| > Of course, the point of the legislative branch is to restrict expansions of power from the other branches. That's almost exactly the opposite of the point of the legislative branch, since the other branches have very little power not explicitly granted by the legislature, and the legislative branch principally acts by defining and granting functions to the executive and judicial branches. > Theoretically the legislative branch has the ability to restrict the capabilities of federal agencies More to the point, federal agencies only exist because they are created by Congress, and only have powers because they are given them by Congress. Its not a theoretical power that Congress has over them, but a practical one whose exercise is the only reasons the agencies exist and have any power at all. If Congress doesn't take action that you think it should against a federal agency, that's because a sufficiently large portion of Congress doesn't want to take that action, not because Congress has only a theoretical but not practical power over the agency. > but it's extremely unlikely we will ever see a heavy ruling against them. Congress doesn't make rulings, that's the judicial branch. Congress has substantially restricted the powers of commissions and even abolished them. (A notable example being the one that served as a structural model for pretty much all other "independent" regulatory agencies, the Interstate Commerce Commission, whose powers were stripped in a series of deregulation movements culminating in the abolition of the Commission in 1995.) |