Kevin Portteus’s essay, “Congress and the Collapse of Constitutional Republicanism in America,” is nominally a meditation on congressional dysfunction. But it’s much more than that. He offers a deep reflection on the administrative state and the breakdown of our institutions under its weight.
Portteus begins by accurately noting that Congress’s favorite activity is not legislating. Instead, it follows the other two branches of the federal government in governing by decidedly extra-constitutional means, including executive orders and actions, administrative rulemaking, and judicial meddling. As he says, “Through both positive action conferring legislative power on others, and the failure to address important issues through legislation, legislative power has steadily passed from its constitutionally-designated home to other actors.” Congress has voluntarily ceded its own authority. So much for James Madison’s argument in Federalist 51 that ambition will counteract ambition.
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