Did Anyone Notice Congress Was Gone?

M embers of Congress — calling them lawmakers would be too generous — returned to Washington this week from a month-long recess. For what reason, nobody can say. Senators will linger for three weeks of inactivity before heading home. Antsier still, the House ditched out today for seven weeks to allow for midterm campaigning. One has to wonder, for what purpose are members seeking reelection? What are they campaigning to do?

The cardinal defect of the Articles of Confederation was the absence of a centralized lawmaking body (with teeth) that was able, in Hamilton’s words, to steer “the direction of the most essential national interests.” Delegates at the Constitutional Convention rectified this deficiency with a national Congress — one furnished with a set of limited yet sturdy powers, including managing the fisc and raising a military.

Today, America has no shortage of national interests that demand real governance: a menacing security environment with adversaries on the hunt, a public debt scheduled to result in catastrophe, and a functionally unbound chief executive, to name a few. Addressing these matters is what Congress is for.

So, in such pressing times, what are Congress’s priorities? One popular idea for this year’s final session is to rescue Hollywood from its own bloated labor costs with a multi-billion-dollar federal subsidy. Another is to reestablish universities’ grip over the college-football cartel since “student-athletes” began claiming some of the money they generate. Or to spare parents the burden of parenting by indirectly censoring online speech. Meanwhile, proposals on matters of true importance, like permitting reform and AI regulation, are dead in the water.

Those are all the new ideas, anyway. Congress also needs to pass another continuing resolution, which simply extends current discretionary spending levels, to fund the government into next year. (It has not enacted a fresh consolidated appropriations bill — let alone twelve separate bills as it’s supposed to — since March 2024.) Republicans are especially eager to extend welfare in the form of farm subsidies. In the House, they wish to grow transportation spending by hundreds of billions of dollars above already enhanced (and supposedly temporary) levels, which they voted against when Joe Biden was president.

What else? Congress has allowed FISA 702, a critical tool for intelligence agencies to scour foreign communications, to lapse for three months and counting. It may want to reauthorize that before officers are left in the dark. Munitions are running perilously low. Will Congress appropriate billions of dollars to replenish stockpiles expended in the president’s war in Iran, which Congress declined to approve or prevent?

Speaking of the president, some might think he has too much statutory authority to exploit as is. Members of Congress know better. In the name of punishing Russia, they just approved a bill allowing the president to impose additional tariffs — of rates anywhere up to 100 percent — on ten countries that are not Russia. Just what the occupant of the Oval Office requires: more tariff power.

He has also developed a habit of grabbing stakes in private companies in exchange for favors, without any basis in law. Rather than forbid the practice, Senate Republicans plan to enshrine it in statute for every subsequent executive. By legitimizing the lawlessness, members figure, they are really establishing guardrails. This is what passes for oversight on Capitol Hill.

Deferring hard choices to the executive branch is just too easy for Congress to resist. For months, senators attempted to pass a bill to delineate rules for cryptocurrency. It failed when Republicans refused to include Democratic provisions to obstruct the White House’s burgeoning crypto empire. Instead, the alphabet-soup regulators are leaping to fill the gap. The legislature may edit their work later if it pleases — subject to a presidential veto, of course. Senator Tim Scott (R., S.C.) is unbothered by this arrangement, saying, “We moved the ball forward, and now it’s time for the SEC and CFTC to set clear rules of the road for digital assets until Congress legislates.” If not the policy of Congress, whose will are these executive agencies supposed to be executing?

The Confederation Congress under the Articles proved a failure when it could not control the nation’s debt or revenues, its currency, or its security. (Stop me if this sounds familiar.) Lacking true power, as it was vested with no coercive authority to enforce its proclamations, the body was confined to relatively trivial matters.

If power is defined as the ability to achieve intentions, our present Congress is equally devoid. Not because it lacks ability, but because it lacks intentions.