There is a whole history of OMB that traces back to commissions in the Teddy Roosevelt and Taft Administrations calling for the creation of such an agency, to President Harding establishing the Bureau of the Budget in the Treasury Department, to Franklin Roosevelt moving the Bureau of the Budget to the Executive Office of the President, to Nixon renaming the Bureau to be OMB, to Ronald Reagan putting OMB in charge of doing a cost-benefit analysis of regulations. "The administration challenged the constitutionality of this proposal through the able testimony of Assistant Attorney General Robert G. Dixon Jr. As Dixon noted, the Article II Vesting Clause and the Take Care Clause compelled two conclusions: 'First, the enforcement of the laws is an inherently executive function, and second, the executive branch has the exclusive constitutional authority to enforce the laws." By taking an important part of the executive power, and of the concomitant duty to see the faithful execution of the laws, away from the President and assigning it to a person unaccountable to the President in her selection and her performance and her tenure.
Author: Steven Calabresi
Published at: 2026-01-10 22:08:12
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