Don’t blame the Constitution for congressional inaction
Opinion by Zachary Faria, Washington Examiner, 7/13/22
Writing for the Atlantic, David French laments that the Constitution “isn’t working” because Congress refuses to do its job. “What if Congress simply doesn’t do anything?” French asks.
The answer to that is quite simple. If Congress doesn’t do anything, then nothing is done.
In his piece, French highlights two recent Supreme Court decisions: The court striking down regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency and affirming that President Joe Biden was able to reverse the “Remain in Mexico” immigration policy. Through the EPA ruling and others, including Biden’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration vaccine mandate and former President Donald Trump’s attempts to add to the 2020 census, the Supreme Court is rightly skeptical of the executive branch using powers it does not have.
According to French, this means that “a dangerous game is afoot.” The Supreme Court is telling Congress to do its job and insisting that the role can’t be filled by the president or his executive agencies. This is a problem because Congress has devolved into a “collection of partisan foot soldiers.” The executive branch has only been responding to “serious and problematic congressional inaction.” As French notes, “the Supreme Court can deny the president additional power, but it cannot force Congress to do its work.”
That is correct. The nine justices of the Supreme Court can’t force Congress to work, but another group of people who go unmentioned in French’s piece can: voters. If voters do not approve of the job their elected representatives are doing, they can send them home and elect someone who better represents them. If people want their members of Congress to respond to “legitimate concerns about climate change,” they will elect them to do so. If not enough members of Congress have been elected to act, then nothing will be done.
The people get the government they vote for. If they choose to send wannabe pundits to Congress instead of people who actually want to legislate, then that is what our legislature will be. Legislative inaction is itself a course of action by the legislature, not a license for the executive branch to begin making laws.
There are plenty of problems with the American system, chief among them the nationalization of our politics to the point that people demand Congress (or the executive branch) impose one-size-fits-all solutions on the country. The executive branch not being able to do Congress’s job is not one of those problems, and the Supreme Court preventing it from doing so does not mean the Constitution is failing.