Multi Party Democracy in a Presidential Republic Part Three, powers of the legislature changing

In a presidential republic, the president, and other executives, are strictly apart from the legislature, and the American president is particularly weak in their ability to force Congress to do anything compared to many presidents of even presidential republics in the world.

This leaves the task of trying to manage Congress up to the legislative leaders, who occupy a much bigger role in American politics than most give them credit for and who wield a lot more power than most similar roles such as the parliamentary leader of the Canadian House of Commons for instance, presently Pablo Rodriguez. 

In the last part, I described how in a multi party system, in this type of imagination for an American version of a multi party system, all political elections would be held by secret ballot by Single Transferable Vote, the voters having a secret ballot, any uncontested votes have a secret yes or no vote on that one candidate.

That would apply in the legislature too. All of the members of each legislative house would elect their own members to positions this way, such as committee members to committees and subcommittees, the plenary electing the chairs of those committees and subcommittees, and the speaker and president/president pro tempore, depending on if its about congress or a state or locality and the house involved, would be elected this way as well, potentially introducing a very different model of speakership where they end up acting as the agent of any middle ground, potentially getting their base from say 35% of those on the left of the middle of the political axis and 20% of those on the right of the middle of the political axis, or some other similar combination, which is what the British House of Commons does. 

This also means that the speaker or presiding officer isn't an agent of their party, but also retain some power to balance out any party's leadership so individuals like the Senate leader of the largest party might get a bit of balance, with more duopoly sharing. As the vote to elect them is secret, they also don't know who would support their deposition if it came to that, and any motion such as to overrule the chair, to demand that a bill be placed on the agenda or be voted on by a committee (a discharge petition), and other actions wouldn't be as controlled by the presiding officer or the leaders of any party. 

With this, the House of Representatives and any other body with powerful speakers and presiding officers get balanced out more by the leader of the largest party. 

Speaking of which, these leaders of parties will be quite different. There might be a majority leader who ends up being the leader of a coalition to put them in power, elected by them in a secret ballot, and the rest of the members vote for a minority leader in the same way. Or this type of position might not exist and each party might just elect a leader for themselves. The former would tend to be harder to control, and your tenure much less certain, the latter might have more ideological ability to hold a party together but it also means that the leader of this party, is more expendable with the party being more ideologically together, dissidents likely having ran as independents or as members of another party where today they are together in unholy alliances, and less dependent on any one leader to see their faction come out victorious. The same goes for other leaders such as the chairs, vice chairs, secretaries, and likewise of the caucus, their whip and any deputy whips, and so on.

That would be especially true of the diminution of the power of the leadership as the committee membership and committee chairs would now be determined by the plenary floor. You might even proportionally award committee chairs and vice chairs to the parties, such as if one party had 1/3 of the seats and there are 21 committees, they would have 7 committee chairs and 7 vice chairs. 

Said chairs would probably also know they may be overruled more often if they resist the other parties' influence. 

The legislative agenda can also be shifted, as the leaders of any party stand a greater chance of being overruled, not being able to rely on a solid whip on their party alone to keep a motion from being on the schedule, both in committee and the plenary. Nominations of the president too. Investigation of people, such as holding subpoenae, can also be extensive. 

The president or governor still likely holds a veto and some mayors hold a veto as well. Assuming they don't have a line item veto line, as they don't in Indiana, and also that they don't need a supermajority to override it (though the threshold may vary, 2/3 is normal, but 3/5 is also present in a couple states), the executive's negative would be different. The governor or president's own party is unlikely to have enough seats to block a veto override, which would normally need between 34% and 41% of the seats in either house, and other parties may support the override and not being in the same party as the executive, can save face, but at the same time, the override may not be supported by enough parties ideologically, as opposed to voting in line with a whip of a party with a supermajority, as the Missouri GOP caucuses.

