This is an unfortunately common response that often misses the point: U.S. government agencies do indeed have the power to make decisions with the force of law. Rule-making is a valid authority (subject to legal review of course)
Perhaps the courts will have to step in clarify? But this won't solve the administrative issue. If agencies don't have "agency" to do their jobs well, that would be ironic.[1] Perhaps Congress will be motivated to write better laws?[2]
[1] I'm deeply suspicious of efforts to undermine agencies under the cover of "only Congress makes law"... I suspect is it often a guise of undermining the laws one party does not like. Or, sometimes, even as an effort to undermine the idea of regulation at all. The latter point is hardly hidden -- it is central to a lot of right-leaning rhetoric which seems to boil down to "regulation bad, freedom good". This level of reasoning would have Milton Friedman rolling in his grave, as some regulation _provably_ helps reduce market failures. (And even center-left people typically want markets to work well.) But I digress.
[2] Hah. The idea that we would give Congresspeople and their staff even more responsibility to specify laws _without_ an associated increase in their competence for those areas where the law applies strikes me as foolhardy.
> Whether the net benefit is good or bad is largely a subjective matter of political opinion.
Without knowing the intention of the author above, when I see the phrase "subjective matter of political opinion", it makes me wonder if it serves as a "semantic stop sign" or "thought-terminating cliché"[2].
WRT net benefits... it is one thing to have differing predictions about what will happen and quite another to assess each possible scenario.
I recognize differences of opinion and want a society that protects the freedoms to have them. However, to me, opinions matter much less than reasonable claims based on evidence. Luckily, when reading [1], there are many testable claims embedded in the arguments of the various justices.
For example, in the cases of an ambiguous law, who is better suited to understand the ambiguity... agency experts or judges? Which groups have better knowledge of the domain? Which have experience in engaging in sustained discussions with the industries they are regulating? Agencies have an objective advantage for both.
Here is my point: say we go through the, say, top twenty arguments and we dig into the details. I predict that most opinions one hears at the outset from the public don't survive contact with reality. Those opinions have to get tossed. What remains? Nuanced assessments of better and worse scenarios. By making these assessments more nuanced, the hope is we find workable and sensible compromises.
[1] https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/01/supreme-court-likely-to-d...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_cliché
