tennessee. i'm a third-year doctoral student at the university of delaware. i really think the president should be talking about youth homeliness in his upcome congressional speech. >> i'm from brazil. i would like the president to talk about the environment, because i think it's one of the greatest challenge of the century, and it's affecting my home country. >> i hope the president addresses science funding. >> c-span's voices, delivering democracy unfiltered. be part of the conversation. c-span, democracy unfiltered. we're funded by these television companies and more. including wow. >> the world has changed. today the fast, reline internet connection is something no one can live without. so wow is there for our customers, with speed, reliability, value, and choice. now more than ever, it all starts with great internet.

wow. >> wow sports c-span as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy. journal" continues. host: we are joined by philip wallach, a senior fellow at the american enterprise institute and the author of the book why congress. welcome to the program. start by telling us about your background and your areas of expertise. guest: i'm a political scientist who studies american politics, particularly our constitutional system, our policymaking system and the separation of powers. over the last seven or eight years i have mostly focused on studying congress because i am concerned that congress is in some ways the part of our government that is having the

most trouble and because congress has troubles we get a lot of problems passing laws that are legitimate that the whole american people -- there is so much stress on a presidential elections and it strains our political system. host: you're a senior fellow at aei. does that mean you have a conservative point of view? guest: i think of myself as a center-right person. i am unusually concerned about process and the way we do things. not just a particular set of priorities. host: let's talk about the speech tonight the president will be giving. what are you looking for in terms of how president trump defines his role and his powers? guest: i think president trump and this second term has been very clear he thinks he won a huge victory, a mandate from the american people and that gives him pretty much entitles them to do whatever he thinks is right.

of course the president takes an oath to take care of that the laws are faithfully executed. sometimes president trump seems to think that when he finds laws inconvenient or bad they do not apply. i wonder if he will say anything on that score to reassure those of us who are worried they are playing fast and loose with the law in this new administration? i expect president trump to revert to form as a showman. he will tout his accomplishments, he will say we have seen more good things happen in the last six weeks than ever before in american history. host: there was a posting on x, where president trump wrote "he who saves his country does not violate any law." that is attributed to napoleon, who crowned himself emperor. what was your reaction when you saw that? guest: trump is the master

troll. he knows how to provoke reactions and he can always say i was just kidding around, i was just trying to get a rise out of my opponents. it is crazy for the president of the united states, a constitutional republic, to be favorably citing napoleon bonaparte, who made himself emperor and ended the republic in france and converted it to an empire and went trying to conquer the whole of europe. that is a crazy thing for a president of the united states to be favorably quoting on social media. i do consider myself successfully trolled. it did get a rise out of me. that is not the kind of country america is supposed to be. we are a country where the law is king. there is no other king. we do not elect a king.

a president is bound to be an officer of the law. host: tell us about unitary executive theory. what does that mean and where does it come from? guest: there is a question about how the executive branch ought to be organized. we have literally millions of people who are employed in the executive branch of our government today. that is quite a contrast from the beginnings of our country where there were just a few hundred in 1789. the question is how much do we need to have it be so the president as the boss at the top of this pyramid is literally responsible for everything that happens in the executive branch and has the ability to hire and fire as he sees fit? the unitary executive theory says the constitution makes the president's sole head of the executive branch and there is not room for independence within the executive branch. independent agencies, which we

have had for many decades are suspicious. we think why are they independent? why don't the answer to the democratically elected president? president trump and his supporters have leaned very hard into the unitary executive theory to justify why the president needs to have direct control over every part of the government. they have taken it even farther in suggesting anything the president says goes. the unitary executive theory does not necessarily say. host: philip wallach is our guest, author of the book "why congress?" if you would like to join our conversation. start calling you now. democrats (202) 748-8000, republicans (202) 748-8001, (202) 748-8002 and independents (202) 748-8002. where does that theory leave

congress? guest: the executive branch is one thing and congress is another thing. congress is the article one branch of government. it does not get its power from the president, it gets its power from the people. congress is meant to be the preeminent branch of our government that makes the big decisions. they are the ones who make the law and the president is supposed to be executing the law. that ought to give congress pride of place. it is clear congress in recent years has marginalized itself. members of congress, you will see them begging the president to do things. you could just make a law but instead you're going around the lawmaking process and sing the president is the one who is supposed to make all the policies and all of the decisions. as a member of congress the most effective thing i can do is bend to the presidency or. -- is bend the president's ear.

