of their own. All of which break down a program into tiny parts and mercilessly scrutinize them without stepping back and looking at the big picture. The benefit to this is that a program, if passed, will have gotten a complete run-through and should adequately fill its purpose without any hampering side effects. Until congress resolves a better way for the committees to communicate and work together as a whole on programs, this will be the biggest burden between the presidents ability to mobilize the congress. The final factor between the president and congress relations is their take on domestic and foreign relations.The president is fortunate to be able to mobilize congress pretty easily when his objective has to do with foreign policy. Foreign policy issues usually get plenty of press regarding the United States standpoint with foreign relations. Due to this, the president and congress usually work very hard to either resolve the situation, or find some other means of bringing the policy debate to an end (including possible armed occupation or domestic support to a foreign country.) Domestic policy here in the states is something we need to put a little more emphasis on. If the president or congress would take more aggressive stands on such things as the national budget and Social Security, I feel more work could be accomplished. More work would be accomplished not because the president and congress are working hard to fix the problems on hand, but because the American public that would be more aware would also be putting a fire under the issues. Of course both parties would work harder with the threat of upsetting the public (and killing hopes of re-election in some cases.) In the 1980s the mobilization of congress was even more difficult because government was divided between a republican executive branch and a democratic congress. Relations between the president and congress also got a little hairy during the republi...
