Comment by wvenable
9 days ago
I don't know why you were down voted this is exactly correct. The system is not working as intended though; it was designed to be adversarial with each branch expected to want to keep its own power. The whole system falls apart when the other branches of government simply abdicate all their power.
Congress didn't _abdicate_ their power. Trump stole it. One of his first actions in office was to free the violent mob he sent after Congress last time they exercised power against him.
There's a much stronger argument that Trump's personality cult in the current GOP legislature is doing the same.
Threatening primaries and social media tirades against his legislative opponents chases any Republican willing to check him out of the party.
I mean, Christ, only 2 fiscal conservative Republicans had an issue with deficit spending greater than what the House had passed? And a debt limit increase?
The real problem with Congressional GOP independence is that enough of them don't decide something is too much at the same time. Ones and twos are easily picked off.
If we're being honest, the GOP never had a problem with deficit spending. It was under Republican administrations that the debt and deficits have grown the most, after all.
It just happens to be a useful cudgel to beat the Democrats over the head anytime they want to spend money, both because the debt really is something that will have to be addressed at some point and because most voters are too stupid (or willfully ignorant) to keep track of which party is really doing all the spending and what said spending has been for.