Letter: Federal dysfunction

To the editor:

Is our federal government on the verge of being completely ineffectual? We have a president who wants to govern by fiat (executive order) largely because Congress will not cooperate with him. We have a Congress that wants to insert itself into international negotiations, which it has no business doing because its job is to only to advise and consent. We have a Supreme Court that seems hell-bent on declaring every law it can unconstitutional. How can government create orderly and enduring change if the Supreme Court sees its duty as nullifying laws it disagrees with ideologically? It’s also interesting, isn’t it, that an activist liberal court was so objectionable, but an activist conservative court seems just fine and dandy?

To be effective, every organization needs clear boundaries between its functional units. This is no less true for our federal government. As the boundaries between the executive, legislative and judicial branches dissolve, the ability to govern effectively will be diminished. When our federal government becomes so dysfunctional it can’t govern, what then?