Aug 23, 2026 · 1 hr 2 min · 10 segments
Samantha Hancox-Li and guest Josh Chafetz, professor at Georgetown Law, discuss how Supreme Court rulings around the "legislative veto" laid the groundwork for expanded executive power.
Josh ChafetzGuest
Samantha Hancox-LiHostBut I also want to take a moment and reflect on... what you talked about in terms of how this question of the legislative veto fits into the development of the executive branch and like the growth of the government.
And it is kind of shocking how small the federal government is at the time.
That like the Department of the Navy is basically one guy with a checkbook.
Like that's the federal government right there is him writing a couple of checks.
By, you know, some time passes, right? We can talk about the growth of the executive branch in the 19th century.
I looked up some numbers before this episode that I found very striking, where we have a little bit better data from the Federal Reserve.
In 1929, this is basically as far back as that chart went, federal spending as a share of GDP is 2.9%.
By 1936, that has risen to 9.7%, right? This is, in fact, functionally, we have tripled the size of the federal government in a few years.
Today, we are looking at, again, there's this enormous spike during World War II, but Set that aside, today in 2025, federal spending as a share of GDP is 22.8% of, right? Every dollar in the economy, one fifth of them flows through the federal government in some way.
So we have lived through a century in which the scope of the federal government has expanded
For those of you who aren't watching the video, my cats are fighting in the background.
But I also want to take a moment and reflect on... what you talked about in terms of how this question of the legislative veto fits into the development of the executive branch and like the growth of the government.
And it is kind of shocking how small the federal government is at the time.
That like the Department of the Navy is basically one guy with a checkbook.
Like that's the federal government right there is him writing a couple of checks.
By, you know, some time passes, right? We can talk about the growth of the executive branch in the 19th century.
I looked up some numbers before this episode that I found very striking, where we have a little bit better data from the Federal Reserve.
In 1929, this is basically as far back as that chart went, federal spending as a share of GDP is 2.9%.
By 1936, that has risen to 9.7%, right? This is, in fact, functionally, we have tripled the size of the federal government in a few years.
Today, we are looking at, again, there's this enormous spike during World War II, but Set that aside, today in 2025, federal spending as a share of GDP is 22.8% of, right? Every dollar in the economy, one fifth of them flows through the federal government in some way.
So we have lived through a century in which the scope of the federal government has expanded
For those of you who aren't watching the video, my cats are fighting in the background.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
