Identify for me the error? Congress delegates sweeping authority to the executive branch and appropriates a slush fund instead of discrete appropriations. Having done so, why can’t the executive branch then exercise that discretion as he sees fit? Your only counter argument is something about “oversight”—but what’s the constitutional standard for how much the president needs to supervise those to whom he delegates authority?

If Congress has become “dysfunctional,” as you put it, isn’t it even more important for the executive branch to be highly responsive to elections? Otherwise you’re positing a system where all the governance is performed by a civil service comprised 90% of laptop class democrats, with elected Congress merely laying out procedural rules for how policy should be adopted and the elected president merely supervising compliance with those rules. I can see why democrats love this idea, but I can’t imagine why you’d think it would be a persuasive argument to anyone else.

Speaking of “lawless”—if legal conservatives stooped to finding constitutional principles in “emanations from penumbras” we’d have a heck of a lot more fun. Why not have a “living constitution” that reflects our view of what modern developments demand?