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That’s the history of separation of powers, the judiciary is the final check in the loop. It doesn’t fully explain why Congress has allowed the expansion of exe

by dmix 1mo ago

That’s the history of separation of powers, the judiciary is the final check in the loop. It doesn’t fully explain why Congress has allowed the expansion of executive power for nearly a century, resulting in more and more major issues being pushed to the Supreme Court. That’s not to say states have lost power, their reach has also grown exponentially far outpacing even the federal in terms of number of workers and written law. It’s mostly just Congress has become self satisfied on being negotiators for spending the most money in their own states, while ignoring the minimization of their role in the greater power dynamic. Everyone makes a big deal about president as the signal but IMO if you take a 10,000-foot view of US history Congress neutering itself is the real long term narrative. Including most major current populist issues like immigration, debt, war, abortion, etc. They are hands off unless it involves new spending.

vkou 1mo ago
> It doesn’t fully explain why Congress has allowed the expansion of executive power for nearly a century, resulting in more and more major issues being pushed to the Supreme Court. It's because the US is a presidential republic with no concept of a non-confidence vote. This makes the sitting head of the party ~impossible to remove, and when government fails to reach consensus, instead of... Having an election, and let the voters decide, power de-facto ends up in the hands of the executive.
- reliabilityguy 1mo ago
  I am not sure a vote of non-confidence would have helped here — there are only two parties.
  - deleted 1mo ago
    [deleted]
  - skissane 1mo ago
    > I am not sure a vote of non-confidence would have helped here — there are only two parties. But why are there only two parties? The rest of the Anglosphere–Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK–have multiparty systems–some are more multiparty than others, but none of them have the hard two-party system that the US has, in which third parties have a very marginal role (not completely marginal – e.g. in a close election, the decisions of New York's Conservative and Working Families parties can make a real difference to the outcome – but certainly at a national level third parties have no real power in the US.) First-past-the-post is a popular explanation, but it can't by itself explain it, since the UK and Canada use it, yet lack a US-style hard two party system (and with the rise of the Reform party in the UK, the British system is becoming less two-party than it has been in a long time.)
    - 0xbadcafebee 1mo ago
      Even if first-past-the-post could change, it's not the whole ballgame. To get on a state ballot you need thousands of petition signatures, and those signatures can be invalidated on technicalities brought up by major parties' legal teams. To be covered by the media or be included in a debate you need to poll at a high percentage. You can't get public funding to campaign unless you already had a high percentage of the vote in a previous election. Nobody will donate to you because the third party just detracts from the other two that will give the big donors what they want. And gerrymandering ensures the same people keep getting elected. All those roadblocks are in place because the two major parties put them there to prevent 3rd party challengers. The whole thing is rigged. Just to show up and get 1% of the vote, you would need a grassroots national movement to elect someone who was wildly popular, who could build a 50-state network of volunteers (including legal, political, financial, community organizing, etc), sponsored by someone with extremely deep pockets that doesn't want anything from established political figures. And you'd still lose. We have representatives already. The problem is we never hold their feet to the fire. We keep voting for the same useless bastards, and we don't vote them out when they do nothing. Half the country doesn't vote. That's our own responsibility we're shirking. Rather than get a new party, we need to get off our collective asses, and use the existing power we have to force the parties to do their jobs.
    - consp 1mo ago
      I dont see how the uk system's small parties are not marginalized. The larger parties still claim outright majorities with 35% of the votes or less (last time 172 seat majority with 33.2% of the votes) so they are irellevant. If I am not mistaken all disruptions to fpp two party systems eventually settle back into them, maybe not the same parties but two nonetheless.
      - jfengel 1mo ago
        The smaller parties are all aligned with one of the two major parties. In a lot of ways they act more like caucuses than separate parties. Like Bernie Sanders being "independent". That's overstating it, but it's why the largest group always can form a government. They go to the same aligned parties looking for a majority.
fooey 1mo ago
the lesson congress learned from the Hillary Clinton coronation getting derailed by Obama was to absolutely never ever vote on anything important
- reliabilityguy 1mo ago
  Can you elaborate what you mean?
  - mlrtime 1mo ago
    In 2002, Hillary Clinton voted for the Iraq War. In 2008 Obama used that fact successfully to [help] win the Democratic nomination and went on to beat McCain.
fweimer 1mo ago
> It doesn’t fully explain why Congress has allowed the expansion of executive power for nearly a century, resulting in more and more major issues being pushed to the Supreme Court. It's not just about executive power. In recent times, Congress failed to adjust the written law when societal consensus shifted, and the discrepancy was resolved the courts, and ultimately the Supreme Court. I don't think Congress would pass something like the Civil Rights Act under the current circumstances. This isn't good for a democracy because the political debate that is part of the regular legislative process is lost.
jfengel 1mo ago
I think it does largely explain it. Congress can't do even necessary things. On the rare occasions they can, they create an executive branch agency and give it the power to write regulations. They know that Congress is neither qualified nor capable of handling it. Then when the executive takes more power they have little ability to opposite it. Especially since there is a significant Congressional delegation who believes in the Unitary Executive theory, who will interfere with attempts to rein it in. I believe it is entirely due to the Founders being intent on pitting Congress against itself, while the President is a single person. They initially tried a half-assed version of that by making the runner up Vice President, but that was quickly seen to be useless. There is a lot more to be said over a quarter millennium, but that is the fundamental design flaw.
- dmix 1mo ago
  That’s a great point. Congress largely just generates new federal agencies, where there is now about 400+, and then mixing responsibilities for running them. Combine that the executive order mandate scheme and appointment/independence thing being vaguely defined. So it basically continuously empowers the executive each generation while Congress is scared to respond. Which is other half in how the two parties perfected building loyalty schemes, where the president or leading opposition candidate can kill off a congressional candidate with their influence and easily stack congress with their people. I’d personally ban a sitting president or ex president from getting involved in Congress or senate run. Also maybe a similar scheme for the Supreme Court.

