The Loss Of Congress - And, Thus, Our Voice in Government

[Spare_change]

Reviving a Constitutional Congress

(,,,)
In recent decades power has shifted dramatically away from Congress—primarily to the executive but also to the judiciary.

Part of the shift has resulted from presidents, executive agencies, and courts seizing congressional prerogatives. This part of the story has been much in the news. President Obama has effectively rewritten important provisions of the Affordable Care Act and immigration law, while circumventing the Constitution’s requirement of Senate approval for senior executive appointments. The Environmental Protection Agency has contorted the Clean Air Act beyond recognition to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses—and has done so after Congress declined to embark on such regulation. The Supreme Court has acquiesced in most of these executive usurpations, while taking for itself the authority to decide live political controversies. It played both roles last June, first approving the Obama administration’s unilateral extension of tax credits to persons who purchase health insurance on the federal Obamacare exchange, then declaring same-sex marriage a constitutional right.

But the most important part of the story has an opposite plot: Congress itself, despite its complaints about executive and judicial poaching, has been giving up its constitutional powers voluntarily and proactively for decades. Since the early 1970s, Congress has delegated broad lawmaking authority to a proliferating array of regulatory agencies, from EPA and OSHA in the early years to numerous executive councils, boards, and bureaus under Obamacare and Dodd-Frank in 2010. In the new dispensation, members of Congress vote bravely for clean air, affordable health care, and sound finance, while leaving the real policy decisions to executive agencies.

In recent years, Congress has even handed off its constitutional crown jewels—its exclusive powers, assigned in Article I, Sections 8 and 9, to determine federal taxing and spending. Several executive agencies now set and collect their own taxes or generate revenues in other ways, and spend the proceeds on themselves or on grant programs of their own devising, without congressional involvement. Most members of the current Congress cannot even remember the days when that body passed annual appropriations, agency by agency, often with riders directing how the agencies may and may not spend the funds. More recently, following its hapless efforts to use the debt ceiling to force policy concessions from the administration, Congress washed its hands of the borrowing power, too, telling the Treasury that it may borrow as needed to pay the government’s bills for a set period of time.

(...)

 

[waltky]

Granny says, "Dat's right - dat 'Do-nuthin' Congress ain't doin' nothin'...

Congress 'AWOL' on ‘All Significant Investigations of Misconduct by Federal Gov’t.’
August 12, 2016 – Congress has been “AWOL [absent without leave] on almost all significant investigations of misconduct by the federal government,” Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton told CNSNews.com on Thursday. Fitton made the comments after the conservative watchdog group made public 296 pages of previously unreleased State Department records, including 44 emails that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton failed to turn over last year despite her sworn declaration that she had done so.

The emails “show [that] the Clinton Foundation, Clinton donors, and operatives worked with Hillary Clinton in potential violation of the law,” according to the conservative watchdog group, which currently has 18 active Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits. Over the past four years, Judicial Watch has uncovered troves of new information dating back to 2009 on Clinton’s use of a private email server to conduct government business and the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya while she was secretary of state that has apparently eluded seven congressional committees. CNSNews.com asked Fitton if any members of Congress have been in contact with his group regarding these latest revelations. “We have not had any interest from members of Congress in our work,” Fitton replied.

Asked if he was surprised by that, Fitton answered: “No. Congress as an institution is AWOL on almost all significant investigations of misconduct by the federal government,” he said. “Whether they’re incapable or unwilling or too conflicted or compromised, they are not conducting investigations of any significant nature. So we keep on doing our work independent of Congress.” CNSNews also asked Fitton if he was surprised to discover that former Clinton aide Huma Abedin was allowed to work at the Clinton Foundation and a consulting firm tied to the Clinton family while she was employed at the State Department. “I was not surprised at all, and this is the tip of the iceberg, I guarantee you,” he replied. State Dept. documents also show that on Dec. 11, 2012, spokesman Brock Johnson informed Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s former chief-of staff, that “Anne Weismann [of] Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) [is] requesting records sufficient [to] show the number of .email accounts associated with” Clinton.

