Could constitutional checks and balances within the federal government impact your bank balance and the checks you write? Yes, definitely! After a brief reminder of what we mean by checks and balances, we will give you two examples from other countries of how that can happen.
The Constitution’s framers created checks and balances to make it hard for our federal and state governments to tyrannize us. They did this by separating and sharing the powers of government. (The separation and sharing of powers is what makes the USA a republic!)
At the federal level,
- Congress is assigned the power to make the laws.
- The president is given the responsibility for carrying them out.
- When they clash, the Supreme Court can decide if one side or the other acted unconstitutionally.
- Each of the three branches can be countered (checked) by the other two in various ways. (If you want to geek out on how, check out our courses on the presidency, Congress, and federalism.)
Your bank balance and the quality of your life can be impacted when no one is willing or able to uphold the system of checks and balances. To see this, imagine you lived in either of country situations we report on below!
- The Great Leap Forward (1958-1962) is one of the most glaring examples of how a leader unrestrained by checks and balances can cause serious harm to ordinary people. Chairman Mao Zedong wanted to modernize his country, a one-party state that he controlled. He had his own ideas about how to make that happen. Few questions came from The People’s Congress or the Supreme Court because he dominated both. He forced most government employees out of the cities to join the peasantry – who were told to begin producing steel in local collectives and meet impossible production targets for grain. The diversion of untrained labor away from agriculture to steel, combined with grain taken for government export targets, meant less food for workers. The consequences of the Great Leap Forward were devastating, leading to millions of deaths from one of the most severe famines in human history.
The problem doesn’t occur only in socialist countries. Unrestrained leaders in some market economies have also used government machinery in harmful ways.
- Sierra Leone in the early 1980s is an example. At that time, this poor West African market economy was led by a president who could not be checked by the legislature or the Supreme Court – because both were dominated by the same political party that the president headed. The president had set up a system in the 1970s that allowed him and a few cronies to offer lucrative money-making deals in exchange for loyalty, bribes, and favors. This was made possible by granting loyalists the right to buy low through official markets and sell high on the black market. Ordinary people were cut out of these deals and had to pay high prices on the black market for essential goods like rice and gasoline. Business owners suffered, too, not only from the high cost of fuel but also from the scarcity of financing, domestic and foreign, for new job-creating investments.
Bottom line: weak or absent checks and balances can hurt your bank balance and your quality of life. Regardless of party, it’s important to elect people willing to uphold those checks and balances.
