SOTU: Obama wants government power consolidated under Executive Branch

Wednesday, Jan 25, 2012 at 3:31 PM EST

Glenn was more than a little disturbed by comments made by Barack Obama at the State of the Union address and wonders why Obama’s call to consolidate bureaucracy (aka POWER) under the Executive Office isn’t getting noticed by reporters and politicians.

Last night, Obama said, “The executive branch also needs to change. Too often, it’s inefficient, outdated and remote. That’s why I’ve asked this Congress to grant me the authority to consolidate the federal bureaucracy so that our Government is leaner, quicker, and more responsive to the needs of the American people.”

You can see the statement at about 50:36 in the clip below:

“The executive branch? Hold it. Are we now talking structural changes to the Constitution? The executive branch needs to change,” Glenn said.

“Did he just say he wants to consolidate all of the powers into the executive branch? Did he say he’s consolidating the bureaucracy under him? Yes. That’s exactly what he said.”

“Listen to the pitch: I need more power in the executive branch so we can have leaner government. Who the hell believes giving more power to one person is going to give you a leaner government?” Stu added.

Glenn discussed the original intention of the Founders was not to create a system where one person could force any piece of legislation through Congress.

“This entire system was built so it doesn’t move on a dime. The reason why that’s important is because when it does, you make gigantic mistakes. As a group of people or an individual. So you wanted a slow, long, laborious process. The reason why it sucks so much is because we’ve given them too much power. It wasn’t designed to have all of the decisions made in Washington. You were supposed to make the decisions. The states were supposed to make the decisions. Now every decision in your own business has to go through Washington. It was never designed for that. That’s not what it should be doing,” Glenn explained.

“This should lead the news on every single channel,” Glenn said.