The Three Branches: A Balancing Act

Imagine a game with three teams, where each team has the power to stop the
others from scoring. That’s the basic design of the U.S. government. 

This episode's goal is to demonstrate the mechanisms of checks and balances in action as the primary defense against concentrated power.

Here is this week's assignment: Find one news story from the past year where one branch of the federal government limited the power of another. Analyze if the check was effective or just created gridlock.

Our Featured Guest for Episode Five is Dr. Michael Lynch, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Georgia.

🎙️ Citizen's Playbook is produced by Henry Chamber Media, bringing you conversations that connect business, community, and leadership throughout Henry County.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:08

Welcome back to the playbook. Today we step into the central drama of American governance to see how the legislative, executive, and judicial branches actually interact. We will demonstrate how the mechanics of checks and balances serve as our primary defense against the concentration of power. Our featured guest is Dr. Michael Lynch, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Georgia. Well, imagine your game has three teams where each team has the power to stop the others from scoring. That's the basic design of the U.S. government. Welcome back to the Citizens Playbook. Today we see how the three branches, legislative, executive, and judicial, actually interact. And to help us, we welcome Dr. Michael Lynch from the University of Georgia. Dr. Lynch, thank you for being here. Thank you. Happy to be here today. Oh, looking forward to it. This brain thing that I had back in, I guess it was around November, was to have some conversations around civics for the general populace. And those six or eight episodes turned into 18. And I have found them thoroughly enjoyable and that each of the episodes I've done, I've I've gotten something out of it and learned something new. So I appreciate your time.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Certainly.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Let me let me ask you, your research focuses extensively on the U.S. Congress, on legislative procedures, and that. And it's strange that, you know, as we record this, we just celebrated Independence Day and that. But the founders based our three-branch system on a deep-seated distrust of concentrated power. And from your analysis of the behavior and rules, how is that balance of power between the executive and legislative branches evolved over time?

SPEAKER_01 1:45

Yeah, I think it's evolved in a way that would surprise a lot of the founders. If you look at the Constitution, uh Article I, which outlines the jobs Congresses have, it's over half of the document. It's over half of the words of the document. So the Congress, the House, and the Senate was the key component of the U.S. government and the early, early parts after the founding. I always tell my students, the presidents during the 1800s, whose names you don't quite remember, there's a reason why. And it's because presidents didn't do as much back then. And the story of change between the three branches has been a story of the president getting stronger and stronger over time and Congress and the courts to a lesser extent ceding a lot of their power.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

You know, when you look at that, that federal checks, like, you know, Senate confirmation hearings and and veto overrides, how much of this balancing act is driven by the pure constitutional architecture versus those shifting realities of modern strategies?

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Yeah. Well, the Constitution is a it's a document of compromise. Uh, there's a lot of people with a lot of different views that had a hard time balancing all those during the Constitution uh and the convention. And I I don't think it's surprising that they provided us with a form of government that requires us to compromise. It's it's hard to pass a bill. You have to go through the House and Senate. And there's a filibuster in the Senate, so sometimes you need supermajority votes, and there the president can be involved if he ends up vetoing things. So it's it's a it's a difficult process, and that's the way it's designed, and it forces us to compromise, which is or try to. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

As an expert on congressional politics, how does congressional pushback manifest when when judicial branch regulates or invalidates that legislative policy?

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Yeah, it's so the number of times that the courts actually invalidate acts of Congress is it's somewhat rare. And Congress always has a chance to to pass new pieces of legislation if it's a specific law that's shot down. Occasionally, the only only recourse they have is uh to pass a constitutional amendment to override um Supreme Court rulings, and and that is never happens effectively, right? So there's a lot of fighting between Congress and uh the courts that's kind of hard to see because it comes in kind of small parts of legislation being changed as courts invalidate different cases at the lower levels and occasionally at the Supreme Court level. And yeah, so I think that's the that that that's a maybe a less visible fight uh among the branches. Congress and and the courts is the hardest one to see. Anything involving the president is the the the blockbuster, the easiest to notice and the easiest to to pay attention to.