In a system where the president or governor is already weak and the legislature commonly arbitrarily amends the law just to spite a governor or president, and the personal safety or political survival of the executive isn't threatened (such as a law that grants emergency powers to the executive), a strong veto may be in order, but in a political system with many different options like this, and it normally being harder to pass something one year and repeal it another as an about-face, due to better negotiation between parties, it may not necessarily be a wise tool to give to the executive.

The confirmation of appointments will likely be different, as you very likely won't have a single party majority to approve the appointments, but at the same time, the governor usually can't be forced and never a president can be forced into picking a single particular person, and normally can't steer them to their own personal preferences as the vote is yes or no. Removing a person whose appointments needs confirmation is also often a bad idea if your goal is to consolidate your own power, as you have no idea if a new appointment will get confirmed. Doing so more than halfway into your term also usually means at least part of the senate or state senate is significantly different and may well end up without the same majority or the same numbers of support you depended on to get your first appointments in place. So this could end up giving autonomy in practice to the appointees. Independent commissions could become especially independent with the limited authority of the president to dismiss them combined with the difficulty in appointing a new one.

Impeachment is also a tool which may become different in practice. The governor or president will rarely have the votes to totally stop the process from their own party if it comes down to this vote. Dilma Rousseff learned the hard way that parties can jump ship on you, even if they were formerly part of your coalition, when they found something damning of you. According to historical Wikipedia records, 365 members of the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, was part of Rousseff's coalition when her impeachment began, and there were 367 votes to impeach her, a difference of over 230 or almost half of the legislature (of 513). Imagine if that fraction of the GOP Senate conference flipped on President Trump, that would be 23 or 24 senators jumping, easily enough to remove him.

That doesn't just go for removing a President mind you, it could be any civil officer or judge or a cabinet member, a member of an independent commissioner, an inspector general, the head of the CIA or FBI, the VP too, and for any act of treason, bribery, high crime or misdemeanour, or any action which the House decides falls under those categories. These civil officers will then know that there is at least some loyalty to congress essential to keeping their position, and given that replacing them by the president acting as a power consolidation is harder as the confirmation of a replacement is more difficult without a single party majority automatically loyal to the president's party, or else is totally impossible as being a judge or requiring proven acts of cause, such as the kind needed to dismiss a Federal Trade Commissioner, acting more autonomously of the president may be in order. Much the same goes for state elected officials too, and some local officials.

The executive also is basically never going to have a single party majority that might support any calls or votes against getting evidence and hearings. The Democrats' impeachment hearings were opposed by the GOP even though they knew that iron discipline was likely in their legislative caucus and couldn't remove the president. These kinds of hearings could become a lot more common, in part also that the ordinary members would want access to the same information their party leaders do and may just force it out, also helping to please their constituents whom they need to care more about and less so loyalty to their leader. A simple majority can impeach a person, and I suspect similar rules are in place with each state, the formula of a majority of the lower house, a 2/3 vote of the upper house. Ergo, it would be possible to have impeachment trials and the need for senators to be on oath or affirmation and being unable to lie and can be criminally prosecuted for perjury if they don't respect that, being able to demand witnesses and evidence in such a high profile event, it could be a serious and much more common tool if these officials don't stay reasonably close to democratic oversight.

The budget may end up different, as the veto override is likely to be easier to do against a president or governor who lacks a minority enough to block the override, and the legislature may well add more strings attached to how a department does something or for what purpose money is spent, maybe even drafting aspects of the budget themselves without the president's initiative or the governor's initiative.

Devolution is also likely to be more tightly controlled. You know that you are very unlikely to get a president who is necessarily from the same party as you, in a new proportional system you might be one out of three representatives, or less, who are a member of the president or governor's party, and so you don't want to empower them, you want to empower your legislative caucus and yourself, and not devolving power is how you do that along with strict control over the appropriations, more strict confirmation process, more hearings over their actions, and more probability in removing them. The idea of the executive being far beyond congress may well be limited more than it is today.

Next part is upcoming.