The GOP just proved that it can't govern its way out of the party's latest "feckless crisis," according to one analyst.
Chris Lehmann, Washington, D.C. bureau chief for The Nation, argued in a new column that the airport crisis that unfolded last week revealed how the GOP's "rake-stepping" during the partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security has allowed President Donald Trump to take more power from Congress. He pointed to the administration sending ICE agents to ease airport wait times and to Trump's abrupt announcement that TSA workers would be paid before the final DHS funding deal was reached.
Those issues could compound the already fraught "excursion" into Iran, considering the Pentagon has started making preparations to send ground troops to the country "for several weeks" without getting Congress's approval on a formal declaration of war, Lehmann added.
"It’s hard to imagine how one could draw up a more farcical parody of legislative governance," Lehmann wrote.
"It’s the very sort of executive abuse that Congress is supposed to exercise fundamental oversight over," he added. "Yet a national legislature that can’t even govern its way out of airport delays isn’t about to reclaim its constitutional responsibilities in wartime. The scandal here isn’t so much that Congress is on recess at this parlous moment, but that, to paraphrase Dorothy Parker, it’s no longer possible to tell the difference."