A Call for Congressional Oversight not Lawmaking

A Proposal

Article I of the US Constitution establishes Congress as the supreme legislative body. Article II establishes the office of the President and effectively tasks the President with enforcing and otherwise carrying out the laws passed by Congress. For those reasons, Congress is known as the "legislative branch" and the President is recognized as the head of the "executive branch".

While today the separation of the legislative and executive powers established by the US Constitution seems like a no-brainer, the assignment of those duties was, in my opinion, actually a very bad decision. And while that assertion will surely be shocking to many, please hear me out.

I believe the role of the democratically elected representatives of the people should not be to draft laws; that should be left to lawyers and domain experts. Rather, the role of our representatives in Congress should be to provide oversight over the executive branch. More specifically, Congress's primary job should be to ensure that the executive branch obeys all enacted laws when carrying out its duties.

Here, in fact, are the specific authorities I believe Congress should have been vested with:

1. the authority to charter agencies of the federal government and delegate to such agencies specific duties and authorities,

2. all authorities necessary to conduct comprehensive investigations related to the conduct of the agencies of the federal government,

3. the unrestricted authority to recall any officer, whether elected or not, and any employee of the federal government agencies,

4. the authority to enact or reject any law, treaty, tariff, tax, or regulation proposed by any agency of the federal government, and

5. the authority to review and approve the annual proposed budget and operational plans for each agency of the federal government.

Furthermore, as I have expressed in my October 11th blog titled Reforming the Executive Branch, I believe the executive branch should not be aggregated into a single, monolithic entity overseen by a single executive. Instead, the executive branch should be disaggregated into discrete agencies with their own charters, missions, and chief executive officers. Each agency's chief executive officer should also be appointed by a selection committee and be able to be recalled by popular vote.

Note too that I believe a supermajority vote by Congress (rather than a simple majority vote) in favor of any proposed law, treaty, tariff, tax, or regulation should be required in order for it to be enacted. Requiring a supermajority guarantees that whatever is passed will serve the true interests of the people.

The Rational Behind the Proposal

When Congress is empowered to both author and enact laws, as it is currently, there is effectively no "watchdog" to assure that Congress carries out the will of the people. The members of Congress therefore act in their own self-interests--whatever those interests might be--when drafting and approving legislation. And the ability of the President to veto legislation passed by Congress provides little to no relief as the motivations of the President cannot be known.

Ideally legislation should be clear, concise and target a specific need. However, a review of legislation passed by Congress makes clear that such legislation today is rarely focused on addressing a specific need. Instead, such legislation tends to reflect a mishmash of political objectives, often unrelated and frequently not widely endorsed by the public. And the fact that most legislation passes with a barely sufficient majority vote is evidence of the poor quality of the legislation that is passed.

Note also that, for nearly 40 years, the US operated under what was known as the "Chevron doctrine", where the US Supreme Court recognized that, when it came to the interpretation of legislation, the domain experts were generally employees of the executive branch. It makes little sense therefore to draft laws in the "legislative" branch when the domain experts required for drafting effective laws actually reside in the executive branch.

Reassigning the drafting of legislation to the executive branch and leaving the enactment of legislation to Congress would allow for the oversight over the legislation enactment process that is badly needed. The people need to be able to tell the government "NO!" when the government exceeds or misuses its authority. When Congress drafts and enacts laws on its own, the people are left without a voice.

For an example of how the legislation drafting and enacting powers might be better assigned, I would recommend the following website: nationalconstitutionprototype.org.