POLI 342 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Clean Power Plan, War Powers Resolution, Carbon Price
11 May 2018
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February 22nd: cont. / The President and Congress
• Example 2: Environmental policy in the Obama era
o Key issues and objectives set out by the administration:
o The Waxman-Dingell challenge
o Carbon pricing and the national cap-and-trade system
o Increase in CAFE standards
o The Clean Power Plan (2014)
▪ Phase out coal
▪ Executive policy - being reversed by Trump
o The China-U.S agreement (2014)
▪ 2 largest emitters of greenhouse gases
▪ They pledged to do sumtn about it
o The Paris Agreement (2015)
▪ Trump pulled out
• Example 3: the Exxon Valdez oil spill crisis
o Stability and resistance to major changes characterize U.S. policy making:
▪ [“Stability” meaning that changes happen incrementally]
▪ The importance of political subsystems
▪ Limitations of access points
▪ The opening of windows of opportunities during crises
▪ Oil Pollution Act of 1990
• Ended a stalemate of 14 years that discussions of these issues have seen
in congress
• The President and Congress
o Now, how do the relationships between and within institutions shape the public policy
process?
o Constitutional sources of power
▪ Article 1: (section 8 + the elastic clause)
• “To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into
the Execution the foregoing Powers
▪ MISSED
• The sword vs the purse
o Example: the War Powers Resolution (1973) and the “leeway” of the President in its role
of commander-in-chief
o Key points of contention:
▪ Background: cold war involvement of the US (especially Cambodia)
▪ What is the flexibility that the president should be given in his/her “faithful
execution”?
▪ What does the power “to declare war” entail in practice
o Moments where the War Powers (examples):
▪ Lebanon 1982-83, iraq 1991, somalia 1994, iraq 2003
▪ The Kosovo bombings of 1999
▪ Syria 2017?
• War vs support of factions
o To a large extent, the President has been given flexibility with regard to the conduct of
covert and /or financing operations in foreign war efforts, for instance;
▪ Cold War context: through the military and the CIA (Iran, Lebanon, Libya,
Grenada, Nicaragua, etc.)
▪ NATO and coalition deployments
o At other times, Congress participated more actively (and directly) in influencing the
executive’s foreign policy:
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