More power to the people. Oh, heck with that. How about more power to the president?

Hi, I'm Scott Ott with Bill Whittle and Stephen Green, and this episode of Right Angle is brought to you by the members at bill whittle.com.

Gentlemen, there was an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal that got me to thinking, and that's always a dangerous thing.

Basically, the thrust of the article was that it would be more constitutional for the

President of the United States to take back some of the power that's been delegated to

agencies that usually he appoints the heads of, but then they're kind of treated like

their hands off, like he can't really do anything about what they do.

In addition, the person who wrote this op-ed was making the case that the president should have restored to him a power that was lost in the 1970s,

and that is a power that they called impoundment, which basically

means when Congress passes a budget, because constitutionally Congress has the power of the

purse, the president can decide not to spend money that is allocated for certain purposes.

In other words, the budget is a cap, not a floor. Anyway,

I thought this was interesting, and they put it in the context of, you know, currently, or at least

within the last five or six years or so, and the president that we have had and we may get again.

But I'm not interested in personalities. I'm interested in the power of the presidency itself.

And Stephen Green, it seems like an alluring concept to me to be able to say, Congress can say,

okay, you can spend this much and no more in these areas. But since the

president is the person to execute and is accountable for that behavior, and in many ways

his party becomes accountable for that behavior, why not give the president the authority to say,

no, I'm not going to spend that money that was allocated there, or I'm not going to spend as

much money as was allocated there?

Oh, there's a lot to dig in, but what I'm reminded of here is the column I wrote about the

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