The point is to limit the administrative state and move power to congress (as you said), because federal rule making is relatively open, and the administration has experts.
If it moves to congress, they'll just take the legislation lobbyists hand them and pass it, because they don't have the expertise to actually write technical regulations.
Congress doesn't remotely have the bandwidth to explicitly write out and decide all the little rules it takes to regulate the country, even if they had a clue what they were doing in each case
It's pretty clearly designed to dismantle the federal regulatory apparatus
Then it should explicitly delegate that to the executive branch where applicable, as it does for other things. You don’t just throw away separation of powers because it’s convenient.
Congress has plenty of time and money. They are too busy jockeying for votes to do anything. The problem with congress is that they are too focused on winning elections instead of doing the GD job. I view this as yet another reason why we need strict term limits for members of congress. There are too many leeches.
Typical staff sizes for congresscritters seem to be about 60 people. I managed to get some salary data on them, and $5M total per congresscritter seems to be reasonable [0]. So, I dunno, double that cost for ancillary expenses and the like, you get ~$10M per congresscritter. Multiply that all out and you have ~26,000 people and ~$4.4B total.
The total spending of the whole US federal government is ~$4T with ~4M people employed. So, ~1000x the budget and ~150x the staff of all of congress and their staffers.
Sure, yeah, you can double or 10x the staff of congress, even up the budgets by 100x. Maybe only 1/10th of the budget is actually needed. Maybe you can get by with giggling the staffer pay ratios. Whatever. You're still really short.
Oh, and you still have to have the staff that was doing the original jobs of the congresscritter.
Unless you completely rejigger how congress works to the tune of a ~100x increase in budget and staff[1], there's just no way congress can take over that job.
[0] There's not really a database on this that I found. I just took a random sample of 35 congresscritters and then googled for their staff sizes and salaries. It's not definitive and it varies a fair amount, but 60 seems to be a high yet good estimate.
[1] Imagine trying to grow any business or enterprise by 100x. It would take a very very long time for the dust to settle. Let alone working all the kinks out of the system that you're creating from whole cloth. And that's a new system. You'd also have the fight with the old system when trying to do this between congress and the exec. branch. The likelihood of it occurring in any kind of reasonable timeline and in any kind of reasonable effectiveness is precisely 0.
Government works off of law, not merely intentions. Intentions can change. Laws are documented. otherwise what’s the keep of random police officer from deciding that they have the ability to regulate the applications on my phone? After all, they’re just keeping me safe.
Legislation often deliberately leaves interpretation of statutes to the agencies implementing the laws. The legislation can just say "The parks department shall keep the park safe and well-maintained," without specifying what 'safe' means, or how often they collect the trash.
Yes, a functioning government depends on parties acting in good faith and assumes everyone is working for the common good, not always achievable when vast sums of money are in play. This case is a great example.
Yes, the "minority" party that's currently 2 points ahead on the generic Congressional ballot (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/generic-ballot/), won 1.5 million more votes than Democrats in the 2016 House elections, and is on pace to win several million more votes than Democrats in the 2022 House elections. That's an interesting definition of "minority" you have there?
If we had a parliamentary system, I would agree with you. But the actual on the ground reality is Congress does not represent the actual will of the people due to malaportionment.
The main implication here is that the policy making decision tree needs to change.
Whereas before it was:
Do we have the political will to enact this from sea to shining sea via Federal legislation?
-> YES/NO
-> Can we enact this from sea to shining sea via fiat through an existing administrative agency?
-> YES/NO
-> Can we enact this from sea to shining sea via the SCOTUS?
-> YES/NO
-> Can we enact this policy gradually via the States?
-> YES/NO
Now it is:
Do we have the political will to enact this policy from sea to shining sea via Federal legislation?
-> YES/NO
-> Can we enact this policy gradually via the States?
-> YES/NO
The States themselves don't have the "malapportionment" problem, and insofar as Congress does, it's because the system was always set up for change to occur from the bottom-up, not the top-down. The EU refers to this as subsidiarity [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity_(European_Union)]. Congress is structured in exactly the same way as the EU, as well as other federations like Australia and Switzerland.
Justin Trudeau became Prime Minister of Canada last year despite his party winning almost 200,000 fewer votes than Conservatives. Does that mean that Canada's Parliament "does not represent the actual will of the people?"
If 'we had a parliamentary system" Biden would be shown the door next year when Republicans again win a majority of not only House seats, but total votes for House candidates.
Looking at the results for only the two largest parties when there are five parties in Canada's Parliament and none has an outright majority of seats is completely misleading.
Trudeau can only govern with the support of the NDP. Liberals plus NDP got a majority of the popular vote[1].
> The point is to limit the administrative state and move power to congress (as you said), because federal rule making is relatively open, and the administration has experts.
> If it moves to congress, they'll just take the legislation lobbyists hand them and pass it, because they don't have the expertise to actually write technical regulations.
Huh? Remember Ajit Pai? It hasn't been that long.
It's profoundly anti-democratic for major decisions to be made by unelected, unaccountable technocrats (with a comment period) than by actual elected representatives who can at least theoretically be held accountable through elections.
IMHO, the solution to this is probably just to pass a law that authorizes this regulation that simultaneously pays off the states who object so they feel it's an overall good deal for them (e.g. fund a nuclear plant and a bunch of new infrastructure for each of them).
Ajit Pai got kicked out when the administration changed! Exactly how it should be!
They're not unaccountable, the president can dismiss them. Just like Trump fired Janet Yellen, and SCOTUS already ruled the structure of CFPB where removal for cause was required is unconstitutional.
The idea congress is "democratic" is a huge joke. There's a reason why the House of Lords has essentially no power any more. Let alone the literal open corruption campaign finance is.
Everything you say may or may not be true, but it doesn’t address the point of the ruling or what's under debate. If you don’t believe that the Congress is representative of the will of the people, your issues are not with this or that law or SCOTUS ruling, but with the fundamental structures of the American republic.
> Biden is elected. He appoints experts. Experts craft regulations. When regulations screw up, Biden gets elected out. Experts get kicked out.
So just elect a king, then? There's a pretty strict division of powers in the US, and for good reason. Congress just needs to do its job and pass some legislation.
> Jesus, can you put aside the taking points and just think for yourself? Obviously no one is unaccountable. This is not some tin pot dictatorship like Fox is telling you to pretend it is.
I can tell you I am thinking for myself, at least as much as you probably are. Making an accusation like you have is also, frankly, against the site guidelines and not conductive to discussion.
Congress is not going to do it's job in this political climate and we don't have the luxury of new found proceduralism when so much is at stake.
"Just elect a king then?"
No, because that would be creating unaccountability where I just demonstrated it already exists. How is putting everyone's future in the hands of Joe Minchin and Mitch McConnell an improvement on that?
And again with the hyperbole. Instead of kings, let's stay in reality - the accountability issue you speak of is a red herring. Environment degradation presents an existential danger. Current legal and regulatory procedures are already slow in addressing it but they could have worked (for everyone except polluting industries and their shills). Scientist agree that faster action is required. Legislative obstructionism and a new appetite for legal originalism are just more obstacles that we can't afford.
All these points can be defended. You're just repeating ungrounded, abstract, Fox News, boogie man talking points without demonstrating any of them. I apologise if I caused offense, but saying that's thoughtless is not an accusation.
The point is to limit the administrative state and move power to congress (as you said), because federal rule making is relatively open, and the administration has experts.
If it moves to congress, they'll just take the legislation lobbyists hand them and pass it, because they don't have the expertise to actually write technical regulations.
This is a win for industry.