Senator Bill Cassidy recently made headlines by complaining that Donald Trump treats Congress like a mere appendage. The political establishment nodded in solemn agreement. Commentators wrung their hands over the erosion of checks and balances.
They are all missing the point.
Congress is not being reduced to an appendage by an overreaching executive. Congress transformed itself into an appendage decades ago, by choice, because actual governance is bad for re-election. The outrage from Capitol Hill is not about a loss of constitutional authority. It is about the discomfort of having the curtain pulled back on their own self-inflicted impotence.
For generations, the legislative branch has systematically outsourced its primary responsibilities to the executive branch and unelected regulatory agencies. When a senator laments that the presidency is too powerful, they are complaining about a monster they built, fed, and house-trained.
The Great Legislative Abdication
The textbook version of American government says Congress writes the laws and the president executes them. That version has been dead for half a century.
Instead of writing precise statutes, modern congresses pass massive, vague frameworks. They use sweeping language, directing agencies to ensure "clean air" or "fair market practices," and then leave the actual lawmaking to unelected bureaucrats.
Why do they do this? Because writing specific laws requires making hard choices. Hard choices create angry voters. If a lawmaker votes for a specific regulation that shuts down a factory in their district, they lose their job. But if they vote for a broad, virtuous-sounding framework and an agency shuts down the factory, the lawmaker can stand in front of the cameras, express outrage, and run for re-election as a champion of the working class.
Imagine a scenario where a corporate board decides to stop making product decisions, delegates all strategy to the CEO, and then spends every annual meeting complaining that the CEO runs the company. The shareholders would fire the board. In Washington, we re-elect them.
I have spent years watching the mechanics of policy implementation from the inside. The dirty secret of Washington is that lawmakers do not want the power they swear an oath to uphold. Power requires accountability, and accountability is political suicide.
The Myth of the Imperial Presidency
The political class loves the narrative of the imperial presidency because it provides a convenient villain. If the executive branch is an unstoppable force of overreach, then the legislative branch is a tragic victim.
This is a complete inversion of reality. The executive branch has expanded because Congress willfully vacated the premises.
Consider the War Powers Resolution of 1973. It was supposed to check the president's ability to commit forces to armed conflict without congressional approval. In practice, it became a template for Congress to wash its hands of military intervention. Presidents deploy troops, and lawmakers wait to see how the public reacts. If the intervention succeeds, they wave the flag. If it goes sideways, they cite the War Powers Act and blame the commander-in-chief.
The same dynamic applies to the national budget. Congress is constitutionally mandated to handle the power of the purse. Yet, the formal budget process has been broken for years. Instead of passing twelve distinct appropriations bills, Congress routinely relies on continuing resolutions and massive omnibus packages cooked up by a handful of leaders in backrooms at midnight. They do not even read the text before voting on it.
When an administration uses executive orders to bypass a stalled legislature, it is not a coup. It is the natural consequence of a legislative body that has rendered itself incapable of passing standard legislation.
Why Lawmakers Prefer Cable News to Committee Rooms
The modern lawmaker is not a legislator. They are a content creator who happens to have a voting card.
The incentives of Capitol Hill have completely shifted away from policy craftsmanship toward narrative management. Success is no longer measured by the complexity of a bill you guided through committee. It is measured by small-dollar fundraising metrics, social media engagement, and the frequency of your appearances on prime-time cable news.
The Death of the Committee System
The real work of a functioning legislature happens in committee rooms, away from the cameras. It involves grueling hours of staff briefings, expert testimony, and line-by-line markups of legislative text.
Today, committee hearings are largely theatrical productions. Members ignore the witnesses, read pre-written statements designed to generate viral clips, and hurl insults across the aisle. The actual policy work is outsourced to K Street lobbyists and think tanks.
The Weaponization of Gridlock
Gridlock is no longer a failure of the system; it is the desired product. A solved problem cannot be used to raise money. A perpetual grievance can keep a campaign war chest full for a decade.
If Congress actually negotiated and passed a comprehensive immigration bill or a structural tax reform package, both parties would lose their most potent fundraising narratives. By keeping these issues permanently unresolved, lawmakers can continue to blame the opposing party or the occupant of the White House while doing absolutely nothing.
The Cost of the Performance
This systemic abdication has severe consequences for the stability of the nation. When the laws of a country are dictated by executive orders rather than legislative statutes, stability vanishes.
Every four to eight years, the entire regulatory landscape undergoes a violent shift. A policy enacted by one administration is erased by the next with the stroke of a pen. Businesses cannot plan long-term investments, foreign allies cannot trust long-term commitments, and citizens are left guessing which rules apply from one week to the next.
This instability is the direct result of a legislature that refuses to do its job. A law passed by Congress is difficult to repeal; an executive order can be undone in an afternoon. By forcing the presidency to govern through decrees, Congress ensures that American policy remains fragile and chaotic.
Dismantling the Premise of Congressional Outrage
When politicians like Cassidy complain about being treated as an appendage, they are asking the public to defend an institution that refuses to defend itself. They want the prestige of the office without the responsibility of the work.
Let us address the questions that naturally arise when this institutional failure is exposed.
If Congress is weak, why do trillions of dollars still flow through their bills?
The ability to pass massive spending packages does not equal legislative strength. It equals fiscal cowardice. Piling trillions of dollars into omnibus bills to keep the lights on is an act of desperation, not governance. It is the financial equivalent of a landlord neglecting building maintenance and constantly paying for emergency repairs while the structure rots.
Can the judiciary force Congress to take back its power?
The Supreme Court has made moves to curb the administrative state, notably by rolling back long-standing legal doctrines that gave federal agencies wide latitude to interpret vague laws. The judiciary is essentially telling Congress: "You must write clear laws if you want them enforced."
The reaction from Capitol Hill has not been a triumphant return to legislative drafting. Instead, it has been panic. Lawmakers are suddenly faced with the terrifying prospect of having to understand the technical details of the industries they regulate.
The Uncomfortable Solution
Fixing this requires an approach that goes entirely against the self-interest of current politicians. It is an approach that will likely result in shorter political careers and fewer viral moments.
- Reclaim the Regulatory Authority: Congress must stop passing vague bills. If an issue requires technical expertise, Congress must hire the experts directly to staff legislative committees rather than outsourcing the interpretation to executive agencies.
- Force Individual Votes: Eliminate the omnibus spending model. Force lawmakers to vote on specific department budgets out in the open. Make them defend every dollar spent or cut on the record.
- End the Permanent Campaign: If lawmakers spend three days a week fundraising in luxury suites and two days a week delivering speeches to empty chambers for the C-SPAN cameras, they are not legislators. They are fundraisers. The legislative calendar must be restructured to force members to stay in Washington and work through committees.
The downside to this approach is obvious. The legislative process will slow down to a crawl. Fewer bills will pass. Lawmakers will face intense backlash from their constituents for taking definitive stances on controversial issues. Many of them will lose their seats.
But that is precisely how the system was designed to work. It was supposed to be difficult, deliberate, and dangerous for the political survival of those who get it wrong.
Stop blaming the presidency for taking the power that Congress willingly left on the table. If the legislative branch wants to be treated as a co-equal branch of government, they need to stop acting like a glorified press corps and start doing the heavy lifting of governance. Until they do, they will remain exactly what they are: an appendage.
