Top GOP aide tells Members of Congress: Start doing your jobs!
Brendan Buck, a top aide to former Republican Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan, posted an eloquent essay in the New York Times today recounting the many ways in which Congress has allowed its legislative muscles to atrophy and its power to be usurped by a succession of presidents. The essay echoes many of the themes emphasized here at Fixing Congress.
Buck’s indictment includes the failure to provide regular oversight, appropriation, and reauthorization of major programs and agencies and giving the president wide discretionary powers to set tariffs, regulate business, and start wars.
“Over the past generation, Congress has grown too distracted, too ineffectual, or too lazy to hold federal agencies accountable,” he writes. “That has created a political opening for President Trump to seize control of the federal bureaucracy, thoughtlessly and indiscriminately hacking agencies and their work forces.”
Buck puts the onus on Members of his own party to start providing responsible oversight and direction to federal programs—or else Elon Musk and his DOGE colleagues will.
“If members continue to stand by as DOGE plunges deeper into the federal bureaucracy,” Buck writes, “Congress would be sending a clear message to future president, and perhaps even the course, that the executive need not worry about congressional authority.”
The full essay can be found here: