File at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
I
INTRODUCTION
We have witnessed in the past few weeks, as perhaps
never before in our history, unprecedented tragic events. The
assassination of the President has removed from our midst a man
of great charm, great dignity and great courage. It was my
privilege to serve with him in World War II as well as in the
Congress of the United States. I knew him perhaps as well or
better than most other members of Congress. I did not agree with
many of his programs and policies; I did not agree with many of
his actions, but these disagreements in no way interfered with
the personal friendship which existed between us. I mourn him
deeply.
Note: Here insert a personal anecdote if an appropriate
one exists with respect to your relationships
with President Kennedy, and particularly if it
relates to the point that personal friendship
for a man in political opposition to him and
his policies is not incompatible.7
The greatest respect that I can pay John Kennedy and his memory
is to continue the fight that I have made over the years for
the principles that I believe should guide us in the complex
1.
problem of operating our Government. Our eternal goal must be
to achieve a government that serves all the people and not just
a part of the people. We cannot permit our sacred governmentmental
institutions to be used simply to satisfy a lust for power or
preference by any individual, any group of individuals, or any
political party.
II
GROWTH OF EXECUTIVE POWER - HOW AND WHY
My subject today goes to the very heart of the great
problem of whether our Government is sufficiently viable to deal
with the complex problems of our times. Can it deal with them
properly and at the same time preserve the dignity of the
individual citizen and protect him in his legitimate activities?
Our Government will accomplish the noble objectives which our
forefathers designed for it only to the extent that you and I
ensure that it operates as it was intended to operate.
Our forefathers designed a unique system of government.
It was designed in response to the tyranny of the past and as a
means to achieve the promises of the future. The uniqueness of
2.
this great design was in the separation of powers into three
branches, each of which was designed to be co-equal and to act
as a restraint upon the other branches. The separation of the
legislative, executive and judicial "powers" was not an accident.
Though not spelled out explicitly by the framers of the Consti
tution, and perhaps the word "powers" is an inexact word and the
word "functions" is more exactly descriptive of the framework
designed by the authors of our great Constitution. Whether we
call it a separation of "functions" or a separation of "powers",
the fact of the matter is that the framers of the Constitution ,
viewing history at that time, knew that the inevitable result of
a concentration of the three functions or powers in a single
agency always produced tyranny for the people.
Our Constitution places restraints upon the legislative
power through presidential veto, the power of the executive to
recommend legislation, to summon Congress to special sessions and
to veto their acts. The judicial power exercises a restraint
through its power to review and interpret legislation, thereby
imposing a restraint upon the legislative branch. The legislative
3.
branch, to some degree, restrains the executive and the judiciary
by its powers with respect to approving appointments, consenting
to treaties, and impeachment of federal officials. The executive
restrains the judiciary through his power of pardon for all offenses
except treason. Thus our system of government is a complex and
delicate system of checks and balances. So long as there is no
undue dilution of any of these powers or any usurpation by one
branch of the powers of another, there can be no tyranny imposed
upon the people.
As our government has become more complex and as the
power of the executive has become increasingly used for political
purposes, there has been a blurring of the distinctions between
the various functions of government. We now find governmental
bureaus, under the control of the executive branch, exercising
legislative and judicial powers to a degree far beyond the con-
templation of the framers of our magic document, the Constitution.
The growing insistence of the executive branch that there be
adherence by the Congress and adherence by the judiciary to the
principles espoused by the executive threaten the very foundations
4.
of our unique system of separation of powers! We are at a point
in our history, as in the days of Jackson, when once again it
has become accepted that public office and the spoils that flow
from it are properly the loot of victory at the polls. It is
fortunate that our nation and our people are so vastly rich that
our economy can prosper notwithstanding these wasteful misuses of
executive power. In what other country in the world can 24,700,000
bushels of surplus grain disappear without a trace; in what other
country in the world can investigation disclose that many thousands
of the bushels of that grain found its way at economic profit to
someone behind the iron curtain of a nation sworn to do us in;
in what other country in the world would the officials in the
executive branch of the government charged with its safekeeping
be continued in office, notwithstanding their apparent disinclina-
tion to find what happened to the grain? (Note: See attached
article re Senator Williams from The National Observer.)
If the legislative branch of the Government is not
permitted to operate as a coordinated branch of the Government
with a full check upon the executive branch, then tyranny is the
5.
result. The interferences in our political system upon the
legislative branch by the executive branch stem mainly from
favors promised and given or withheld, and political support
granted or withheld. If the executive branch succeeds through
the exercise of its tremendous powers in obtaining control of
the legislative branch, as has been increasingly the case, then
tyranny is the result. In his great book "The Great Issues of
Politics", Leslie Lipson has said on this subject:
"Unfortunately the evidence on this point is not
taken only from the pages of the past. Modern dictator-
ships-Nazi, Fascist, and Communist-supply corroborative
testimony. There, too, the executive branch has acquired
enormous new power and the work of government is carried
on through the twin media of party and civil service.
