Politics & Power Quote by Jim McDermott

Blank checks are how democracies sleepwalk into wars, surveillance sprees, and executive overreach with a bipartisan shrug. Jim McDermott's line is blunt on purpose: it rejects the Washington habit of laundering controversial power grabs through vague, must-pass authorizations. The phrase "blank check" isn’t policy-speak; it’s household finance. It drags the argument out of committee rooms and into the moral economy of consent: you don’t hand someone unlimited spending authority and then act surprised when they use it.

McDermott, a long-serving House Democrat known for antiwar and civil-liberties instincts, is signaling two audiences at once. To the White House (especially in moments when presidents ask for sweeping authority - military force resolutions, emergency powers, expansive security funding), he’s drawing a bright line: oversight is not optional, and loyalty to party doesn’t substitute for constitutional limits. To constituents and skeptical colleagues, he’s performing a kind of institutional self-respect: Congress has been burned before by open-ended language that later gets stretched beyond recognition.

The clipped "period" matters. It’s not rhetorical flourish; it’s a refusal to negotiate the premise. He’s framing the issue as one of democratic accountability, not tactical disagreement. The subtext is an indictment of political convenience: lawmakers love the cover of giving presidents broad discretion, then posturing in hindsight. McDermott’s intent is to deny that escape hatch - to force specificity, sunsets, and responsibility onto the record.