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Peter1469
01-15-2017, 06:19 PM
Does Congress Want to Govern? (http://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2017/01/14/does_congress_want_to_govern_110137.html)

I mentioned this yesterday and several times in the past. Congress has largely ceded its authority to the executive branch and we have now what is called the Administrative or Bureaucratic State.

Perhaps the Trump election will get the democrats and the left on board with returning power to Congress. They better study up on the issue, I think they have missed the problem completely.


Speaker Ryan’s “A Better Way” agenda declares (http://abetterway.speaker.gov/): “The people granted Congress the power to write laws, raise revenues, and spend and borrow money on behalf of the United States. There is no power more consequential …Yet for decades, Congress has let this power atrophy — thereby depriving the people of their voice.” Similarly, Senator Mike Lee last year launched the Article I Project (http://www.lee.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=article-one-project) on the premise that, “the federal government is broken, and congressional weakness is to blame … Congress has handed many of its constitutional responsibilities to the Executive Branch.”




Congressional Republicans who sounded these alarms about executive overreach may well have had Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton in mind. But as Donald Trump prepares to assume office, these calls for congressional re-assertion have become increasingly bipartisan.


All of which prompts the question: How much will Congress let President Trump get away with? The answer? Probably more than they should. Congress has grown weak relative to the executive branch, and Speaker Ryan is right: legislators, themselves, are largely to blame.

Tahuyaman
01-15-2017, 09:35 PM
The house of reps isn't the problem. I would argue that the Senate is the weak link.

Peter1469
01-15-2017, 09:43 PM
The house of reps isn't the problem. I would argue that the Senate is the weak link.

This is a bigger problem than typical politics. This is writing vague laws and then asking the executive agencies to write hundreds of pages of regulations to implement the laws.

MisterVeritis
01-15-2017, 10:29 PM
What the Congress did is an unconstitutional ceding of legislative power to the Executive Branch. The Constitution does not allow any branch of government the authority to give its powers to another branch. An Article V convention of states is the only way to fix this problem.

Tahuyaman
01-15-2017, 10:37 PM
What the Congress did is an unconstitutional ceding of legislative power to the Executive Branch. The Constitution does not allow any branch of government the authority to give its powers to another branch. An Article V convention of states is the only way to fix this problem.


You'll need to explain how they did that.

MisterVeritis
01-15-2017, 10:39 PM
You'll need to explain how they did that.
Congress wrote a law allowing the so-called independent agencies the authority to write regulations. Congress has the sole legislative authority in the Constitution. The independent agencies are part of the Executive branch. So Congress gave its legislative powers to the executive branch.

Peter1469
01-15-2017, 10:41 PM
Linked to in the OP:

The Article I Project

The Article I Project is a new network of House and Senate legislators working together on a new agenda of government reform and congressional rehabilitation.


The premise of the Article I Project is simple: the federal government is broken, and congressional weakness is to blame.
The authors of the Constitution made Congress the most powerful of the federal government’s three co-equal branches. Congress was designed both as the most powerful and the most accountable to the people.


But over the course of the twentieth century, and accelerating in the twenty-first, Congress has handed many of its constitutional responsibilities to the Executive Branch.


Increasingly harmful federal laws are written by people who never stand for election, via processes contrary to those provided for in the Constitution, and, indeed, with the explicit purpose of excluding the American people from the decision making process and shielding policymakers from popular accountability.


But there’s good news: what a weak Congress has broken a strong Congress can fix.


The constitutional powers necessary to put a representative, accountable federal government back to work for the American people are still right there in Article I, ready to be reasserted.


That is why we launched the Article I Project.

MisterVeritis
01-15-2017, 10:45 PM
Linked to in the OP:

The Article I Project



The Article I Project is a new network of House and Senate legislators working together on a new agenda of government reform and congressional rehabilitation.


The premise of the Article I Project is simple: the federal government is broken, and congressional weakness is to blame.
The authors of the Constitution made Congress the most powerful of the federal government’s three co-equal branches. Congress was designed both as the most powerful and the most accountable to the people.


But over the course of the twentieth century, and accelerating in the twenty-first, Congress has handed many of its constitutional responsibilities to the Executive Branch.


Increasingly harmful federal laws are written by people who never stand for election, via processes contrary to those provided for in the Constitution, and, indeed, with the explicit purpose of excluding the American people from the decision making process and shielding policymakers from popular accountability.


But there’s good news: what a weak Congress has broken a strong Congress can fix.


The constitutional powers necessary to put a representative, accountable federal government back to work for the American people are still right there in Article I, ready to be reasserted.


That is why we launched the Article I Project.
While I applaud parallel efforts only amendments giving enforcement teeth will solve the problems.