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by anon291 717 days ago
> that congress has been in deadlock for partisan reasons.

If Congress is in deadlock, that means that Americans cannot agree on the rules. In that case, yes... no rules ought to be made, because it's not going to represent American's interests writ large.

You are actually arguing that rules should be made up by unelected bureaucrats while admitting that the representatives substantially disagree on those rules and would not be able to legislate them themselves.

That means you are asking bureaucrats to go against the collective will of democratically elected representatives.

1 comments

Is the Supreme Court elected now? When did I vote to have the Supreme Court stacked in such a way?

And if your argument is 'congress is in deadlock so no rules ought to be made' then fine. Except the Supreme Court is continuing to make up rules during that deadlock, many of which have a direct and measurable impact on my daily quality of life.

Problem is: At some point, someone has to make rules. The world changes, technology changes, new problems emerge that cannot magically solve themselves. Congress has been nonfunctional for my entire adult life. Consequently, with a few bipartisan exceptions, Federal law is stuck in 1993. Should it be stuck in 1993 forever? Think about it for a minute--should Congress simply stop doing anything from now on because we are perpetually split exactly 50-50 on every possible issue?
This is why, historically, Congress delegates duties to different agencies and empowers them with authority. Both so that experts in their respective fields can do their job, and so that they can continue to make decisions in the wake of congress being nonfunctional.

So what happens when the Supreme Court steps in and says that delegated authority is no longer valid? The answer is that we become more nonfunctional and the intention is clear, because the court has partisan objectives.

> So what happens when the Supreme Court steps in and says that delegated authority is no longer valid? The answer is that we become more nonfunctional and the intention is clear, because the court has partisan objectives.

Given that the overwhelming majority of government workers are themselves partisan in one direction (DC is by far majority democrat, and government workers the same), one can easily argue the opposite: that allowing bureaucratic rule making is itself partisan.