Presidential Engagement with Congress: Rebuilding a Constitutional Relationship

2028 Presidential Campaign of

Martin A. Ginsburg, RN

March 20, 2026

The President and Congress are not two separate governments. They are two branches of one government — designed by people who had lived under a king and who were very determined not to replicate that experience. They are designed to work together, to check each other, and ultimately to produce law that reflects the considered judgment of both the executive and the legislative.

That design has been under serious stress for at least thirty years. What was meant to be a relationship of constructive friction has become, in many respects, a state of open warfare conducted through press releases and procedural maneuvers. This campaign intends to change that — not by wishing it were otherwise, but by doing specific, concrete things from the first day of this administration.

I. What the Constitution Actually Requires

Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution requires the President to "from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." The Founders called this the Recommendation Clause. It is not ceremonial. It is a positive duty — an explicit constitutional directive that the President engage the legislative branch, make the case for proposals, and provide the information Congress needs to exercise its oversight function.

Successive administrations have reduced this obligation to an annual speech and a budget submission. The relationship has atrophied. The President's staff avoids briefing the opposition. The opposition refuses to engage with executive proposals on their merits. The result is a constitutional relationship that exists on paper and in gridlock in practice.

"The Founders did not design co-equal branches so they could ignore each other. They designed them to argue — productively, in public, about the business of the nation. When that argument stops happening, governance stops happening."

II. What We Will Do Differently

On the first day of this administration, a Congressional Liaison Room will be established within the Executive Office of the President — a secure space where credentialed members of Congress, majority and minority alike, can access real-time briefings, agency reports, and interagency updates. This is not a courtesy. It is a structural change in how the executive branch treats the legislative branch as a partner in governance.

Every major policy initiative will be briefed to the full membership of the relevant committee or committees before it is announced publicly. Not after — before. Members of Congress should not learn what this administration is doing from a press conference. They should be part of the process through which proposals are refined, challenged, and improved. Every member of the relevant committee has earned that seat through the constitutional process; every one of them represents constituents whose lives will be affected by what this administration proposes. Filtering that briefing through party leadership defeats the purpose.

A Presidential Oversight Review Panel will operate under a presumption of disclosure. The default position of this administration will be to share information with Congress, not to withhold it. Executive privilege will be claimed only when there is a specific, articulable national security or deliberative process justification — and that justification will be stated in writing and made available on the public record.

III. The Walk-In Access Model

The full walk-in access protocol has been published separately. The mechanism deserves to be understood precisely, because it is more specific — and more structurally demanding — than it might first appear.

A House member earns walk-in access to the President by opening his district office to both U.S. Senators representing his state. Not open to constituents of both parties in the abstract — open to the senators themselves, physically present, with space to conduct the business of representation. A senator earns the same access by reciprocating: making her services available in every congressional district within her state that has extended that welcome, and hosting the relevant House members in her own offices.

The logic is deliberate. The protocol does not ask members of Congress to feel differently about their colleagues across the aisle or across the chamber. It asks them to share a physical space — to be present, together, in the offices where their overlapping constituents come for help. Shared geography creates shared accountability. A House member and a senator occupying the same district office, serving the same constituents side by side, cannot easily pretend the other does not exist or does not matter. That is the point.

Members who decline to participate must be escorted by a walk-in eligible colleague to reach the President, or may request an appointment at the President's discretion. In the absence of either, they are received as any other citizen would be. This is not punitive. The President is not closing a door. The President is making clear which door opens for those who have demonstrated, in the most concrete terms available, that they understand what representation actually requires.

"Congress works best when it works together. If your representative will not share a roof with the colleagues who serve the same people you are, there is no principled reason why this President should give him a shorter walk to the Oval Office."

IV. On the Matter of Partisan Theater

Congressional oversight is a constitutional function. This administration welcomes genuine oversight — the serious, evidence-based examination of how executive branch programs are working, where they are failing, and what corrections are needed. We will cooperate with it fully.

What this administration will not do is pretend that all oversight is genuine. Since 1995, Congress has shut down the government five times in disputes that were ultimately resolved through ordinary legislative negotiation — at a documented cost of billions in permanently lost economic output and direct taxpayer waste. The pattern is familiar: a manufactured crisis, a period of public performance, a resolution that could have been reached weeks earlier. This administration will name that pattern when it sees it, appear before committees as required, answer questions on the record, and simultaneously make clear to the public what is happening and what it is costing.

That is not defiance. It is participation. The American people deserve a government that takes the constitutional design seriously enough to defend it even from those who hold constitutional office — and to do so in the open, with the full transparency that this campaign has committed to from the beginning.

Congress and the President are partners in a republic that belongs to neither of them. This administration intends to govern as though that is true.

Martin A. Ginsburg, RN

2028 Presidential Campaign of

Martin A. Ginsburg, RN

Sources

Primary Sources

U.S. Const. art. II, § 3 (State of the Union and Recommendation Clause).

Congressional Budget Act of 1974, Pub. L. 93-344, 88 Stat. 297 (July 12, 1974). Established the modern federal budget calendar and annual appropriations deadline framework.

U.S. House of Representatives, Office of the Historian, 'Funding Gaps and Shutdowns in the Federal Government' (U.S. House of Representatives, updated March 11, 2026). Available at: https://history.house.gov/Institution/Shutdown/Government-Shutdowns/

Secondary Sources

Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, 'Government Shutdowns Q&A: Everything You Should Know' (Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, January 26, 2026). Available at: https://www.crfb.org/papers/government-shutdowns-qa-everything-you-should-know

Congressional Budget Office, 'The Effects of the Partial Shutdown Ending in January 2019' (Congressional Budget Office, January 2019). Available at: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/54937

Peter G. Peterson Foundation, 'What Is a Continuing Resolution?' (Peter G. Peterson Foundation, November 13, 2025). Available at: https://www.pgpf.org/article/what-is-a-continuing-resolution/

United States Government Accountability Office, 'Federal Budget: Selected Agencies and Programs Used Strategies to Manage Constraints of Continuing Resolutions,' GAO-22-104701 (Government Accountability Office, June 30, 2022). Available at: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-22-104701

Brookings Institution, 'Government Shutdowns: Causes and Effects' (Brookings Institution, updated February 3, 2026). Available at: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-is-a-government-shutdown-and-why-are-we-likely-to-have-another-one/