This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, February 7th, 2020. I'm Keelib Brown.

Congress is obligated to provide oversight of the executive branch but in so many ways from the White House itself to executive agency rulemaking

Congress has abdicated many of its basic oversight functions.

So just how do we make Congress great again?

Cato's Will Yeatman offers his thoughts.

Congress, in pursuit of short-term gains, it seems throughout the 20th century and now on into the 21st century

has given away much of its mojo to the White House.

The process, it's known as delegation,

and it's the means by which the administrative state is created.

So it's a Congress passes a law that establishes

and endows these regulatory agencies with the powers that they wield over all of us.

And there's been you, it's a Congress has been doing it since

1887 when it established the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate rail

rates and it picked up steam during the progressive era and the New Deal era, and it has an abated sense,

and indeed it's where the overwhelming preponderance of modern lawmaking is actually performed.

I mean regulations with the force and effective law being turned out by these creations of Congress

way more so than laws being passed by Congress.

I'm reminded of Paul Ryan in 2016

saying that over this, what was the so-called Muslim ban.

Paul Ryan said, I would sue any president that exceeds his or her powers.

And that seems like yet another way of deflecting from the hard job that Congress could do of asserting

its Article I powers against a White House.

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