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Something, something small enough to drown it in the bathtub.

This isn't new. Republicans have always worked to erode government offerings to justify further cuts. What is new is the scale and speed.

Is there literally nothing Congress can do or are they just doing nothing?




Yes, but Grover Norquist thought the path was tax cuts → Congressionally mandated spending cuts → worse government. Trump/2025/DOGE's big innovation has been skipping the first step and simply ignoring Congress' "power of the purse" and unilaterally (and illegally) withholding spending as they see fit [1]

The US constitutional system was always built on "norms," good faith, and an assumption that even personally corrupt actors in power won't act to burn the whole system down, or will fear the consequences of the rule of law. It's always been the case that Congress and the Supreme Court don't have cops or soldiers at their command, so the enforcement powers of 2 out of 3 branches of the federal government rely to some extent on fears that the system will find some way to dole out consequences, or a good faith belief in the rule of law. Even Nixon resigned once the Supreme Court ruled that he had to release the tapes.

However, the Supreme Court has essentially ruled that a president (at least, a Republican president) is immune from personal consequences for everything, so at this point an authoritarian-minded president can behave as a king. Congressional Republicans would likely prefer not to cede their power but more than that, they don't want to cross Trump for fear of being defeated in a primary by a Trump-backed challenger. The appeal of a job that at this point almost exclusively consists of debasing oneself is beyond me.

[1] A great primer on exactly why this illegal withholding of congressional spending is unconstitutional can be found in Senator Murphy's confrontation with DHS Secretary Noem earlier this week. Murphy documents how the department is illegally impounding funds, violating Supreme Court orders, and ignoring statutory requirements - creating precisely the constitutional crisis predicted when an administration decides it can simply disregard Congress's power of the purse: https://www.murphy.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/murphy...


They’ve been doing nothing for decades.


> They’ve been doing nothing for decades.

Here's a list of the 250+ pieces of nothing that the 118th Congress passed.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acts_of_the_118th_Un...

If you're going to reach for hyperbole, at least make it defensible.


The Wikipedia article you link states:

> It has been called one of the least productive Congresses since 1951

Let’s not measure productivity in terms of count of bills passed like measuring output by lines of code.

Healthcare reform, SS reform, fiscal sustainability, electoral reform, climate, immigration, information environment, cybersecurity, how many of these pressing issues have been tackled and solved by congress?


Congress has two parties in ut and one of them is strictly opposed to all of these. The issue is not doing nothing, the issue is large parts of population and their political representation being actively against it.

Talking about it in abstract, to make it sound like the congress ia a monolith where all are ambivalent ... is part of the problem.


If "nothing for decades" isn't true, then parent can use different words.

"Least productive" != "nothing"

If language collapses into describing a different reality just because of the way someone feels, then communicating is going to be difficult.


Exactly. They raise campaign funds and appear on tv and cross examine industry leaders like Altman and Zuckerberg. Clearly that is not “nothing”. But some worry that is not enough to keep pace with emerging threats and opportunities and that’s given justification for presidents to increasingly fill that gap, to disastrous effect. Some argue that a single strong leader calling the shots via EOs is better than having congress try to get up to speed on complex, emerging matters (ie AI export controls) but I’m unconvinced.


Something 'taking an Act of Congress' (to indicate that it's difficult and time-consuming) is in the lexicon for a reason. It's been true of the US legislative process for that long.

But!

That isn't to say that after the gears grind, Congress doesn't complete important and essential work, even in toxic times.

The nihilism of a blatently false claim that Congress is doing nothing just feeds into 'so let someone else do it' fervor. Untrue memes can be dangerous.


[flagged]


> Instead, they consistently cede their legislative authority to bureaucrats by creating office after office of unelected regulators who generate reams of rules with the power of law but with no democratic oversight.

The irony of saying that in a thread about the NSF getting gutted is palpable.


That's clearly not accurate. Congress has passed continuing resolutions in some years but they've also passed budgets. E.g in 2024, they passed this: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/4366 .


Ten democrats in the senate voted with the republicans, giving Trump (filibuster-proof) free rein for his entire agenda for the rest of 2025.

So, yeah, there’s stuff they can do, and they’ve already accomplished a lot this year.




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