Our Dysfunctional Congress

At first blush the article by Jon N. Hall at the American Thinker entitled Congress Is Dysfunctional, So Send In The Cavalry sounds like a cry for a coup d'etat. What he is actually talking about, however, is to declare martial law on the border and send in the army to turn back the invasion. But before Hall gets to the crisis on the border, he first takes apart the role of Congress itself:

Having presided over the nation’s first trillion-dollar deficit in 2009, Pelosi is the most fiscally disastrous speaker in history. Voters were warned that she was lying about ever abiding by her promises of PAYGO. Every so-called “moderate” Democrat representative who vowed to not vote for this ridiculous woman to be Speaker of the House (third in line to the president) but who then voted for her, should be “primaried” in 2020, and never heard from again.

House Democrats are an alarming admixture of hoary antiques and feral children. But these two groups have one thing in common: the answer to everything is more government and more spending.

But Congress has been shedding its responsibilities for decades. Congress has ceded over its own authority and duties to the judiciary (by not removing judges who “legislate from the bench”), to the Federal Reserve (by expecting the Fed to keep unemployment down, rather than using fiscal policy to help the economy), and to the bureaucrats of the administrative state (i.e. the permanent government) to create regulations that have the same impact as laws. Congress has also forked over power to the president, such as the power to levy tariffs. There are exceptions, of course, but nowadays Congress is more like a gaggle of effete palace courtiers than a body of serious lawmakers.

Frankly, I have been saying the same things for years. What gives the Congress the authority to pass of their responsibilities under the Constitution to unelected bureaucrats and the judiciary? In fact, nothing. The Constitution is fairly clear that legislative power rests in the Congress, and the Congress alone.  The Federal agencies may make rules for themselves, but they can not make regulations and impose them on us.  Only Congress can do that.  There would be fewer regulations if Congress had to make them. 

Finally, Hall gets to the border crisis, and using a Tucker Carlson segment notes that we have troops in something like 163 foreign countries.  These troops could be brought home, and defend our own border.

A damn good idea, I say.