On Congress and the Delegation of Legislative Power

Resolved, That it be upheld as follows:

Presidential control over the executive is paramount because the President is the only person elected in the executive branch. If the President cannot control the executive branch, neither can the people.

Section 2. Congress, unlike any other government body, is representative of the broad and united interests of the nation. Congress is most closely connected to people's local lives, reflects the actual changing population of the country, and is large enough in number to be forced to arrive at logical and flattering consensuses regarding legislative affairs.

Section 3. Congress has acceded much of its legislative power over the years to the executive branch. This is the central meaning of the Supreme Court's characterization of the executive bureaucracy as a fourth branch of government.

Section 4. Congress, viewing the increasing technological specialization of society as too complex to manage alone, or foolishly wishing to place that management in a less deliberative body, responded to the growing role of government by placing a significant portion of its regulatory power in executive agencies.

Section 5. Whereas Congress formerly passed laws containing all regulations and prescriptions within them, leaving the executive a relatively narrow window of interpretation and execution, Congress now writes broad laws, creates agencies to execute them, and leaves the actual content of the prescriptions and rules entirely to the executive.

Section 6. Because the executive branch is theoretically governed by one person while Congress is governed by many, Congress is far more suited to craft legislation, rules, and prescriptions, being informed by the wide consensus of the representatives of the popular will. The law is supposed to be the consensus of millions of people and their hundreds of elected representatives, not the decree of a single person.

Section 7. Legislative power must return to Congress. If Congress has difficulty making laws, that power ought to be returned to the states rather than prescribed from a single seat of centralized power.