After seeing Bush in office, the sensible thing to do would have been to reduce presidential power. Nobody bothered. Then again after Trump. Biden didn't do a damn thing to reduce presidential power, knowing what happened and what could happen. Way too late. The judiciary and congress are now both subservient to the president.
Well, for his part Biden's DOJ did argue in court against the idea of blanket presidential immunity. SCOTUS disagreed, said POTUS needed more power.
For Congress' part, they did pass laws that make a lot of what Trump is doing now with impoundment of congressional funds, and firing inspectors general explicitly illegal. He's doing it anyway.
But the reason Trump is able to do what he's doing now comes down to the structure of the DOJ being an executive branch he controls. Combined with his immunity from SCOTUS. This means he can argue anything he does isn't a crime, no one will investigate or prosecute him, and he can pardon anyone acting in his direction / direct his DOJ to not prosecute them.
Nothing Biden or Democrats could do about this, because at the end of the day, Republicans decided they deserve this power, and they grabbed it for themselves. It was always there for the taking, they just needed to convince themselves with words and court decisions and speeches that they had the right.
"imagination" here is an euphemism for lawlessness. Democrats believe in democracy. This whole plan requires Trump exerting full control over the DOJ and FBI rather than what is typically done which is allow them to act independently.
It's hard to unwind that clock. The next admin will may leverage that consolidated power to undo trump harms, but also see the benefits of keeping that power. I pray congress mandates the political independence of certain federal agencies (FBI, doj etc)
The supreme court sure did take power away from the executive in Sacket v EPA, Ohio v EPA, and Biden v Nebraska, but it's likely that reasoning only applies to liberal presidents for the 6-3 conservative federalist society majority.
Repealing Chevron deference implies that everything which used to be left to regulatory agencies must now be passed via legislation or litigated in court. Which of those sounds like faster change?
Because they see themselves as Democrats and Republicans more than they see themselves as Members of Congress. The identity/loyalty issue seems to be the main problem.
If they see themselves first as Members of Congress, then they should try to seek more power for Congress, not for their parties.
Too bad the bill had things unrelated to limiting the presidential power like
> requires a candidate for President or Vice President to provide copies of tax returns for the 10 most recent taxable years to the Federal Election Commission.
> establishes a program to support states and localities transition to ranked choice voting systems.
While things that I support, it frustrates me that congress can't propose bills that are hyper focused on one issue.
I don't think those line items would have made the difference either way. Until the turbo-filibuster we have today is curtailed, most legislation is DOA from the jump.
Congress has slowly abdicated its power to the other two branches of government over the decades. As a consequence, it's become more and more performative over time. This reality ends up changing the type of people who even seek high office in the first place. Legislators get replaced by social media influencers.
At this point, congress is primarily a judge appointment machine.
And civic institutions that actually want to get things done, adjust accordingly. They spend less time drafting bills and lobbying congress, and more time fighting for change through the courts or by lobbying the executive directly.
Pork Barrel is the term you're thinking of, but generally speaking that applies to spending that gets slapped onto unrelated bills, not necessarily to more general bloat like this stuff. Riders is probably the more accurate term
The vast majority of congressional seats (both chambers) are safe seats and can't reasonably be flipped to the other party unless there is massive upheaval.
The real elections for those seats happen in partisan primaries, where hyper-partisan ideologues are over represented. The electoral danger for most members of congress therefore comes from primary challengers catering to those ideological primary voters, and so incumbents have to defend their seats by being more partisan than the primary challengers. And so the partisanship keeps ratcheting up and up.
The Republican party has been totally consumed by this and is now just a hollowed out cult of personality. The only way most Republicans can keep their seats is through total loyalty to Trump. Otherwise they get primaried.
The extreme filibuster we have today also makes most legislation impossible - so the job of a member of congress has become more and more performative.
At the same time, the population as a whole is sorting itself into like minded enclaves. Red areas are getting redder and blue areas are getting bluer.
If we could somehow get rid of partisan primaries, the filibuster, and expand the house by several factors, we could improve the situation. But it's all so broken already, I don't know if we can get there.
> If we could somehow get rid of partisan primaries, the filibuster, and expand the house by several factors
Honestly, just fixing the absurd gerrymandering (on both sides) would help with this. In basically every other developed country the governments have no powers to draw the electoral boundaries, which seems to work better.
> The identity/loyalty issue seems to be the main problem.
It always has been. Even back in Rome there were the plebeians and the patricians.
Demagogues rose to power based on party lines, corruption grew, and then Rome fell.
What we are seeing today is what naturally happens when you fail to teach future leaders history, and instead they are taught, but this time it will be different.
The House passed this Act in 2021 to reduce the presidents power, but Biden never asked the senate to act on it. Reducing his own power wasn’t a priority for him, he spent his political capital on pushing for other laws.