J.D. Vance Is Wrong: Congress Is Indeed ‘a High-Class Debating Society’
Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio) attempted to shield the Trump administration from criticism during the vice presidential debate on Tuesday by claiming that Congress was not “doing its job.” Vance complained that Congress is not a “high-class debating society” but “a forum to govern.” Congress has resembled the former more than the latter for decades.
Vance was responding to a question about his past disparagement of former President Donald Trump’s failure to deliver his promised agenda of economic populism. After admitting to changing his mind about Trump, Vance pivoted to blame Congress for not cooperating with the Trump administration’s legislative agenda. According to Vance, legislators were too busy “whin[ing] about problems” to pass bills on “on the border [and] on tariffs.”
Congress’ inability to legislate substantive issues has contributed to the ongoing immigration crisis. As Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz pointed out during the debate, immigration policy must be “done by the legislature—you can’t just do this through the executive branch.”
Both the Trump and Biden administrations have tried. In January 2017, Trump called for the construction of a physical wall along the Mexican-American border in an executive order. More recently, the Biden-Harris administration took action in June to limit asylum claims by migrants crossing the southern border.
That’s how most big policy issues are resolved these days: by the executive branch, not Congress. It’s a trend that began with the 1946 passage of the Administrative Procedures Act, which granted executive agencies the power to issue “substantive rule[s] or order[s]…within jurisdiction delegated to t
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