This week the Glenn Fellows are reading Mann and Ornstein's The Broken Branch, an indictment of both houses of Congress on a number of different grounds, among which are excess deference to and minimal oversight of the executive branch.
The U.S. Constitution separates the legislative and executive branches of government. The British Constitution, in contrast, fuses them together. I think it was shrewd Walter Bagehot who referred to the cabinet as the buckle that fastens, the hyphen that joins, the executive and legislative powers in Great Britain. One of the consequences of that is that it is fairly easy for new governments to implement new policies, citing their electoral mandate and exploiting the advantage of a parliamentary majority.
The freshly minted coalition of Conservatives and New Democrats that recently threw out Gordon Brown and New Labour has now announced its program to attack deficit spending in Great Britain. (That's British Chancellor George Osborne, above, unveiling the government's plan. He is flanked by Prime Minister David Cameron, in the purple Tory tie, and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, with his yellow New Dem tie.) Here is a story in The Economist. And here is Andrew Sullivan's typically idiosyncratic take in the Daily Dish.
Implementation of the program will put Keynesian propositions to a systematic test and will likely usher in a new age of austerity, at least over the short run. Most assuredly, other countries, especially those, like the United States, where deficits are staggeringly high in relation to Gross Domestic Product, will be watching closely. Pull yourself a pint and pass the Spam.
No comments:
Post a Comment