On Wednesday, Judicial Watch released Mills’ responses to interrogatories in which Mills acknowledged “having conversations with Bryan Pagliano….in or around March 2013, when the email account of [Clinton advisor] Sidney Blumenthal was compromised by a hacker known as Guccifer. As I recall, these discussions involved whether this event might affect Secretary Clinton’s email…” Pagliano, who helped set up Clinton’s private email server while she was secretary of state, refused to testify before a House committee investigating Benghazi. In April, President Obama said he would not interfere with the FBI’s investigation into Clinton’s private email server. But “there was no investigation to interfere with,” Fitton told CNSNews. Fitton noted that the FBI’s Public Integrity Unit failed to find any criminal offenses despite the fact that classified information was found on Clinton’s private server.

In a July 5 statement, FBI director James Comey said that “although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.” That was the same FBI unit that also investigated the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of 426 tax-exempt organizations, including many conservative and Tea Party groups, Fitton pointed out. Last October, the Justice Department informed members of Congress that “our investigation found no evidence that any IRS employee acted with criminal intent…. What occurred is disquieting and may necessitate corrective action – but it does not warrant criminal prosecution.” Judicial Watch has been granted discovery by two federal judges in two of the 18 FOIA cases it has filed. One of those two cases involves Abedin’s outside employment with the Clinton Foundation. The other lawsuit involves the now discredited “talking points” used by former UN Ambassador Susan Rise in an discredited attempt to link an anti-Muslim video with the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya in which U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed.

Judicial Watch provided CNSNews with a list of its major court filings:

 

[yiostheoy]

Reviving a Constitutional Congress

(,,,)
In recent decades power has shifted dramatically away from Congress—primarily to the executive but also to the judiciary.

Part of the shift has resulted from presidents, executive agencies, and courts seizing congressional prerogatives. This part of the story has been much in the news. President Obama has effectively rewritten important provisions of the Affordable Care Act and immigration law, while circumventing the Constitution’s requirement of Senate approval for senior executive appointments. The Environmental Protection Agency has contorted the Clean Air Act beyond recognition to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses—and has done so after Congress declined to embark on such regulation. The Supreme Court has acquiesced in most of these executive usurpations, while taking for itself the authority to decide live political controversies. It played both roles last June, first approving the Obama administration’s unilateral extension of tax credits to persons who purchase health insurance on the federal Obamacare exchange, then declaring same-sex marriage a constitutional right.

But the most important part of the story has an opposite plot: Congress itself, despite its complaints about executive and judicial poaching, has been giving up its constitutional powers voluntarily and proactively for decades. Since the early 1970s, Congress has delegated broad lawmaking authority to a proliferating array of regulatory agencies, from EPA and OSHA in the early years to numerous executive councils, boards, and bureaus under Obamacare and Dodd-Frank in 2010. In the new dispensation, members of Congress vote bravely for clean air, affordable health care, and sound finance, while leaving the real policy decisions to executive agencies.

In recent years, Congress has even handed off its constitutional crown jewels—its exclusive powers, assigned in Article I, Sections 8 and 9, to determine federal taxing and spending. Several executive agencies now set and collect their own taxes or generate revenues in other ways, and spend the proceeds on themselves or on grant programs of their own devising, without congressional involvement. Most members of the current Congress cannot even remember the days when that body passed annual appropriations, agency by agency, often with riders directing how the agencies may and may not spend the funds. More recently, following its hapless efforts to use the debt ceiling to force policy concessions from the administration, Congress washed its hands of the borrowing power, too, telling the Treasury that it may borrow as needed to pay the government’s bills for a set period of time.

(...)

Bullsh!t.

You saw the power that Boehner had and the chaos he wrecked upon America.

You need to revisit your bullsh!t thinking on that.

 

[owebo]

Reviving a Constitutional Congress

(,,,)
In recent decades power has shifted dramatically away from Congress—primarily to the executive but also to the judiciary.

