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Democrats, Republicans Study Plan to Curb Presidential Powers

(Bloomberg) -- A bipartisan effort to wrest congressional authority back from the president will get a House hearing next week to look at decades of what many lawmakers view as executive overreach -- not just the actions of President Donald Trump.The House Rules Committee session March 3 will focus on presidents of both parties citing broad authority over government functions. Chairman Jim McGovern, a Democrat from Massachusetts, said the discussion will include foreign policy, military deployments and the use of national emergencies to circumvent Congress.

“This issue transcends party, and I hope we can find bipartisan solutions so Congress can finally exercise its full authority again,” McGovern said in a statement issued jointly with the committee’s top Republican, Tom Cole of Oklahoma.

Even amid the partisan acrimony of impeachment, there has been some bipartisan cooperation in the House and Senate to push back on some of Trump’s unilateral actions. Efforts to curtail the president’s redirection of taxpayer money to build a border wall and to limit his military actions without congressional authorization received bipartisan support but fell short of a veto-proof majority.

Cole said it’s no accident that the first article of the Constitution lays out the power of Congress, the most direct representative of the American people.

“Though the shift has been gradual, I have long been concerned by Congress ceding some of its authority as well as presidents of both parties claiming power that belongs to the legislative branch,” Cole said in a statement. “I look forward to discussing how we reached this point and what can be done to help Congress reclaim and reassert its constitutional authority.”

The Rules Committee is responsible for preparing legislation for votes on the House floor, and the panel’s chairman works closely with the House speaker.

The witnesses for next week’s hearing will include professors of law, history and government.

To contact the reporter on this story: Billy House in Washington at bhouse5@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kevin Whitelaw at kwhitelaw@bloomberg.net, Anna Edgerton, Laurie Asséo

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