by dmix 1mo ago

vkou 1mo ago

> It doesn’t fully explain why Congress has allowed the expansion of executive power for nearly a century, resulting in more and more major issues being pushed to the Supreme Court. It's because the US is a presidential republic with no concept of a non-confidence vote. This makes the sitting head of the party ~impossible to remove, and when government fails to reach consensus, instead of... Having an election, and let the voters decide, power de-facto ends up in the hands of the executive.

reliabilityguy 1mo ago
I am not sure a vote of non-confidence would have helped here — there are only two parties.
- deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
- skissane 1mo ago
  > I am not sure a vote of non-confidence would have helped here — there are only two parties. But why are there only two parties? The rest of the Anglosphere–Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK–have multiparty systems–some are more multiparty than others, but none of them have the hard two-party system that the US has, in which third parties have a very marginal role (not completely marginal – e.g. in a close election, the decisions of New York's Conservative and Working Families parties can make a real difference to the outcome – but certainly at a national level third parties have no real power in the US.) First-past-the-post is a popular explanation, but it can't by itself explain it, since the UK and Canada use it, yet lack a US-style hard two party system (and with the rise of the Reform party in the UK, the British system is becoming less two-party than it has been in a long time.)
  - 0xbadcafebee 1mo ago
    Even if first-past-the-post could change, it's not the whole ballgame. To get on a state ballot you need thousands of petition signatures, and those signatures can be invalidated on technicalities brought up by major parties' legal teams. To be covered by the media or be included in a debate you need to poll at a high percentage. You can't get public funding to campaign unless you already had a high percentage of the vote in a previous election. Nobody will donate to you because the third party just detracts from the other two that will give the big donors what they want. And gerrymandering ensures the same people keep getting elected. All those roadblocks are in place because the two major parties put them there to prevent 3rd party challengers. The whole thing is rigged. Just to show up and get 1% of the vote, you would need a grassroots national movement to elect someone who was wildly popular, who could build a 50-state network of volunteers (including legal, political, financial, community organizing, etc), sponsored by someone with extremely deep pockets that doesn't want anything from established political figures. And you'd still lose. We have representatives already. The problem is we never hold their feet to the fire. We keep voting for the same useless bastards, and we don't vote them out when they do nothing. Half the country doesn't vote. That's our own responsibility we're shirking. Rather than get a new party, we need to get off our collective asses, and use the existing power we have to force the parties to do their jobs.
  - consp 1mo ago
    I dont see how the uk system's small parties are not marginalized. The larger parties still claim outright majorities with 35% of the votes or less (last time 172 seat majority with 33.2% of the votes) so they are irellevant. If I am not mistaken all disruptions to fpp two party systems eventually settle back into them, maybe not the same parties but two nonetheless.
    - jfengel 1mo ago
      The smaller parties are all aligned with one of the two major parties. In a lot of ways they act more like caucuses than separate parties. Like Bernie Sanders being "independent". That's overstating it, but it's why the largest group always can form a government. They go to the same aligned parties looking for a majority.

fooey 1mo ago

the lesson congress learned from the Hillary Clinton coronation getting derailed by Obama was to absolutely never ever vote on anything important

reliabilityguy 1mo ago
Can you elaborate what you mean?
- mlrtime 1mo ago
  In 2002, Hillary Clinton voted for the Iraq War. In 2008 Obama used that fact successfully to [help] win the Democratic nomination and went on to beat McCain.

fweimer 1mo ago

> It doesn’t fully explain why Congress has allowed the expansion of executive power for nearly a century, resulting in more and more major issues being pushed to the Supreme Court. It's not just about executive power. In recent times, Congress failed to adjust the written law when societal consensus shifted, and the discrepancy was resolved the courts, and ultimately the Supreme Court. I don't think Congress would pass something like the Civil Rights Act under the current circumstances. This isn't good for a democracy because the political debate that is part of the regular legislative process is lost.

jfengel 1mo ago

I think it does largely explain it. Congress can't do even necessary things. On the rare occasions they can, they create an executive branch agency and give it the power to write regulations. They know that Congress is neither qualified nor capable of handling it. Then when the executive takes more power they have little ability to opposite it. Especially since there is a significant Congressional delegation who believes in the Unitary Executive theory, who will interfere with attempts to rein it in. I believe it is entirely due to the Founders being intent on pitting Congress against itself, while the President is a single person. They initially tried a half-assed version of that by making the runner up Vice President, but that was quickly seen to be useless. There is a lot more to be said over a quarter millennium, but that is the fundamental design flaw.

dmix 1mo ago
That’s a great point. Congress largely just generates new federal agencies, where there is now about 400+, and then mixing responsibilities for running them. Combine that the executive order mandate scheme and appointment/independence thing being vaguely defined. So it basically continuously empowers the executive each generation while Congress is scared to respond. Which is other half in how the two parties perfected building loyalty schemes, where the president or leading opposition candidate can kill off a congressional candidate with their influence and easily stack congress with their people. I’d personally ban a sitting president or ex president from getting involved in Congress or senate run. Also maybe a similar scheme for the Supreme Court.