Divided Government
Divided Government: The American Experience is a book of reports by the United States House of Representatives on the American government’s response to the Great Depression. The report by the House Committee on Banking and Currency, titled “Divided Government,” first introduced the concept of divided government and proposed that there be two branches of government. In the 1930s, the Federal Reserve and the House Banking Committee were the primary branch of government, whereas the President, Senate, and the Supreme Court were considered the “regular” branch of government. Divided government has its origins in the Founding Fathers’ debates on the need for a single government with power divided between three branches. In 1948 the Supreme Court ruled that Congress could not be divided into two separate governing branches, but three branches were upheld and the Supreme Court itself could not be divided.
The House Report by the Ways and Means Committee, titled “Divided Government,” and the Federal Reserve System were the first time the phrase had been used in reference to the American government. The report by the House Banking Committee addressed the need for a single government with power divided into a system of three separate branches, while the House Committee on Banking and Currency focused on the need for a single central bank in the US and to consolidate and democratize the nation’s monetary system. The Federal Reserve Act of 1913, the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, and the Federal Reserve Bank Act of 1913 are collectively known as the “Banking Acts.”
History of the concept of divided government
Origins of the concept The concept of “two houses, each having a different way of governing” has a long history. It was first proposed in the debates over the ratification of the Constitution of the United States in 1787. According to Patrick Henry, during the ratification debates of the Constitution, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Robert Yates expressed their worries about the future of the government being made up of “three rival bodies or departments.” Madison, Hamilton, and Yates, in their 1787 draft of the Bill of Rights, called for a division of the executive, legislative, and judiciary branches. The proposal was rejected by several groups, including the Federalists, who viewed such a division as an unnecessary change. After the Bill of Rights was ratified, James Madison’s Federalist paper stated that the proposal for three branches had been rejected because the Constitution was a compromise among the people, and that “we must make due concessions to the men who for four score and seven years have been at work in the cause of the
