It's bad when even LIBERAL Law Professor Jonathan Turley says Congress is making itself irrelevant - Granite Grok

It’s bad when even LIBERAL Law Professor Jonathan Turley says Congress is making itself irrelevant


I have been saying this for a number of years now – that Congress has been following in the footsteps of the Roman Senate – still having the self-righteous words, the rhetorical flourishes – in that it has killed it self by a thousand cuts bills.  More and more, and solely for the sake of their re-election careers, deliberately fail to do their jobs.  They won’t make the hard choices, the difficult decisions that we expect our elected legislators to make.  In doing so, they have made Congress (both the House and the Senate) more and more irrelevant.  They have done so by, for decades, turning over their responsibility to make decisions (i.e., LAW)  to the Executive Branch – which has taken that and now more, seeing the supineness that both the House and Senate have exhibited.  Instead of jealously guarding its Constitutional mandates and powers, they blithely write laws that tell the Executive Branch “go ahead, you make the decisions that we won’t for the sake of reelection” (i.e., “the Secretary SHALL <insert weasel words that tell some agency to make the decisions that these Congressional Political Cowards refuse to do).

And in doing so, many of us on the Right believe this Country is at a tipping point.  Pretty bad, too, when those on the Left that still believe in the Constitutional Governance Model are making the big warnings as well:

Cowards – I have no other way of expressing it.

They have the power to use it (although the Progressive Dems (and a few Repubs as well) but won’t.  The power of the purse, the power of impeachment – have we turned past that corner where Party / ideological partisanship is gone post-Constitutional?  The Framers expected that each Branch would robustly defend its domains – how can we ordinary people clean up the detritus that is being created by a Branch that refuses to do its duty to ITSELF (and thus, by us)?

I don’t mind “Congressional stalemate” in the least – it means that bad ideas and legislation that does not have a broad swath of legitimacy will not pass.  Which means that the Constitutional checks and balances are working.  What I do have a problem with is when an entire Branch refuses to defend itself – a stalemate of an entirely different crisis because it means that for our current time, with this particular Executive President, there is no effective check and balance at all – a free hand.

This is what happens when a Government goes so far beyond “limited” as to become a Royal Aristocracy of and by itself.

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