SPEAKER_00 4:12

Yeah. Well, it and when you look at that executive branch and that legislative branch and and the you know the the the practice of of pushback and and negotiation and and that for a business community that's looking for economic predictability, how do these two branches negotiate behind closed doors?

SPEAKER_01 4:29

Yeah, that's a that's a tough question. So historically, a lot of the action comes from Congress. President can't write a bill. The president has to find someone in Congress to write a bill that they would like and introduce it. The place we see the most negotiation, I guess, between uh Congress and the president is in some of the regulatory policies and some of the details of how specific policies will be implemented. And we actually see some pretty major policy changes between a Democratic administration and a Republican administration without any formal change in law, just with reinterpretation of how to enforce the statutes that are already on the books. Like a real a really, I think fascinating example of that is when Congress writes a bill, uh, even though they're really long and they're really hard to get through, they don't provide enough detail. You think about the Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act. You're writing a bill that regulates huge swaths of the American health care system. Even though it's really long, it doesn't have enough detail in it for anyone to actually know how to run the American health care system. So bureaucracies move in and fill in the details. In that particular act, there's over 1,400 spots in the Affordable Care Act that says the Secretary shall or the Secretary may, which gives the Health and Human Services Secretary the authority to go in and fill in those details so we can actually have a working healthcare system as we react to changes, COVID, changes on other healthcare policies. So there's a lot of movement that we don't see in that regular legislative process that's happening. It's not, it's not totally hidden, but it's a lot harder to see than than these bills being passed and bills being signed or vetoed by the president.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

Well, I appreciate that. I I appreciate the the example to help us have a better understanding. And I know in a future episode, we're going to talk about the what the way policy is implemented from that law. And so this gives us a a little bit of a uh tease for them that that the that our listeners listen into. So thank you. This will be the episode that we will slowly move into the Georgia specifics. So as you have done your research and and and you have your your doctorate in in political science, is that correct? Political science. Yeah, political science. Okay. As we bridge that that conversation into state government, how does the procedural complexity balance or compare, I guess, to the high-stakes environment of the 40-day session in Georgia? You know, I I guess part of it is it's a 40-day session here. The only thing that they have to do in that 40 days is pass a budget. What are some of the differences then that we would see with with Congress in DC?

SPEAKER_01 6:57

I think in some ways there's a there's a lot of parallels. The governor and the president have access to a really large bureaucracy and lots of people that are employed full-time that allow them to know a lot about a lot of policies and have a lot of opinions and and work they can do on trying to implement policies through regulation and other means. Congress, even though Congress is in session all year long and Congress has staff, the the tools at their disposal are kind of dwarfed by what the president has. And then across the street from the Capitol, the Supreme Court has almost no one who works over there, right? So it's uh part of it is the president is the a CEO of a corporation with effectively millions of employees working for him. And Congress, they have staffers, but they're they all fit on Capitol Hill pretty easily. So uh it's a it's a much smaller operation. And we see that parallel, maybe even more exacerbated by that short session in the the Georgia State House, where you know it the it's hard to gain expertise on every policy if you're a part-time legislator and you are only in session 40 days. I always ask my students to try to feel sorry for members of Congress and legislators. It's like, what's a policy you need to know about and be knowledgeable about if you're in a legislature? It's all of them, right? Um and being able to learn about, I'm from Kansas, the complexities of an interstate water compact uh and healthcare policy and uh tax policy and law enforcement, right? It's just it's really arduous for a true citizen legislator to come in and and kind of know what's going on. And I think because of that, we see this at the national level for sure, and it happens in Georgia as well. The the president and the governor end up leading and driving policy because they have the resources and the staff to know to have a better idea of what to do and and what policies need to be changed and how.

