In her Washington Post column Catherine Rampell has a modest proposal for curing the nation’s ills—throw the bums out:
If lawmakers are not going to perform their most basic constitutional functions, then what are we paying them (at minimum) $174,000 a year to do? We might as well can them all and save the money.
To be clear, this is not the only duty our derelict lawmakers have abdicated. Declaring war when we’re, in fact, at war comes to mind. As does, say, exercising the authority to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations†and lay import duties.
Over the past 80 years, Congress has voluntarily delegated much of this constitutional trade-regulating power away from itself and to the president, as trade historian Craig VanGrasstek lays out in his new book, “Trade and American Leadership.â€
More recently, Congress turned a blind eye as Trump abused even that generously re-delegated authority. Here, too, Trump cited similarly bogus “national security†rationales to justify his overreach. Yet in response, Republican lawmakers — members of a party that once embraced free trade and sounded the alarm about an “imperial presidency†— have introduced legislation that would give the president even more discretion to levy tariffs without their interference.
To disabuse Ms. Rampell of any misconception that the problem is solely one of Republicans, let me remind her that the National Emergency Act, which people are suddenly discovering granted the president sweeping authority without meaningful constraint to declare national emergencies and act on them, was enacted into law by a Democratic House majority, a veto-proof Democratic Senate majority, and signed into law by a Democratic president.
The problems to which she points are not merely problems of the Congress. They are problems of partisan politics. Here in Chicago we have nearly 20 candidates vying to be Chicago’s next mayor. All are Democrats. They believe very nearly the same things, express the same aspirations, espouse tremendously similar programs, and make nearly identical but impossible to fulfill promises. How does one choose among them? Why does one choose among them?
The Constitution provides for a sort of permanent revolution, the opportunity to replace the Congress every two years. It did not envision the eventuality of leaving the same Congress in place permanently, merely changing the namecards.
“They are problems of partisan politics.â€
More specifically, they are problems of politicians seeking power and wealth by making unfulfillable promises, and an electorate that either doesn’t care or has convinced themselves that they are in fact net beneficiaries. The latter explanation is at best, dubious.
Individual corrupt tyrants die. Corrupt tyrannical political parties don’t.
While it is true that this is a problem both parties face, the GOP currently controls POTUS, the Senate and SCOTUS, so if you are writing a column in 2019 they get the brunt of the criticism. On top of that, as she points out, conservatives are supposed to be the ones who by belief should oppose most of this behavior. This is a matter of hypocrisy or just completely throwing over professed beliefs for the sake of maintaining power. That makes for good copy. (Ever notice how much conservatives like to go after limousine liberals?)
Steve
Since Congress seems to mess everything up, my idea of paying them to do nothing at all must be deemed smart. Or, pay them to name DC streets, honor citizens or establish memorials. Anything but legislate!
Or, as Will Rogers put it, the difference between death and taxes is that death doesn’t get worse when Congress is in session.