Dem
47
GOP
53
So while Elon Musk runs rampant, eliminating whole pieces of the government that Congress created, and Donald Trump reinvents himself as Il Duce, what are congressional Republicans doing? Raising the white flag of surrender. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee and President pro tem of the Senate, the third person in the line of presidential succession, said "Congress can't do anything except complain. This is an executive branch decision. Who works for the executive branch is determined by the president of the United States."
Whoa! Grassley has been in the Senate for 44 years. He has a pretty good idea of what Congress can and cannot do. He knows very well that private citizens who are acting as officers of the United States without confirmation by the Senate are violating the Constitution. He also knows that the constitutional role of the Executive Branch is to see that the laws passed by Congress are faithfully executed. He also knows that no one in the Executive Branch, not even the president, has the authority to just toss out programs Congress has mandated because he thinks they are inefficient. In addition, Grassley knows that the power of the purse is Congress' alone. What does he mean Congress can't do anything?
In practice, as a thought experiment, Grassley could think of what he would do if Joe Biden had hired, say, Hillary Clinton, to kill programs that she didn't like right and left. To start with, he would be going to the media every day to tell the country that what the president and his helper were doing was unconstitutional. The next step would be for the Senate to sue the president in court for usurping Congress' power of the purse and get a judge to issue a temporary restraining order. If the president refused to obey, the next step would be to confer with the House leadership about starting impeachment proceedings. There is no way Grassley would tolerate a Democratic president and his helper trampling Congress the way Trump and Musk are. So saying Congress can't do anything is just another way of saying: "We are all scared to death of Trump and are willing to give up all our constitutionally mandated power because he wants it." (V)