The president’s power to direct the executive branch to take legislative action is even more
worrying when you realize how big, and dangerously off kilter, the executive branch has
become over the last century.
Today, there are about 30,000 federal employees in the legislature branch, 32,000 staff members in
the judicial branch and an astounding 2,618,000 non-military workers in the executive branch—
spread across 15 departments, 69 agencies and 383 non-military subcommittees!
“The growing dominance of the federal government over the states has obscured more fundamental
changes within the federal government itself,” wrote Turley in a Washington Post editorial. “It is
not just bigger, it is dangerously off kilter. Our carefully constructed system of checks and balances
is being negated by the rise of a fourth branch, an administrative state of sprawling departments and
agencies that govern with increasing autonomy and decreasing transparency” (March 24, 2013).
This so-called fourth branch of government now has a larger impact on American citizens than the
other three branches combined. The legislative branch no longer issues the vast majority of “laws”
governing the United States. Instead, these “laws” are issued as “regulations” crafted by thousands
of unelected, unreachable bureaucrats.
In a telling speech given on Constitution Day in 2010, Harvard professor Michael Klarman condemned
conservatives of “constitutional idolatry,”citing the rise of the administrative state as both unconstitu-
tional and necessary for the good of the country. “The framers set up three branches of government
—executive, legislative and judicial,” he said.
“But today we have a vitally important fourth branch—the administrative state—which is almost
certainly unconstitutional in multiple ways according to the original design of the framers.
MAY 2016 Rise of the Superpresident
https://www.thetrumpet.com/13711-rise-of-the-superpresident
