Even the most casual observer of politics is aware of the difficulties Nancy Pelosi regularly has with facts, figures, names, and dates, but one claim she recently made has many questioning her basic knowledge of how our government works.
Before an assembled group of European dignitaries in Brussels earlier this week, House Speaker Pelosi claimed that the Constitution places her on equal footing with President Donald Trump, largely because Congress wields the “power of the purse.”
Clarification needed
Politico reported that Pelosi endeavored to explain to the diplomats in attendance at the event, “We’re not a parliamentary government, even though we’re parliamentarians. We have Article I, the legislative branch, the first branch of government, co-equal to the other branches and we have asserted ourselves in that way.”
A fellow member of the American delegation quickly interjected to expand on the speaker’s comments. Democrat Rep. Gerry Connolly asserted that Pelosi’s remarks were intended to be a reminder that “the United States government is not just one branch.”
Connolly stated that Article I of the Constitution discusses the powers given to the legislative branch, emphasizing that they encompass matters of “war and peace and even direction of the armed forces,” at which point Pelosi emphatically added, “and the power of the purse.”
Constitutional claim
The event in Brussels was not the first time Speaker Pelosi has claimed constitutional powers on par with those of President Trump. Earlier this year, when asked by the New York Times whether she considered herself an equal of Donald Trump, she answered bluntly, “The Constitution does.”
While it is possible to interpret the speaker’s remark as referring to a broader understanding of gender equality in the workplace, her specific mention of the Constitution suggests that she had a more technical meaning in mind — namely, the sweeping appropriations authority granted to Congress and not to the executive branch.
The latter reading seems all the more likely especially in light of the recent spending bill standoff in which Democrats declined to fully fund President Trump’s $5.7 billion request for border wall construction. Unfortunately for Pelosi, that exercise of “co-equal” power was swiftly countered by the president’s declaration of a national emergency so that resources for the barrier could be obtained.
Flawed logic
There are several glaring problems with Pelosi’s declaration of power parity with the president. Though she does hold the speaker’s gavel in the House, that does not equate to being the sole head of the legislative branch, which also includes the Senate. This point was not lost on Breitbart’s Joel Pollak, who tweeted:
This is nonsense. Accepting, for argument’s sake (since it’s not in the text of the Constitution), that the legislature is a “co-equal” branch of government, Pelosi’s party only controls one of two chambers, and not the upper one. https://t.co/79m211F7Ol
— Joel B. Pollak (@joelpollak) January 3, 2019
Furthermore, Speaker Pelosi’s professed reverence for equality among the branches was far from evident during the Barack Obama administration, when the executive branch implemented a series of initiatives, including the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy, in the face of congressional disapproval. Nary a peep was heard then about the rightful power of the legislature to check unilateral actions of the executive.
Nancy Pelosi has uttered some truly bizarre and outrageous things throughout her tenure in Congress, but her insistence on a clear misunderstanding of our basic governmental structure is perhaps among the most troubling of them all.
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