It seems completely infeasible to me to think that Congress and its staff is capable of drafting reasonable legislation without considerable input from the exec

It seems completely infeasible to me to think that Congress and its staff is capable of drafting reasonable legislation without considerable input from the executive agencies. I understand the general conflict of interest you are concerned about but that is why there are separate branches. The executive branch can only propose and/or respond to inquiries, they can't actually introduce legislation. (I'm just going to ignore the rabbit hole of regulatory contruction here as that is another can of worms)