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Comment by sherburt3 | Hacker News Reader

Removing it would make Congress less powerful, and we can't have that now can we.

If anything it has been the opposite problem, with modern congresses having been more than happy to delegate away their powers. You might have heard the recent tariff news for example.

Modern being what? The main tariff laws in question happened 50+ years ago. The republicans in congress have been going out of their way to not interfere, but that's significantly different from creating new delegations.

Presidencies last 4-8 years, congressional careers last decades.

Avg for house is 12.5 and 8.5 in senate

Mitch McConnell has been serving in the senate since 1985. He's been a senator longer than most Americans have been alive.

I think the outliers are far more consequential than the averages in this case.

Since each person has one vote why would outliers matters? It doesn't seem that length of terms doesn't even help with leadership roles The Democrats minority leader is Hakeem Sekou Jeffries who was elected about 12 years ago and Mike Johnson has been in the house for 8~ years. There are R and D members who have been in the house longer.

* or whatever the threshold is

How could Congress get less powerful than now?

That's how they like, more time to campaign and less work that may be impopular.

Thinking about it, the US government is going exactly the same way of the Roman republic.

> US government is going exactly the same way of the Roman republic.

We're gonna conquer and annex Egypt? What an awesome time to be alive!

That was the first imperial conquest. The republic had been gobbling up states long before that.

Egypt? No. But how about Greenland, Canada, and Panama?

Kayfabe

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