The budget bill was a reminder: the president and House speaker don’t care about lawmakers’ views. Why not just quit?
L
ike soldiers in a well-disciplined army, Republican members of US Congress do whatever Commander Donald Trump demands. While the foot soldiers may occasionally grumble, they quickly fall in line when Trump intervenes.
Republican representatives go through contortions to satisfy the bully in the White House: we hated deficits, goes the party orthodoxy, but now we vote for adding trillions to the deficit; we supported Ukraine, but now we cozy up to the Russians; we scrutinized cabinet nominees, but now we give our “advice and consent” to a cabinet of knaves and charlatans.
In being supremely supine, these legislators are behaving as if they were members of parliament, taking their cues from the prime minister. Yet as every schoolchild knows, “balance of powers” was the framers’ watchword, with the three branches of government each held in check by the others.
