Whither Congress

George Will takes aim at George Bush:

A new Capitol Visitor Center recently opened, just in time for the transformation of the Capitol building into a tomb for the antiquated idea that the legislative branch matters. The center is supposed to enhance the experience of visitors to Congress, although why there are visitors is a mystery.

Congress' marginalization was brutally underscored when, after Congress did not authorize $14 billion for General Motors and Chrysler, the executive branch said, in effect: Congress' opinions are mildly interesting, so we will listen very nicely -- then go out and do precisely what we want.

Friday the president gave the two automakers access to money Congress explicitly did not authorize. More money -- up to $17.4 billion -- than had been debated, thereby calling to mind Winston Churchill on naval appropriations: "The Admiralty had demanded six ships: the economists offered four: and we finally compromised on eight."

The president is dispensing money from the $700 billion Congress provided for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The unfounded assertion of a right to do this is notably brazen, given the indisputable fact that if Congress had known that TARP -- supposedly a measure for scouring "toxic" assets from financial institutions -- was to become an instrument for unconstrained industrial policy, it would not have been passed.

If TARP funds can be put to any use the executive branch fancies because TARP actually is a blank check for that branch, then the only reason no rules are being broken is that there are no rules. This lawlessness tarted up as law explains the charade of Vice President Dick Cheney warning Republican senators that if they did not authorize the $14 billion, the GOP would again be regarded as the party of Herbert Hoover. Surely Cheney, a disparager of Congress and advocate of extravagant executive prerogatives, knew that the president considered the Senate's consent irrelevant.

Indeed, it is shocking in the brazen manner Congress has been rendered an irrelevancy. Congress exists to reflect the will of the people, and in this instance Congress refused to appropriate the auto bailout funding. That should have been the end of things. It is disappointing in the extreme how little criticism we have seen of this move. I suspect it is due to both conservatives that remain unwilling to criticize Bush even at this late hour and Democrats that are withholding fire because they are pleased with the result -- billions of dollars in corporate welfare.

I can only suspect that the reason Bush went ahead with this blatant violation of free market principles -- although it must be conceded that Bush is hardly a free market ideologue -- is that he wanted to get credit for the move as well as attach his own conditions to it rather than the more lenient, labor-friendly terms that surely would be applied by the incoming Obama Administration.