[HN Gopher] Congress Became the Weakest Branch
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Congress Became the Weakest Branch
Author : marojejian
Score : 9 points
Date : 2026-04-04 19:43 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.aei.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.aei.org)
| marojejian wrote:
| Read this as part of my effort to understand this question. Seems
| like a good overview. while the solutions proposed seems good,
| they also appear to small/tactical
| verdverm wrote:
| Jon Stewart's podcast with Heather Cox Richardson this last
| week is similarly good input for thinking about these things.
| salawat wrote:
| If they wouldn't have shut down the Office of Technology
| Assessment, legislators may actually have research collated
| that's more free of bias than whatever it is that the lobbyists
| vomit all over them, but we can't have nice things. Fucking
| Gingrich.
| fasterik wrote:
| I've felt increasingly politically homeless over the past few
| years. Neither major party appears to care about the two largest
| problems facing the U.S.: the national debt, and the inability of
| Congress to assert the powers delegated to it by the
| Constitution. Though the problems become obvious to one party
| while the other is in power, they end up doing nothing about it
| when the pendulum swings back.
|
| Getting rid of the filibuster, adding more seats to the House,
| and states adopting some form of ranked choice voting, would be a
| good start. Ultimately we will need a broader cultural shift back
| to the values of the Founders: rule of law, federalism, and
| limited government. Unfortunately with the rise of populism on
| the right and left, it doesn't seem like we are headed in the
| right direction.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Neither major party appears to care about the two largest
| problems facing the U.S._
|
| Forget about national politics and parties. Focus on the races
| in front of you. Irrespective of consequence. Local, primary,
| pre-primary informal caucusing, _et cetera_. It's tedious. But
| there is a shocking amount of power that even small amounts of
| civic engagement away from general elections brings.
|
| Unless the only issues you care about are hot button, there is
| a good chance you can individually sway policy outcomes in a
| meaningful way. (I have.)
| Arodex wrote:
| If you honestly think think both sides are "abusing the same
| power", you clearly are oblivious.
|
| Which your proposal to abolish the filibuster further proves:
| it would make governing even more a "winner-takes-all" game. Or
| ranked choice voting: you can't even stop Republicans from
| gerrymandering. (And no, gerrymandering is not done by "both
| sides". California did it as reprisal and put provisions to get
| back to a fair system when Republicans stop gerrymandering. And
| gerrymandering is the official strategy of the GOP from bottom
| to top.)
| fasterik wrote:
| Your quote "abusing the same power" appears nowhere in my
| post. I am saying that neither Democrats nor Republicans,
| when they get into power, do anything to bring the deficit
| down to 3% of GDP as is recommended by economists, or to
| constrain the military actions and executive orders of the
| President on their side. I'm not making a "both sides are
| equally bad" argument, I'm saying that neither side is doing
| what it would take to fix the problem.
|
| I'm willing to go either way on the fillibuster; that was
| just one example which the article talks about. In
| particular, they talk about filibuster reform rather than
| abolishing it, so I may have worded it too strongly in my
| original post. Still, I think there's a legitimate argument
| that the increase in use of the filibuster over the past few
| decades has had the practical consequence of delegating
| legislative power to the Executive branch.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| The first sentence of Article II is "the executive Power shall be
| vested in a President of the United States of America" [1].
|
| That should be changed to "the President shall execute the laws
| of the United States of America." Rule of law.
|
| (My other pet Article II amendment is striking "and he shall have
| Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the
| United States, except in Cases of Impeachment" from SS 2 and
| switching to direct election for the President.)
|
| [1] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-2/
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