that is a dangerous shift for congress that suggests it is subordinate. host: do you think the power of executive had already been expanding in the past, even before the current time? guest: i think it is a long upward trajectory. not always steady. after watergate congress eased back a lot of powers. there have been times in congress has shown it can stand up for itself. in the 21st century especially we have seen very assertive presidents. you had barack obama say when congress is not doing what i want i have my pen and my phone and i can do a lot of policymaking just by those by ordering people to do things in the executive. trump has fit into this upward trajectory but i think it is fair to say the second trump administration is making the most aggressive claims of any administration we have ever seen.

host: you published a commentary with the title "the rule of law has seen better days." explain what you mean by that and if you think there are laws being broken right now. guest: i think it is clear that there are. some of them are detailed, not likely to be things the ordinary american is experiencing directly. there is a question about the funding of research labs. congress clearly set out a formula that it wanted. it had a disagreement with the first trump administration so it clearly put this into law. the second trump administration says sorry we are giving less for overhead, it does not matter that the losses otherwise. there are little things like that. that is an important policy but something most people will not notice. then there is the question of the civil service laws and how the federal employment is structured and what kind of procedures you have to go

through to shut down an agency. usaid is established by law. the president has made it sound like nevertheless he can just disappear it. host: under unitary executive theory that all branch belongs to him so he could shut down agency if he chose to? guest: the president is charged with taking care that the laws are faithfully executed and those are good laws on the books. the president has to have direct lines of control through the executive branch under unitary executive theory. traditionally they do not have the power to just disregard the law. another place where this will come up as this question of impoundment. when congress passes spending laws is the president required to spend up to the amount congress has said or does the president have an inherent power to say actually i don't want to spend as much on this, that is just a ceiling for how much i could spend?

president nixon made some very aggressive claims about how he could impound funds if he thought the policy was bad. president trump seems to be moving in that direction although he has not formally made any claim of that yet. host: the impoundment control act of 1974 requis e president to spend appropriated money unless he obtains congressional approval within 45 days not to disburse the funds. has that ever happened? guest: yes. many presidents since the passage of that act have successfully gotten rescissions. you rescind the spending that was originally in the appropriations laws. it does require going to congress and working with members of congress to pass those bills. certainly easier for the president to just say i can do this on my own.

since the big clashes with nixon in the 1970's no president has gone outside of that framework to say i have a strong impoundment power. president trump looks like he may. host: let's start with callers. mary on the republican line in texas. caller: go ahead -- hello. host: go ahead. caller: i am mary smith and i, from a long line of democrats and i voted for obama and biden but i had a friend who was very politically astute or meet that biden was pro-abortion up to the ninth month and i'm a pro-life person so i made a 180 and became a republican. then i started watching newsmax and fox nation and i became a conservative republican and i will be watching the president tonight. i appreciate your show very much. host: here is carol in illinois.

