obamacare overturned

this episode of crashcourse is broughtto you by squarespace. hello. my name's craig, and this iscrashcourse government and politics, and today we're gonna really figure out why the presidentis the most powerful man in the world. okay, not really, i guess, obviously, the reasonhe's the most powerful person in the world is he leads what's currently the most powerfulnation in the world, and he can't really take credit for america's global position. besides, there's a good case to be made thatthe richest man in the world is the most powerful, and if we're talking cultural influence, thenwho's more powerful than kanye? according to kanye, no one. but rather than go downthe rabbit hole of power and the secret cabal

that actually runs the world, let's talk aboutthe powers of the president that are not in the constitution, at least, not literally. [theme music] so the constitution lays out a specific limitednumber of expressed powers, but the president's able to do a lot more than what the constitutionsays. expressed powers are sometimes called 'formal powers', but the president also hasinformal powers that do not appear within the written text of the constitution. sometimesthe powers he has are implied by the wording of the constitution, while sometimes, they'reconsidered inherent in the office of the presidency, which means that they flow logically from the ideasin the constitution. a little confusing, right?

well, maybe the thought bubble can explain. let's start easy with an expressed power,which is not the same as an espresso power, which is what i'm currently running on. theconstitution says right here in the text that the president is the commander in chief ofthe army and the navy. this also implies that he can and perhaps will lead the armed forceswhen the nation is at war. it also implies that he can command the air force, even thoughit only mentions the army and navy. so far, so good, but what about when the nation isnot technically at war? remember that the constitution gives congressthe power to declare war as a check on presidential power, but the president still has the inherentpower to use troops even when congress hasn't

actually formally declared war. logically,if there's an immediate threat to the us and congress doesn't have the time or the opportunityto declare war, the commander in chief must be able to use force. so this power is saidto be inherent in the office. the problem is that once you grant that the presidentmust have the power to use troops, how do you limit him? what sorts of threats are soimmediate and dangerous that the president should have free reign to send troops? otherthan martian invasions or taco tuesday riots, obviously. if you look at most of the timesamerica has sent troops into conflict, especially during the 20th and 21st centuries, it's beendone with him acting as commander-in-chief without a formal declaration of war. we senttroops to korea, vietnam, afghanistan, and

twice to iraq without congress declaring war, andthese are just the big ones. we're not even gonna talk about grenada and panama and all the other smallinterventions, so is there any check on this power? after vietnam, congress tried to put on thebrakes by passing a war powers resolution, which requires the president to get authorizationto use troops within 60 days of when he first commits them, or else he has to bring thetroops back. this sounds like a pretty powerful check, but in practice, congress always authorizedthe president to use force. thanks, thought bubble. sometimes i use force without being authorized. the president has informal powers in foreignpolicy, too. formally, the constitution says the president has the power to make treaties, receiveforeign ambassadors, and appoint ambassadors

and ministers. the president has developedthe power to negotiate executive agreements, which are nowhere in the constitution. executiveagreements are, well, they're agreements between the us and foreign nations that look liketreaties but aren't formally treaties. they can come with treats, though. brownies. cookies.trade concessions. the most important difference between an executiveagreement and a treaty is that the agreements don't need to be ratified by 2/3rds of thesenate, but they become valid with only a majority of vote in both houses. this makesthem easier to pass than a formal treaty and explains why presidents prefer executive agreementsto treaties. lately, there have been some very importantexecutive agreements, like the general agreement

on tariffs and trade or gatt that has morphedinto the wto, and the north american free trade agreement, better known as nafta, 'cause if itwere a treaty, it'd be naftt, and that would be nafty. although it isn't mentioned in the constitution,the president is effectively the chief executive officer or ceo of the us. where does thispower come from? formally, it's in the faithfully executed clause in the presidential oath ofoffice, but more practically, it comes out of his power to appoint judges, ambassadors,and other ministers. sorry, judges and ambassadors, but when it comes to executive power, it's theother ministers that matter here, because they're the cabinet secretaries and other heads of administrativeagencies that make up the bulk of the government. the president chooses agency heads that agreewith his policies- at least he hopes they

