Separation of Powers Restoration Act of 2023

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, the central architecture of the Constitution is the separation of powers. It is really just mother's rules, writ large.

One slice of pie; two hungry brothers. How does mother slice the pie so both brothers are happy? Pretty simple. One slices; the other chooses. The powers given to one brother cannot be abused because of the powers given to the other.

That is the brilliance of our Constitution. One brother makes law but cannot enforce it; the other brother enforces law but cannot make it.

Article I is the first and longest article in the Constitution. It begins with the words: ``All legislative powers herein granted are vested in a Congress of the United States.''

When a law was to be made, the Founders wanted a great big rowdy food fight. They wanted every voice expressed through their Representatives. They wanted the decision held up to every light. They created two Houses with decidedly different perspectives so that the Congress would even argue with itself. They wanted it hard to make laws so the Nation wouldn't be smothered by them, and they wanted those who make those laws directly answerable to the people.

But once made, they didn't want laws to be carried out by hundreds of squabbling prima donnas. That's why we have Article II: ``The executive powers shall be vested in a President of the United States.'' One official, independent of the Congress but also accountable to the people, was to carry out those laws; not make them, but to take care that they are ``faithfully executed.''

Then in Article III, mother, the Supreme Court, independent of both brothers, is there to resolve disputes.

How different it is today. Today, executive agencies which are not elected and often act independently of the elected President, make ten times the laws that Congress makes. They then enforce the laws that they have made, and if they accuse you of violating them, you have to prove your innocence in an administrative court run by the same agency that made the law, accused you of breaking it, and which keeps the fines that it takes from you.

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Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, while the courts give intentional scrutiny to the laws made by Congress, under the doctrine of Chevron deference, they have to give wide latitude to the acts of agencies that lack any checks and balances.

Madison warned that when all of the powers of government are in the same hands, you have tyranny. Just ask anyone who has been hauled before this Kafkaesque process.

This bill starts to return the law to its constitutional moorings by repealing this despotic doctrine and placing the acts of unelected administrative state under the same constitutional scrutiny as those of the elected Congress.

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