Make Congress Great Again

Congress' power has been dwindling for decades. This is (generally) the result of a burgeoning executive branch; we can debate about who and why are responsible for the president's steady growth, but it's hardly debatable that the presidency now is quite different from the presidency back in 1880. And most of that power has been absorbed away from Congress. Ideally, the legislative branch makes laws, and the executive branch carries them out. But along this trend, the executive branch has begun to make laws and then execute them. This leaves Congress, most of the time, doing nothing.

But why is that? The founders feared that any one of our three branches would take too much power for themselves. Thus, they designed the three to work against each other, limiting each other. The president could (or should) do little without Congress' direction. If he did, the judiciary ruled his actions unlawful, and corrected them. If someone wanted the law to change (which it was meant to do), Congress was perfectly at liberty to do exactly that. The judges could overturn the laws, if necessary, but they were appointed by the president, etc. It all formed a circle, putting those valuable checks and balances on each level of government to prevent tyranny, while still allowing each citizen to have a participatory voice in his or her own rule. You see, the whole Constitutional system was meant to reflect the will of the American people. To change along with it. But slowly. The government is meant to be the brakes that stop any one person, any one party, any one ideology from infringing on the rights of others, while at the same time still reflecting those beliefs in the law of the land.

But the system, if not broken, is showing cracks. And while there's no single reason for that, Congress deserves a healthy portion of blame. Of course there's the obvious stuff, like failing to vote to impeach in the aftermath of January 6th. But that's not even what I mean. Rather, it's sitting idly by as president after president walks all over them.

Congress is a continuous body. Its members serve two- and six-year terms. It's constantly fluctuating, but there is no single 'flip' point like there is with the presidency. It is unhealthy and disruptive when the entire country must dwell upon the whims of one octogenarian for four full years and then is forced to completely reverse and dwell upon the whims of a new octogenarian just one day later. This much should be obvious. Well, the good news is that this isn't how it's supposed to be. The bad news is that Congress will have to become much more functional in order to change things.

The 118th Congress (from 2023-2025) passed fewer laws than any other Congress in decades (since at least the 1980s). Odd, you say, passing laws is literally Congress' only job. Well, there's the rub. Let's take a fairly prominent example: the asylum problem at the southern border. According to a 1951 law (passed in the aftermath of WWII and reiterated in the Refugee Act passed by Congress in 1980) the United States is obliged to recognize legitimate asylum claims. In short, it is the law of the land that anyone, once over the border, can claim asylum (basically, you have a legitimate fear of harm in your home country) and therefore has a lawful right to be heard in an asylum case. There are 600 immigration judges. The backlog for these cases is in the millions. Anyway, that's why you can't legally just kick them out. It's a violation of U.S. law.

Now, no one disagrees that this is a severe problem. This isn't the situation the original laws were intended to establish. Good news! Congress can change that, whenever they want. They could write up a law clarifying and correcting the procedure for the present day, and it should pass 95-5.

Why don't they? Well, the incentives are all broken. Republicans have run on the border issue for over a decade now, as far back as I can remember. What are they going to run on when it's fixed? There's the public messaging of crossing party lines in our virulently partisan political climate. Democrats aren't about to pony up to Republicans on one of their signicant policy platforms (although recently, that has begun to change. Is the bluff being called?)

A more functional Congress would benefit us all. The party lines should be less firmly drawn. Edmund Burke said that the elected official was not an empty figurehead, beholden to obey his constituents' wishes. Instead, voters elect someone they trust to make those decisions for them. If they believe he did a bad job, they are free to elect someone else next time. (Burke, after telling his constituents this, lost re-election). However, he was exactly correct. Congress would be better if its members cared less about their party and their funding and their reelection and more about governing well. Consider Trump's recent tariff oafishness: setting tariffs is expressly Congress's job. They could end this charade, again, at any moment they choose. In a sane world, such a bill would be supported by both sides of the aisle, surpass 75% of the vote and even be veto-proof. This applies to both sides: do Republicans actually want to destroy the Department of Education (established by an act of Congress in 1979)? Is it better for the country? Nothing's stopping them. It adds to accountability: if you actually support this, put your name on it, and go home and defend it to the people who have to deal with the consequences. That's healthy! That's how our government is supposed to operate, rather than dealing with the ketamine-fueled hijinks of an unelected Wormtongue.

There are many things to be angry about in our current era of government, and I worry that that's a feature, not a bug. But Congress holds the power to restore our nation to a modicum of respectable self-control. This is the easiest solution, and the healthiest: it brings us back to the way our Constitutional system is meant to operate, and be another feather in the cap of the best-designed government man has ever created.