Senator Chuck Schumer has all the brilliance of Joe Biden.
Schumer correctly said the United States has three branches of government. However, poor Chuck is confused about what those branches are.
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Transcript, from NewsBusters:
CANDY CROWLEY, HOST: Let me turn you to domestic policy because it is budget season. It is time to raise the debt ceiling. Otherwise the U.S. is going to lose its ability to pay its debts.
Where do you see this fight going now?
Because, basically, we have a very determined bunch of Republicans right now, particularly on the House side, saying, no way we're going to raise this debt ceiling until we start doing some cutting.
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-N.Y.): Well, there's even a problem before the debt ceiling. On March 4th, the government funding resolution expires. And it seems that a lot of Republicans in the House want to risk a shutdown of the government if they don't absolutely get their way.
That was a mistake when Newt Gingrich tried it in 1995. It will be a bigger mistake now. It's really playing with fire because, if they were to shut down the government, not only would horrible things happen like an inability of people to get Social Security checks, you can't fund the military, but ultimately, it risks the credit markets.
They are getting wary because of the large debt we have, which we have to get down, but if they feel that people are willing to shut down the government, you could risk the credit markets really losing some confidence in the United States Treasury, and that could create a deeper recession than we had over the last several years -- God forbid, even a depression.
So I would urge my Republican colleagues, no matter how strongly they feel -- you know, we have three branches of government. We have a House. We have a Senate. We have a president. And all three of us are going to have to come together and give some, but it is playing with fire to risk the shutting down of the government, just as it is playing with fire to risk not paying the debt ceiling.
Chuck Schumer, are you smarter than a 5th grader?
NO.
This is a major gaffe.
If Schumer were a conservative woman, he would be mocked mercilessly for his claim that the House, the Senate, and the president constitute our three branches of government.
It's strange that Schumer would leave out the judicial branch, given that the guy is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
(Russ Feingold used to be a member of that committee. Not anymore.)
1 comment:
Actually this separation of powers principle was new to the world in 1776 when many other newly independent states followed Virginia in this regard. In 1789, division of powers between national and state governments was added. You won't learn a thing from studying documents from the 1789 national convention, and Edmund Pendleton's Autobiography contains the only hint of how Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws found its way into American political institutions at the state level by way of Patrick Henry's oratory at the Virginia Constitutional Convention of May 1776.
There were many references to a mixed constitution (executive one-man rule of a monarchy, judicial small group rule of an aristocracy, and legislative majority rule of a democracy) in the classics, especially in Polybius and Aristotle, but there is nothing explicit in Montesquieu's misunderstanding of the English Constitution (like Polybius' misunderstanding of the Roman Constitution) to suggest that our own three way separation of powers derives in any way from ancient political theory by way of Montesquieu, although Hamilton's "The Farmer Refuted" indicates that Montesquieu was one of the five most influential philosophers studied by the founding fathers in general.
Just remember, Chuck, there are now THREE not two, branches, of government: (1) Leg-kiss-sort-of, (2) Expletive, and (3) Judean, but I guess the incumbents of these institutions pretty much do as they please these days without bothering to look at their constitutional job descriptions.
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