United States
The United States, which has a presidential system of government, does not have a question time for the President. However, Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution of the United States states: "shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." The exact meaning of this clause has never been worked out fully, although it is the constitutional basis for the modern State of the Union address. There was some discussion at various times about whether this clause would allow something similar to a Westminster style question time – for instance, having Department Secretaries being questioned by the House of Representatives or the Senate – but the discussions on this issue have never gotten past an exploratory stage. The basic concept of separation of powers will probably prevent, in practical terms, a question time from being established in the United States.
President George H. W. Bush once said of PMQs, "I count my blessings for the fact I don't have to go into that pit that John Major stands in, nose-to-nose with the opposition, all yelling at each other." In 2008, Senator John McCain (Republican Party nominee for President of the United States in the 2008 presidential election) stated his intention, if elected, to create a Presidential equivalent of the British conditional convention of Prime Minister's Questions. In a policy speech on May 15, 2008, which outlined a number of ideas, McCain said, "I will ask Congress to grant me the privilege of coming before both houses to take questions, and address criticism, much the same as the Prime Minister of Great Britain appears regularly before the House of Commons."
George F. Will of the The Washington Post criticized the proposal in an Op-Ed piece, saying that a presidential question time would endanger separation of powers as the President of the United States, unlike the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, is not a member of the legislature. Will ended the piece by saying, "Congress should remind a President McCain that the 16 blocks separating the Capitol from the White House nicely express the nation's constitutional geography." However, critics of Will's review pointed out that question time would be a check and balance in itself.
In February 2009, just over a month after his inauguration, President Barack Obama invited serving members of the US Senate to a "fiscal responsibility" summit at the White House, during which Senators asked the President about his fiscal policies in an event which was compared to Prime Minister's Question. Eleven months later, Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner invited Obama to the annual House Issues Conference in Baltimore, Maryland, where the President answered questions and criticisms from Republican Congressmen and women. Commenting on the event, Peter Baker in The New York Times, said " back and forth resembled the British tradition where the prime minister submits to questions on the floor of the House of Commons – something Senator John McCain had promised to do if elected president."
Read more about this topic: Question Time
Famous quotes related to united states:
“The United States is the only great nation whose government is operated without a budget. The fact is to be the more striking when it is considered that budgets and budget procedures are the outgrowth of democratic doctrines and have an important part in developing the modern constitutional rights.... The constitutional purpose of a budget is to make government responsive to public opinion and responsible for its acts.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“On the whole, yes, I would rather be the Chief Justice of the United States, and a quieter life than that which becomes at the White House is more in keeping with the temperament, but when taken into consideration that I go into history as President, and my children and my children’s children are the better placed on account of that fact, I am inclined to think that to be President well compensates one for all the trials and criticisms he has to bear and undergo.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“I thought it altogether proper that I should take a brief furlough from official duties at Washington to mingle with you here to-day as a comrade, because every President of the United States must realize that the strength of the Government, its defence in war, the army that is to muster under its banner when our Nation is assailed, is to be found here in the masses of our people.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)
“The United States must be neutral in fact as well as in name.... We must be impartial in thought as well as in action ... a nation that neither sits in judgment upon others nor is disturbed in her own counsels and which keeps herself fit and free to do what is honest and disinterested and truly serviceable for the peace of the world.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“Vanessa wanted to be a ballerina. Dad had such hopes for her.... Corin was the academically brilliant one, and a fencer of Olympic standard. Everything was expected of them, and they fulfilled all expectations. But I was the one of whom nothing was expected. I remember a game the three of us played. Vanessa was the President of the United States, Corin was the British Prime Minister—and I was the royal dog.”
—Lynn Redgrave (b. 1943)