Part of the shift has resulted from presidents, executive agencies, and courts seizing congressional prerogatives. This part of the story has been much in the news. President Obama has effectively rewritten important provisions of the Affordable Care Act and immigration law, while circumventing the Constitution’s requirement of Senate approval for senior executive appointments. The Environmental Protection Agency has contorted the Clean Air Act beyond recognition to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses—and has done so after Congress declined to embark on such regulation. The Supreme Court has acquiesced in most of these executive usurpations, while taking for itself the authority to decide live political controversies. It played both roles last June, first approving the Obama administration’s unilateral extension of tax credits to persons who purchase health insurance on the federal Obamacare exchange, then declaring same-sex marriage a constitutional right.

But the most important part of the story has an opposite plot: Congress itself, despite its complaints about executive and judicial poaching, has been giving up its constitutional powers voluntarily and proactively for decades. Since the early 1970s, Congress has delegated broad lawmaking authority to a proliferating array of regulatory agencies, from EPA and OSHA in the early years to numerous executive councils, boards, and bureaus under Obamacare and Dodd-Frank in 2010. In the new dispensation, members of Congress vote bravely for clean air, affordable health care, and sound finance, while leaving the real policy decisions to executive agencies.

In recent years, Congress has even handed off its constitutional crown jewels—its exclusive powers, assigned in Article I, Sections 8 and 9, to determine federal taxing and spending. Several executive agencies now set and collect their own taxes or generate revenues in other ways, and spend the proceeds on themselves or on grant programs of their own devising, without congressional involvement. Most members of the current Congress cannot even remember the days when that body passed annual appropriations, agency by agency, often with riders directing how the agencies may and may not spend the funds. More recently, following its hapless efforts to use the debt ceiling to force policy concessions from the administration, Congress washed its hands of the borrowing power, too, telling the Treasury that it may borrow as needed to pay the government’s bills for a set period of time.

(...)

Bullsh!t.

You saw the power that Boehner had and the chaos he wrecked upon America.

You need to revisit your bullsh!t thinking on that.

I must have missed that...

 

[Spare_change]

Reviving a Constitutional Congress

(,,,)
In recent decades power has shifted dramatically away from Congress—primarily to the executive but also to the judiciary.

Part of the shift has resulted from presidents, executive agencies, and courts seizing congressional prerogatives. This part of the story has been much in the news. President Obama has effectively rewritten important provisions of the Affordable Care Act and immigration law, while circumventing the Constitution’s requirement of Senate approval for senior executive appointments. The Environmental Protection Agency has contorted the Clean Air Act beyond recognition to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses—and has done so after Congress declined to embark on such regulation. The Supreme Court has acquiesced in most of these executive usurpations, while taking for itself the authority to decide live political controversies. It played both roles last June, first approving the Obama administration’s unilateral extension of tax credits to persons who purchase health insurance on the federal Obamacare exchange, then declaring same-sex marriage a constitutional right.

But the most important part of the story has an opposite plot: Congress itself, despite its complaints about executive and judicial poaching, has been giving up its constitutional powers voluntarily and proactively for decades. Since the early 1970s, Congress has delegated broad lawmaking authority to a proliferating array of regulatory agencies, from EPA and OSHA in the early years to numerous executive councils, boards, and bureaus under Obamacare and Dodd-Frank in 2010. In the new dispensation, members of Congress vote bravely for clean air, affordable health care, and sound finance, while leaving the real policy decisions to executive agencies.

In recent years, Congress has even handed off its constitutional crown jewels—its exclusive powers, assigned in Article I, Sections 8 and 9, to determine federal taxing and spending. Several executive agencies now set and collect their own taxes or generate revenues in other ways, and spend the proceeds on themselves or on grant programs of their own devising, without congressional involvement. Most members of the current Congress cannot even remember the days when that body passed annual appropriations, agency by agency, often with riders directing how the agencies may and may not spend the funds. More recently, following its hapless efforts to use the debt ceiling to force policy concessions from the administration, Congress washed its hands of the borrowing power, too, telling the Treasury that it may borrow as needed to pay the government’s bills for a set period of time.

(...)

Bullsh!t.

You saw the power that Boehner had and the chaos he wrecked upon America.

You need to revisit your bullsh!t thinking on that.

What a succinct, carefully considered, and insightful response.

Now ..... open the other eye.