Opinion | What if Congress Were in Charge, Not Trump?

Our constitutional system cannot function this way. To repair it, Congress will have to reclaim its place. This certainly means taking oversight seriously, and the assorted misbehaviors of the Trump administration must surely be on the agenda. But it is crucial that the reassertion of congressional power be at its core a reassertion of legislative power, not just of oversight. Fighting the president is not what Congress is for. And the fact that Congress has forgotten what it is for is bad news for our constitutional system.

What might a recovery of Congress’s sense of purpose look like? It would have to begin with a recognition that Congress has become too consolidated in an effort to compete with the president’s executive capacities rather than exercising its own legislative capacities.

The budget process most fully embodies this deformation, and a revival of the Congress would need to begin with some deconsolidation of that process — for instance, by eliminating the distinction between authorization and appropriation, Congress could set spending levels on programs when it defines those programs rather than leaving all budget decisions for one big up or down vote as a shutdown nears. Breaking up budgeting into smaller portions would create more opportunities for real legislative work.

Similarly, some of the consolidated power of party leaders in Congress should be distributed again through the congressional committees, enabling more members to be more involved taking the lead in legislating and letting some unpredictable coalitions take shape. When committees’ work matters, members of those committees gain meaningful expertise and invest their ambition in bargaining rather than posturing.

The centralization of leadership authority has had everything to do with presidential power. As Representative Justin Amash, Republican of Michigan, put it to his constituents at a recent town hall, “Right now, under our current system, the president only has to work with a few people; all he has to do is work things out with a few leaders,” and this gives him much more leverage than he should have over Congress. If Congress is going to reassert its legislative power, it will need to strengthen the committees that are its foremost legislative instruments.

In both cases, and in related changes to floor procedures and other rules, reformers of Congress must remember that the institution exists to compel coalitions into being. Congress is not a European parliament, aimed at enabling the majority party to have its way until it gets voted out. The Madisonian view of legislative power is all about inducing compromise in a divided society.

Pure majoritarian reforms, like eliminating the filibuster in the Senate, appeal to the ideal of centralized power that has driven Congress into a ditch, not to the constitutional vision that will get it out. Congress needs to recover its own best instincts so that it can help our larger political culture escape the poisonous polarization that has overtaken it. No other institution in our system could do it.