Sometimes the title of a book says it all. And that’s the case with a just-released collection of essays by the late, great David McCullough: “History Matters.”
In the book’s first two sentences, McCullough tells us why: “History tells us how to behave. History teaches, reinforces what we believe in, what we stand for, and what we ought to be willing to stand up for.” Making no effort to understand our history, McCullough adds, “isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude. It’s a form of ingratitude.”
But one thing about history: those who are living through historic times aren’t necessarily aware of it. In the last century, Americans who made the transition from a manufacturing economy to a service economy didn’t decide to make history. They just needed jobs, and they went where the new jobs were.
By the same measure, most Americans today don’t realize that we’re witnessing an historic change in governance: the disappearance of the U.S. Congress as a meaningful and essential institution. It didn’t happen overnight, but we are getting close to the point where Congress doesn’t matter anymore.
Seriously, when was the last time you remember Congress passing any significant legislation? Monumental achievements like Medicare, the Clean Air Act, the Voting Rights Act, or the Civil Rights Act, aren’t possible anymore. This 119th Congress, like the last few sessions, is incapable of probing, debating, and resolving such weighty issues. It can’t even manage its most basic job of keeping the government running.
Sadly, history will show that nobody seized Congress or stole away its authority. Its wounds are self-inflicted. Through laziness, lack of courage, or sheer party loyalty over what’s best for the nation, members of Congress gradually ceded their powers, starting with the power to declare war.
The Constitution is clear: Under Article 1, Section 8, only Congress has the power to declare war. Yet Congress has not exercised that power since World War II. In 1950, President Harry Truman bypassed Congress and ordered U.S. military intervention on the Korean peninsula. Since then, every American war — Vietnam, Gulf War, Afghanistan, and Iraq — has been launched by a president. Congress has ceded its war-making power to the president and is unlikely ever to get it back.
This year, Congress made another huge concession, voluntarily surrendering what is perhaps its most-prized responsibility: control of federal spending. Again, the Constitution is clear. Only Congress has the power of the purse. A president cannot refuse to spend money already appropriated by Congress — unless it cedes that power to the president, which it has.
In July, the Republican-controlled House and Senate voted to let President Trump rescind $9 billion in funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting already approved by Congress. Even though $9 billion is just a small slice of the overall federal budget, Forbes magazine called it a “tectonic shift” in the balance of powers and one that Congress may soon regret. Because, again, once having ceded ultimate power over spending to the White House, they may never get it back.
But, as historian Douglas Brinkley recently revealed in a speech to the White House Historical Association, it is by issuing executive orders that presidents have most persistently eroded the power of the legislative branch. It is a practice used by every president since George Washington for some of the most important measures ever taken by the U.S.
The Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order issued by President Lincoln, not an act of Congress. President Teddy Roosevelt used an executive order to save the Grand Canyon and create 150 national forests. President Franklin Roosevelt used it to shape the New Deal, launch the Manhattan Project and force the internment of Japanese-Americans. Truman used it to desegregate the Armed Forces. President Kennedy used it to create the Peace Corps.
President Trump, of course, is especially fond of executive orders. He signed 26 on his first day in office alone and continues to sign more of them, with flourish, almost every day. But, with a total of 209 signed as of Oct. 9, he has a long way to go to beat the 3,721 signed by FDR.
Executive orders have one fatal flaw: They’re not permanent. Any executive order issued by one president can be undone by an executive order signed by his successor, as Trump has repeatedly done for Joe Biden. But they all serve one purpose: to expand the powers of the president and weaken the powers of Congress.
So much for the balance of powers designed by James Madison. Who needs Congress anymore?
Bill Press is host of “The Bill Press Pod.” He is the author of “From the Left: A Life in the Crossfire.”
