Saturday Night Live does Schoolhouse Rock Parody on Executive Orders

From Saturday Night Live (Season 40, Episode 7)

Categories:

American Government and Civic Engagement

Run time: 1:51

Clip Description: In this Saturday Night Live skit, a “Bill” (Kenan Thompson) tries to explain government to a little kid (Kyle Mooney), then President Obama (Jay Pharaoh) and his bullying friend “Executive Order” (Bobby Moynihan) explain how things “really work.” This is an amusing skit showing how executive orders, rooted in the president’s Article II executive power, can bypass the legislative approval needed for a bill. The use of executive orders has increased recently.

American Politics Concepts Discussed/Connected To: This SNL parody of the Schoolhouse Rock’s “I’m Just a Bill” shows in a humorous way how the executive branch can bypass the traditional lawmaking power of Congress with executive actions.

Possible Uses in Classroom: This clip is a useful starting point for discussions on limits on Congressional and Executive powers.

Discussion Questions

The joke is that the executive order shoves the bill aside. But an executive order is not a law: it directs the executive branch, and it can only do what the Constitution or a statute already permits. Where is the line between executing a law Congress wrote and writing one? Justice Jackson’s concurrence in the 1952 steel seizure case, Youngstown, sorts presidential action by whether Congress has authorized it, said nothing about it, or forbidden it. Apply that sorting to an executive action you have seen in the news this year.
Whatever one president does with a pen, the next can undo with a pen, and both parties have done exactly that to each other on the same policies. So why does Congress keep letting this power grow rather than legislating? Consider that passing a statute requires members to cast a recorded vote on something difficult, and doing nothing does not. Then consider whether a policy that lasts only as long as a presidency is worth having at all.
Name one executive action you approved of and one you objected to. Did your view of presidential power move with the policy? If it did, you are in ordinary company, but then say what a consistent standard would actually cost you the next time your side holds the office.

Assignment

Executive orders are published in the Federal Register, and every one of them opens by naming the authority it claims. Pick a recent order, identify the statute or constitutional provision it invokes, and read enough of that statute to judge whether it authorizes what the order goes on to do. Then write two pages placing the order in Justice Jackson’s three categories and defending the placement. The difficulty is that the opening line is boilerplate on every order ever issued, so the whole assignment is deciding whether the authority is genuinely there or merely recited.

For AP Students

AP U.S. Government and Politics
Unit 2: Interactions Among Branches of Government

Topics: 2.4 Roles and Powers of the President; 2.6 Expansion of Presidential Power
Skill: Concept Application (1.E)
Anchors: Federalist No. 70; Article II

Bill, from the original Schoolhouse Rock song, is partway through explaining how a bill becomes law when Executive Order shoves him down the Capitol steps. The joke is the lesson: an order routes around the legislative process entirely, and the sketch makes the difference in effort visible in a way that a flowchart does not.

Discussion questions

An executive order does not require Congress. Name two real limits on what a president can accomplish with one.
Federalist No. 70 argues for energy in the executive, meaning one decisive officer rather than a committee. Does the modern growth of executive orders fulfill that argument or exceed it?
An executive order can be undone by the next president with a signature; a statute cannot. What does that difference mean for a president who wants a policy to outlast the term?

Short activity

The reversal test (15 minutes). Students pick a real policy area — immigration, tariffs, student loans, environmental rules. In three sentences: how the policy could be made by executive order, how the same policy could be made by statute, and which route a president would realistically choose and why. Then one more sentence naming who is worse off when the faster route is taken. The last sentence is the one that separates students who have learned the mechanism from students who have learned that the mechanism has consequences.

Clip hosted on Critical Commons.