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Identify for me the error? Congress delegates sweeping authority to the executive branch and appropriates a slush fund instead of discrete appropriations. Havin
by rayiner 2y ago
Identify for me the error? Congress delegates sweeping authority to the executive branch and appropriates a slush fund instead of discrete appropriations. Having done so, why can’t the executive branch then exercise that discretion as he sees fit? Your only counter argument is something about “oversight”—but what’s the constitutional standard for how much the president needs to supervise those to whom he delegates authority?
If Congress has become “dysfunctional,” as you put it, isn’t it even more important for the executive branch to be highly responsive to elections? Otherwise you’re positing a system where all the governance is performed by a civil service comprised 90% of laptop class democrats, with elected Congress merely laying out procedural rules for how policy should be adopted and the elected president merely supervising compliance with those rules. I can see why democrats love this idea, but I can’t imagine why you’d think it would be a persuasive argument to anyone else.
Speaking of “lawless”—if legal conservatives stooped to finding constitutional principles in “emanations from penumbras” we’d have a heck of a lot more fun. Why not have a “living constitution” that reflects our view of what modern developments demand?
- dctoedt 2y ago> what’s the constitutional standard for how much the president needs to supervise those to whom he delegates authority? It’s GOT to be more than seems to be happening now.
- dctoedt 2y agoEdit: And it's not just presidential supervision, it's the whole checks-and-balances thing — designed as safeguards against just the sort of thing we're seeing now.
- selimthegrim 2y agoIsn’t Second amendment incorporation to the states (and the completely expected result of undocumented immigrants claiming firearms rights) basically what you’re asking for?
- dctoedt 2y ago> Why not have a “living constitution” that reflects our view of what modern developments demand? Because "[y]our view" is dangerously naïve about human nature, and might have been serviceable in earlier times but less likely to be so now?