But these institutions, though employed by democracy and
dictatorship alike, differ radically in the two political
contexts. The spirit and status of any party are com-
pletely changed when it alone has the legal right to
exist and therefore possesses a monopoly. Likewise a
civil service, organized to serve a one-party state,
must itself share a partisan loyalty and does not dare
maintain the political neutrality that is expected when
two or more parties may alternate in power.
"A dictatorship, furthermore, goes to extreme
lengths in subjecting other branches to the domination
of the executive. The courts may not, in any case that
has political relevance, give a decision contrary to
the will of the party leadership. Judges must be mice
under the throne. So too with the legislature, which in a
dictatorship is a superfluous and dangerous institution
since it could be a rallying point for opposition. Dic-
tators sometimes permit the outward form of a legislative
body to survive. But it is a hollow shell, with the
6.
kernel removed. By packing it with party stalwarts, by
convoking it at long intervals, and by controlling its
agenda and procedure, the dictator turns it into a
receptive sounding-board for his own and his party's
propaganda. Such was the fate that befell the Italian
Parliament after 1925 and the German Reichstag after
1933, and the history of the Soviets in Russia has
been similar. That system of councils or representative
assemblies was constructed in 1917 by the revolutionary
movement both as an instrument of opposition to Czarism
and as a nucleus for a new government. But the Soviets,
just because they were representative and elected bodies,
contained within themselves a seed of democracy that
Stalin did not permit to grow. Under his rule, there-
fore, the Soviets were reduced to a nullity. Any possi-
bility of their independence was throttled by the strangle-
hold that the Communist Party secured over them.
"As examples of a concentration of power, pushed to
its utmost, the following may be grouped together: the
autocracy of the Russian Czars prior to 1905, the dicta-
torship of Stalin as boss of the Communist party in the
U.S.S.R., the Hitlerite regime in Germany, Mussolini's
Fascist system in Italy, and the oligarchy of militarists,
bureaucrats, and businessmen who controlled Japan from
1931 to 1945. All the modifications that have occurred
of recent decades in the American and British governments
seem, when compared with such cases, meek and mild indeed.
Such dictatorships aptly illustrate and justify the
remark of Madison: "The accumulation of all powers,
legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands,
whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary,
self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced
the very definition of tyranny.
The extension of executive control today threatens the
legislative branch of the Government itself. Rewards are prom-
ised, granted and withheld in order to influence actions of
members of Congress. But promises and the granting or withhold-
ing of rewards to individual citizens and to groups of citizens
7.
are also employed to ensure a subservient Congress. Thereby
the circle is completed because these individuals and groups
of individuals are induced to send to the legislative branch
representatives who will be subservient to the executive.
This problem of the encroachment of executive power is perhaps
the truly great issue of the age in which we live and exposes
each of us increasingly to the threat of tyranny that peoples
of other nations have known in the past and in many nations
know today.
I do not think I need to go into the countless
examples of our trend toward tyranny. We are all familiar
with the fact that Medicare is being promised as a solution to
the problems of the health of our nation's people. This program,
widely publicized and promised for its political effect, would
transform the doctor's office and the hospital into a governmental
bureau. We have witnessed the sad spectacle of the misuse of
executive power by an insistence upon placing new post office
buildings in cities, towns and villages where they are not only
unneeded but unwanted. Again a use of executive power intended
8.
to dilute the power of Congress by inducing the election to our
Congress of persons who would become a pawn of the Executive.
In the TVA area, we have observed a distortion of the
purposes of this agency to the extent that even today TVA
Cooperatives are obtaining loans from the Government at the
favorable rate of interest of 2% (?), which is (?) percent
less than the Government itself must pay for money. Funds are
obtained by TVA Cooperatives in order to construct new facili-
ties to serve industries - not the rural dweller who wants to
have his kerosene lamps replaced by electricity, but large
industries - which in turn are being financed by loans from the
TVA Cooperatives at very favorable rates of interest and at a
time when the same TVA Cooperatives themselves have bulging
treasuries invested in Government bonds bearing interest at rates
much higher than the rates they are paying to the Government for
the loans that they obtain. Again this is a spectacle of the
misuse of executive power in order to produce a favorable climate
for electing a subservient Congress that will complete the circle
and give ever greater power to the Executive!
LIBRARY
9.