line for democrats. are you there? caller: thank you for taking my call. i am very concerned that all of our relatives died in the past to have our u.s. constitutional rights. congress is not stepping up and doing their job. what can we do to get congress up doing their job? instead of taking away from the people and giving it all to the oligarchs. it does not hurt them but it hurts the american people. thank you very much. host: what do you think? guest: thanks for the question. there are some complicated reasons why congress is shirking its responsibilities in our time. part of it is the change in the media environment. members of congress can reach a

huge crowd of people on social media and get rewards from those kinds of interactions, including funds from all around the country. that incentivizes them the sort of spectacle rather than the hard work of policymaking. i think a lot of our members of congress today need to remember their job is to be a lawmaker and really figure out how they can get together with all of the other members who come from all around the country, work through the countries difficult problems and figure out compromises we can all live with. if we do that we end up with laws and policies that are acceptable, broadly acceptable and that can endure and will not snap back and forth when the control of the white house changes hands. the way we have it now where so

many members of congress are just cheerleading or jeering the president depending on whether their party is in control, we get a kind of whiplash. that is not healthy for our country. host: here is stephanie in south carolina. independent line. good morning. caller: i am a veteran and i'm calling because i'm concerned about the documents seized by the fbi when they raided trump's house, the documents he stole during his first term. i am reading in the washington post and they are saying those documents were returned to his house. who is keeping an eye on that and wide to those documents need to be at his house? i will be watching his speech tonight because i do not hear anybody reporting on this and i will be watching the speech for clues as to why he needs those documents at his house. the same documents that he stole before. thank you.

host: not very related to the topic but you have any comment? guest: i would say i do not know so much about the details of where the documents are today but it does seem that the caller is right that people have moved on from this issue. trump is the president now and he has security clearance for anything and everything. i think it has become a nonissue. host: here is carol, a republican in pennsylvania. good morning. caller: good morning. speaking to mr. wallach's point the whiplash we need checks and balances in congressional procedures. we have a seesaw effect that occurs when one party is in power. the fact that the other party has no rights to bring things to the floor is unhealthy for our congress.

joe manchin has rightly said that 50% of the people are centrist and the way our system has evolved, it is just going whiplash between radical left and radical right. guest: i think carol for that comment. i very much agree that the way we organize the procedures in both the house and the senate today really cuts down on our members ability to work things out and look for bipartisan compromise where they can find them. we have very leader dominated institutions today relative to most of the history of congress. the top partisan leaders have a very tight control over the agenda and we have a very cramped lawmaking process. we do not often see those to the

grindstone work in the committees leading to bipartisan bills that then get brought to the floor where other members have a chance to offer amendments. that has become very uncommon in our time. that process of lawmaking is good for building compromises we can all live with. when we try to do anything to our top partisan leaders they tend to think about how things look for the next elections, which again does not always motivate them to think about how can we calm things down. host: supreme court justice sonya sotomayor was speaking last month in florida and she was asked about the continued relevance of checks and balances and the power of congress to appropriate funding. i will play portion and then get your response. [video clip] >> our founders believed they had created -- and they have --

created free incredible checks and balances. the woman who asked, who said to we have a monarchy or something else and franklin's response was a republic. our founders were hellbent on ensuring we did not have a monarchy. the first way they thought of that was to give congress the power of the purse. because that is an incredible power. they gave the presidency the power of the military. that is also -- that means not just armed forces but law enforcement, which is an incredible obligation of a president. they gave the courts the power to interpret.

we have to do it by persuasion. we have to make it clear to society, to the president, to the congress, to the people that we are doing things based on law and the constitution as we are interpreting it fairly. our goodwill or our power is the power of reason. most people would consider that a soft power. is the most powerful of all of them. money can be taken away by congress. they give it and they can take it away. a president has four years and he or she could be removed. those things are ephemeral in that sense of it. court decisions stand, whether

one particular person chooses to abide by them or not, it does not change the foundation that it is still a court order that someone will respect at some point. host: what you think? guest: i share the justices love for that benjamin franklin quotation when asked what kind of government have you made coming out of the constitutional convention he said a republic, if you can keep it. it is always the responsibility of the american people to make sure our government remains responsive to us and does not get out of our control. the speaker pro tempore: t he house will be in order. proceedings will resume on questions previously postponed. votes will be taken in the following order, ordering the previous question