do. so his appointments shape the politicalagenda. but more importantly, in appointing the ministers, the president assumes an inherentpower to direct them and their agencies on how to implement laws. this makes since. asanyone who's ever worked for a boss knows, once you're hired you're sort of expectedto know what your boss wants and to do it. this power to direct agencies and how to executelaws is enormous. it basically directs the way the government acts. the president has pretty limited formal powersover congress. other than convening special sessions, and the veto, and the state of theunion address, maybe, he can't do all that much to influence them. i mean congress usuallymeets without the president telling them to and he almost never vetoes bills. but thatdoesn't mean that the president doesn't have

a big informal role to play in the legislativeprocess. the president can attempt to set the legislativeagenda by making recommendations for laws that he'd like to see passed. this is sometimescalled the legislative initiative, and in practice it usually means that executive branchofficials will actually draft the legislation they want and give it to congress to refineinto something they can pass. this is what happens with big agenda items like the affordablecare act. you may know it as obamacare. or the dodd-frank act, which, despite being namedfor its two congressional sponsors was actually written with a lot of input from the whitehouse. i should note here that even though it mightlook like the president is usurping legislative

power, congress often gives its power to thepresident willingly, because it wants to avoid responsibility for unpopular policies. hesaid it. i didn't say it. he said it. also this is pretty limited power for the presidentbecause he can't force congress to pass anything, even if he wrote it and says "please, please,please, please, please." and because a president's ability to move the agenda decreases as hispopularity decreases. there's another legislative power that the presidenthas that is probably the most important one. he can give executive orders. these arepresidential directives, or rules, that have the force of law. executive orders can beoverturned by actual congressional lawmaking, or by supreme court decisions. these executiveorders allow the president to circumvent the

legislative process and act unilaterally.ideally the president and congress should work together, but c'mon! sometimes the presidentdecides to go it alone. 'cause they're... they don't work together that often. thesedays anyway. some really important policies have been madeby executive orders, including desegregating the military and the creation of the environmentalprotection agency. but executive orders may not be as durable as a law passed throughthe normal channels. if the next president in office disagrees with the order as a presidentput in place, he or she can get rid of them just as easily as his or her predecessor putthem in place. the other informal power the president hasis kind of obscure, but also pretty important.

the president can impound the funds that congresshas appropriated for certain programs or projects if he doesn't want them implemented. moregenerally, under his power to execute the laws, he can order the bureaucracy to implementpolicies in a certain specific way. or sometimes not at all. although this can get him in totrouble there's one last inherent power i'll mentionthat the president currently has and that's executive privilege. there's probably more,but no president has asserted them yet. basically this is the president's ability to keep informationsecret by claiming that it's too important to be revealed, usually for reasons of nationalsecurity. there's a check on executive privilege though. it can be overturned by a court orderas happened in the landmark supreme court

case u.s. vs. nixon. there they court orderednixon to turn over tapes of his conversations with aids that might have related to the watergatescandal. so even though the president isn't given aton of power in the constitution, the president is pretty powerful. this is especially trueduring war. even if that war hasn't been declared. and this is a point you should remember. youshould remember everything i say, but you should remember this too. congress and theamerican people are usually willing to defer to the president on military matters and the inherentpowers of the commander in chief are enormous. often increased presidential power has beenthe result of a president seizing the initiative and expanding his own inherent or impliedpower. and once a president has established

an implied power, the next president's veryunlikely to do away with it. oh, please, more power? no thank you. but just as often as presidentsimply their own powers, congress willingly hands over more power. and that's what we're going totalk about in the next episode. thanks for watching. crash course government and politics is producedin association with pbs digital studios. support for crash course us government comes fromvoqal. voqal supports non-profits that use technology and media to advance social equity.learn more about their mission and initiatives at voqual.org. crash course is made with the help ofthese commanders-in-chief. thanks for watching.