[compsciphd]

this is the general answer. Why is congress punting the "lawmaking" bureaucracy to the executive instead of it being under its own branch.

There are 2 possible reasons I see.

1) having to change the political leadership of it every 2 years (instead of 4) means it possibly wont be as effective.

2) as there is both a "lawmaking" and "enforcement" aspect to it, it makes sense for it to be under "one roof" so to speak, and it would probably be more problematic for the executive to cede that to congress than vice versa.

perhaps there are other reasons? and one can counter the above reasons?

[biggermike]

1) Congressional leadership tends to change hands less often than presidential. 2) I'd argue that the two powers are separable. The subgroup writing the rules tends to be different from the one executing them. There's also nothing stopping these groups from consulting with one another.

[compsciphd]

is 1 really true? we have elections every 2 years for it. how many periods of time have we had no change in control of the senate or the house for 4 2 straight elections? what about fo 4 straight? vs how many times we've had dual term presidents? (serious, don't know the answer to that question, though i could probably look it up)

[biggermike]

> is 1 really true? we have elections every 2 years for it. how many periods of time have we had no change in control of the senate or the house for 4 2 straight elections? what about fo 4 straight? vs how many times we've had dual term presidents? (serious, don't know the answer to that question, though i could probably look it up)

You can take a look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_Stat.... You'll notice that the individual chambers of congress change hands less often than the presidency.

Additionally, Congress has a high incumbency rate. Even in huge swing years like 2018, the makeup of Congress remains largely the same.