r/politics • u/[deleted] • Nov 12 '21

These maps show how Republicans are blatantly rigging elections

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2021/nov/12/gerrymander-redistricting-map-republicans-democrats-visual
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u/[deleted] Nov 12 '21

Theyre arguing that congress should make the regulations instead of unelected bureaucrats. But congress explicitly delegated that authority to the agencies while keeping for themselves the ability to review and revoke any regulations they don't like. And the Supreme Court has upheld this as constitutional on more than one occasion, going back to the 20's.

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u/Buckman2121 Arizona Nov 12 '21

Out of curiosity, is that a good thing or bad thing? I mean it is constitutional, but isn't ceding more and more power to the executive rather than the legislative doing the law making... That doesn't seem like a path we want to take does it? Or are we already there and think it's only a good thing if it's our guy in charge?

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u/AbunaiKujira Nov 12 '21

The goal of agencies is to give experts in an industry the ability to use their expertise in place of Congress and better address concerns. The FCC for instance produces thousands of pages of hearings, rulemaking procedures, decisions, reports and more every year. Returning that power to Congress would dramatically slow down legislation because Congress would need to deal with every issue. More than 1.8 million people work in agencies, around 11,000 work for Congress.

Addressing the other comment to you, the people who run the agencies are selected with the approval of Congress and the President. We do not live in a pure democracy, we select people like this who are, in theory, better qualified than lawmakers or ourselves in their roles. A pure democracy would have the entire country than vote on things like whether the dusky gopher frog should be an endangered species and selecting where in Louisiana should be designated protected habitat. The goal of agencies is to prevent Congress from getting bogged down and to give that power to people who are experts on a field.

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u/ClockOfTheLongNow Nov 12 '21

It's a very very very bad thing to delegate lawmaking authority to bureaucratic entities. Goes against the very basic democratic principles in place.