This year’s National Lawyers Convention launched an extremely important project to develop a constitutional theory for how the Congress should operate in the 21st century. The current Congress has largely failed to organize itself to accomplish the mandate they received in the last three elections. The fundamental reason for this is the failure of Congress to exercise its Constitutional functions -- it has completely abandoned the power of the purse and failed to assert its authority to check the Executive when the President has tried to unilaterally change the law by selective enforcement and executive decree. The Federalist Society can and should inform the public of what these constitutional duties are and encourage a debate among thoughtful leaders to discuss solutions so that Congress can once again function as it was designed in our Constitution.

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David McIntosh is the President of the Club for Growth and Vice Chairman of the Federalist Society.