Congress and The Presidency - Essay Example

While the House and the Senate enjoy equal status in most matters, there are some special powers granted to one chamber only. Here, it is interresting to note that for matters pertaining to the confirmation of presidential nominations to high-level executive and judicial positions, and for the ratification of treaties, there is a requirement for the Senate's advice and consent. On the other hand, it is important for bills in lieu of raising revenue to originate in the House of Representatives, apart from any proceedings that have to do with the process of impeachment.

Before proceeding, it is important to point out that from 1952 to 1994, there was a lull in the any activity from the Republican side where the Congress was concerned. But after the Republicans made a sweep with the 1994 mid term elections by capturing a whooping 54 seats in the House of Representatives and eight seats in the Senate , the Congressional corridors were dominated basically by the Republicans who have made various changes in the Congress for the last twelve years before the Democrats took over.

In this regard, the first aspect we will study in this paper is that of policy making as regards the power of the institutional heads in the Republican quarters. Here, the Republicans are vastly different from their Democrat counterparts in the sense that the typical Republican is a staunch believer of the fact that law making is an activity that occurs strictly in the legislative and judicial province where the judges are the end all and be all as far as law making and asserting the same is concerned.

This began to show in the Congress with a strict segregation of law and policy making practices followed by the Senate and the House. With the adevnt of the Republican, both wings now had seperatist attitudes towards the activities and tasks that were to be carried out by them.This was a major change launched by the Republican majoirty.With further Republican contact, there were changes that took place where the power of campiagn contributors were concerned as well. With different groups having their own varied interests, it was seen that the pattern of campaign contributors changed to open invitations for all kinds of people instead of being restricted to the most righteous as it was in the Democratic past.

Fruther, if one is take a closer look at the policy making process as far as ignoring the national interest to pay more attention to the character of local interest was concerned, it will be clearly seen that the Iraq war was one such instance where the natinal interest was hardly paid heed to. In the name of "democracy", the Bush government went all out to satisfy the instigations of a personal set of Republican lobbyists. If instead of the theoretical pretense of "democracy" (as in "exporting democracy to Iraq"), one were to closely examine the actually existing practice of "democracy," it would have been more accurate to say that what we have today is oligarchical rule by and large for a plutocracy -- so-called "conservatism" in theory (small government, fiscal conservatism, isolationist foreign policy) boils down in practice to no-holds-barred greed - pursued where possible in an authoritarian manner.

As far as influencing