SHALL WE HAVE A KING? First posed by John Jay to George Washington, that now-eerily prescient question is repeated by R Street Governance Project Senior Fellow James Wallner in a thoughtful legbranch.org essay on separation of powers, the Covid pandemic and President Donald Trump’s recent directives.

“Jay summed up the straightforward solution to America’s problems to Washington: ‘Let Congress legislate, let others execute, let others judge.’ James Madison noted that the separation of powers was vital to securing freedom and liberty and that as long as the people’s elected representatives preserved it, ‘We have no danger to apprehend,’” Wallner writes.

“Notwithstanding its centrality to the success of the American regime, a recent altercation between President Trump and Sen. Ben Sasse, a Republican from Nebraska, highlights the extent to which support for the Constitution’s separation-of-powers framework has begun to wane.”

Wallner makes a compelling case in siding with Sasse, who described as “unconstitutional slop” Trump’s directives to defer payroll taxes, continue enhanced benefits for those out of work, offer certain forms of assistance to renters and homeowners, and provide a breather to millions of people with student loans.

My own view is that Congress has itself mainly to blame here, having for decades steadily ceded to executive branch bureaucrats power and authority that erodes legislative authority and energy.

But even today, Congress still has what political theorists Willmoore Kendall and George Carey described as the “ultimate weapons in any showdown with either of the other two branches.” That would be the power to fund or defund anything done by presidents and bureaucrats. But using those weapons requires a certain unity and spirit, which, sadly, hasn’t been seen around Capitol Hill for a long, long time.