W1: Checks and Balances
Forum 1 – Wrap-Up
Michael Charte
Forum 1 – Wrap-Up
Good points all in the 3 branches of government and checks and balances system. Regardless of your political orientation, it does not take much to see how far our current system of government has veered from the vision of the Founding Fathers. The Founding Fathers could not foresee what 200 years would do to the system they designed. During the crafting of the Constitution, the need for a balanced budget provision was discussed at length but was eventually eliminated because they Fathers believed that there was no way that any future government would be foolish enough to spend more money than it took in.
In the last 200 years, programs and agencies have been created and become entrenched and it has now become next to impossible to eliminate and/or modify those due to increasing reliance upon them. The federal solution for a long time has been to throw money at the problem without looking at the long-term impacts. For emergency management issues, states and local governments were quick to jump into the sea of federal funding following 9/11, but have since realized that this money came with strings attached and required increasing local/state funding of these grants over time as the federal share diminished to zero. Many local and state governments have implemented costly public safety programs that they are now unable to eliminate due to numerous factors.