SPEAKER_00 8:43

Well, and and I think that that's a great point because when you look at a two-year session for 40 days each, you've, you know, and and I'm from Illinois, so like there even the state senators had six-year terms. Down here, everybody's got the, you know, everybody in the in in the the state legislature has two-year terms. So that's that's a lot of changeover that can happen. So just as you get your your training wheels are ready to come off and you and you understand those policies and that, then then it's, you know, you might have somebody else replacing you.

unknown 9:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

No, I agree. And I I think that's that's an argument I've heard that that a lot of people make against things like term limits, uh, is when you already have that much, that little time in session and that that short of a term and that much turnover naturally, creating even more turnover potentially gives even more power to the executive branches at the state and federal level.

SPEAKER_00 9:33

Absolutely. Absolutely. Hey, one one one final question. This is, you know, because I hear this a lot from individuals when I'm talking to them. If we flip back to DC and and that gridlock conversation, in your opinion, with your background, is is that a systemic failure to the way this was designed? That that you know, the majority rule, the the procedural maneuvers and that, or is that a safety feature?

SPEAKER_01 9:59

Well, so gridlock is good and bad. Uh you were talking earlier about business owners. If you ask me what healthcare policy is going to be next year, what tax policy is going to be next year, it's probably going to be the same as this year because it's really, really hard to pass legislation. And in terms of economics, I think there's some real advantages the US system has where we don't have a new party come in like they would in potentially the UK, take over parliament and like change everything they would like to change because they don't need acquiescence from any other any other people. The US system moves slowly and that has an advantage. Now, the the flip side of that is when what the public wants is not represented in law, it takes a while for it to finally get there. So things like the civil rights movement, you know, I think a good a good case I talk about in class is uh same-sex marriage, polling on who wanted same-sex marriage moved much more quickly than the policies to match that desired change. So in some areas, we see really slow movement that, you know, it it effectively it depends. Do you do you like the laws we have now? If you do, great. We're gonna probably keep them. If if you're looking for change, that's problematic. And so for some fiscal areas, I think that's problematic too. I I spent a lot of time worrying about the federal debt and the potential implications that has for my, you know, myself, but also my students and my people in my students' generation. It's really hard to solve long-term problems in the system we have now, even though both parties recognize the problem. If they don't share a solution, then we don't do anything. And we let problems continue to get worse and amplify as we as we wait to find consensus on a solution. So Congress is unfortunately best at responding to emergencies right now and passing legislation for for something that has happened that we can respond to right now.

SPEAKER_00 11:39

That's a great point. I appreciate that. I I appreciate that. Dr. Lynch, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate uh you sharing that knowledge with our listeners. And uh really, really can't thank you enough.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

Oh yeah. Thanks so much for having me. I I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

Absolutely. My pleasure. And that's a powerful reframing. The system values liberty more than speed. Dr. Lynch, thank you for that masterclass. But before we go, it's time for our call to action. This week, find one news story from the past year where one branch of the federal government limited the power of another. It could be a presidential veto, a Senate confirmation hearing, or a Supreme Court decision. And as you read the story, ask yourself, was this check effective? Did it lead to a compromise or did it just create more gridlock? This helps you analyze not just the existence of the check, but its real world impact. A tremendous thank you to Dr. Michael Lynch for giving us an inside look at political institutions and institutional friction, and for his leadership at the University of Georgia. If you enjoyed learning about the real world impact of checks and balances, please share this episode with your civic networks and colleagues. Next time, we take you through a day in Congress. Thank you for listening to the Citizens Playbook. We want to take a quick moment to extend a special thank you to Georgia Power for their generous support of this entire series. Georgia Power's commitment to our communities goes far beyond delivering reliable energy. They are actively investing in an informed, engaged, and empowered Georgia. Their partnership is what helps us bring these critical civic conversations right to your headphones. We are incredibly grateful for their support. The Citizens Playbook is hosted by Joseph Henning and State Judge Stephen Knights Jr., produced by Trinity Archer. This has been a Henry Chamber Media Production, Copyright 2026.