Gitterman - Calling the shots the president, executive orders and public policy

Calling the Shots

THE PRESIDENT, EXECUTIVE ORDERS, AND PUBLIC POLICY

DANIEL P. GITTERMAN

BROOKINGS INSTITUTION PRESS

Washington, D.C.

Copyright 2017

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data are available.

ISBN 978-0-8157-2902-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-8157-2903-7 (ebook)

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Typeset in Sabon

Composition by Westchester Publishing Services

Contents

Acknowledgments

I t takes a small village to write a book. I wish to acknowledge and express my gratitude to many people who supported Calling the Shots . I must begin where it began, with Professor Terry Moe of Stanford University who encouraged me to write about the power of the purchaser and whose own research has proved invaluable in shaping this book. I am also delighted to share my sincere thanks to Robert Flaherty, Valentina Kalk, William Finan, Janet Walker, and Elliott Beard, and Carrie Engel at Brookings Institution Press for all their support during the publication process. This is my second book with Brookings Press, and they are a wonderful group of collaborative professionals. I wish I could acknowledge more directly the unsung heroes of this workin this case, the two anonymous reviewers who provided very helpful comments during the peer review process. Let me also acknowledge Melody Negron, from Westchester Publishing Services, and Katherine Scott for letting no detail go unaddressed. I would also like to express my gratitude to John Wiley and Sons for granting permission for me to use parts of Gitterman, D. P. (2013), The American Presidency and the Power of the Purchaser. Pres Stud Q , 43: 22551, doi:10.1111/psq.12022. I want to extend thanks to my North Carolinabased teamNora Augustine, Lucie House, and J. Peder Zane for their first-rate copyedit, research, and editorial assistance. Peder, a journalist by training, has a special gift for helping an academic communicate to a general audience. I would not have been able to complete this book without the professional and financial support of Senior Associate Dean Jonathan Hartlyn and Professor Ashu Handa of the UNC College of Arts and Sciences, the Robert Watson Winston Faculty Development Fund, and the Thomas Willis Lambeth Distinguished Chair Fund. I wish to express my appreciation to my parents, Alex and Naomi Gitterman, for their support and encouragement. Most important, my deepest appreciation to my wife, Amy, and our children, Max and Claire, who tolerated that long stretch where my laptop was my companion and now have welcomed me back into our wonderful family. It is your time to call the shots.

ONE

The President, Executive Orders and Memos, and Public Policy

P resident Barack Obama faced another year of fiercely divided government as he convened his first cabinet meeting of 2014, on January 14. Republicans in Congress, who had a very different ideological vision for the nation, were publicly committed to blocking his agenda at every turn. His public support a year after his landslide reelection was shaky; Democrats would go on to lose nine seats and control of the Senate in the November 2014 election. Obama was frustrated but unbowed on that January morning. The prospects for major legislation may have been beyond dim, but the president told his cabinet he had plenty of authority to act, stating: We are not just going to be waiting for legislation in order to make sure that were providing Americans the kind of help that they need Ive got a pen and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions.

Obama delivered on that promise, using the unilateral authority of the chief executive to advance his policy priorities. Through this lever of power, Obama pressured Congress to act.

Although executive powers are rooted in the United States Constitution ratified in 1788 and have long been a source of presidential authority and controversy, the Obama presidency can be seen as a coming-out party for them. The concept of unilateral executive power has gained far wider traction in For the first time in history, executive authority was a major campaign issue in 2016. Despite their many disagreements, almost all of the seventeen Republicans who sought their partys presidential nomination repeatedly pledged to undo Obamas executive actions. It is telling that the candidates trusted that their voters cared about this issue. The irony is that the partisan and gridlocked state of contemporary politics makes it almost certain that Obamas very different successor, Donald J. Trump, will overturn many of his illegal and unilateral orders while issuing a slew of his own.

Presidents are central actors in our politics, and one cannot understand the making of American public policy without taking their executive power into account. The United States Constitution lays out three hypothetically equal branches of governmentthe executive, the legislative, and the judicialbut over the years, the president, the chief executive, has emerged as the dominant political and administrative force at the federal level. The president is advantaged by his position as the chief executive, which gives him the right to make unilateral decisions about the federal bureaucracy and policy. In response to this increasing use of unilateral executive power, we need to think more deeply about the historical patterns that have informed the use of this authority and its implications for contemporary public policy.

Calling the Shots documents a fundamental phenomenon of modern American politics and policy: the rapid increase in the size and scope of the federal government and the ways it has transformedand been transformed bythe presidency. This study broadens our understanding of presidential power in two ways. First, it focuses on the presidents role as a chief executive officer (CEO) of the federal government and his or her motivations to achieve political goals. The president is, in fact, the CEO of the largest and most powerful enterprise in the United States: the federal bureaucracy. Although Trump is the first actual CEO elected in modern times, his new job is exponentially larger than the one that made him a billionaire.

The president stands at the apex of a hierarchy of executive departments and independent agencies, boards, commissions, and committees that purchase billions of dollars worth of goods and services. In 2015 the federal bureaucracy included almost 500 agencies and subagencies, $447 billion in federal purchases of goods and services, and at least 2.8 million federal employeesplus millions more who work for private companies that contract or subcontract with the federal government. Moreover, the federal government expends almost $1.03 trillion on health programs. Second, Calling the Shots broadens our understanding of presidential power by exploring specific ways presidents use their authority as CEO to achieve their political and policy goals. Specifically, it identifies and conceptualizes three vast but underappreciated forms of executive power: the power of the purchaser, the power of the employer, and the power of the payer.

The president deploys the power of the purchaser to exercise direct political control over federal procurement rules and to influence policy in a range of areas somewhat related to the economical and efficient purchase of goods and services.