> It has been called one of the least productive Congresses since 1951
Let’s not measure productivity in terms of count of bills passed like measuring output by lines of code.
Healthcare reform, SS reform, fiscal sustainability, electoral reform, climate, immigration, information environment, cybersecurity, how many of these pressing issues have been tackled and solved by congress?
Congress has two parties in ut and one of them is strictly opposed to all of these. The issue is not doing nothing, the issue is large parts of population and their political representation being actively against it.
Talking about it in abstract, to make it sound like the congress ia a monolith where all are ambivalent ... is part of the problem.
Exactly. They raise campaign funds and appear on tv and cross examine industry leaders like Altman and Zuckerberg. Clearly that is not “nothing”. But some worry that is not enough to keep pace with emerging threats and opportunities and that’s given justification for presidents to increasingly fill that gap, to disastrous effect. Some argue that a single strong leader calling the shots via EOs is better than having congress try to get up to speed on complex, emerging matters (ie AI export controls) but I’m unconvinced.
Something 'taking an Act of Congress' (to indicate that it's difficult and time-consuming) is in the lexicon for a reason. It's been true of the US legislative process for that long.
But!
That isn't to say that after the gears grind, Congress doesn't complete important and essential work, even in toxic times.
The nihilism of a blatently false claim that Congress is doing nothing just feeds into 'so let someone else do it' fervor. Untrue memes can be dangerous.
> Instead, they consistently cede their legislative authority to bureaucrats by creating office after office of unelected regulators who generate reams of rules with the power of law but with no democratic oversight.
The irony of saying that in a thread about the NSF getting gutted is palpable.
