Findings

Congress finds the following: (1) Article I, section 1 of the Constitution of the United States vests the legislative powers enumerated therein in Congress, consisting of a Senate and a House of Representatives, subject only to the veto power of the President as provided in article I, section 7, clause 2. (2) Article II, section 1 of the Constitution of the United States vests the Executive power of the United States in a President. (3) Article III, section 1 of the Constitution of the United States vests the judicial power of the United States in one supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish, subject only to the jurisdictional limitations set forth in article III, section 2. (4) As the Supreme Court of the United States has stated, In the main, [the Constitution of the United States] has blocked out with singular precision, and in bold lines, in its three primary Articles, the allotment of power to the executive, the legislative, and judicial departments of the government [and] the powers confided by the Constitution to one of these departments cannot be exercised by another.. Kilbourn v. Thompson, 103 U.S. 168, 191 (1881). (5) It is … essential to the successful working of this system, that the persons entrusted with power in any one of these branches shall not be permitted to encroach upon the powers confided to others, but that each shall by the law of its creation be limited to the exercise of the powers … of its own department and no other.. Id. (6) The increase in the number of States, in their population and wealth, and in the amount of power … [has] present[ed] powerful and growing temptations to those to whom that exercise is intrusted, to overstep the just boundaries of their own department, and enter upon the domain of one of the others, or to assume powers not intrusted to either of them.. Id. at 191–192. (7) Succumbing to these powerful and growing temptations, and beginning in the late nineteenth century with the Interstate Commerce Commission and continuing to the present time, Congress has unconstitutionally created numerous administrative agencies with blended powers, namely— (A) the exercise of legislative power vested by the Constitution of the United States in Congress; (B) the exercise of Executive power vested by the Constitution of the United States in the President; and (C) the exercise of judicial power vested by the Constitution of the United States in the Supreme Court and lower Federal courts. (8) By delegating legislative, executive, and judicial power to the various administrative agencies, Congress has departed from the separation of powers structure of the Constitution of the United States, and ignored the warning of the framers of that instrument that The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.. James Madison, The Federalist No. 47. (9) Further, by delegating legislative, executive, and judicial powers to various administrative agencies, Congress has unconstitutionally established a Star Chamber-like system of rules promulgated, executed, and adjudicated by administrative agencies that are functionally a part of the Executive branch of the Federal Government in violation of the due process guarantee of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. (10) By the very nature of legislative power, and by the express terms of article I, section 1 of the Constitution of the United States, Congress may not delegate any legislative power to any other branch of the Federal Government or other entity, including any administrative agency. As Chief Justice John Marshall stated: It will not be contended that congress can delegate to the courts, or to any other tribunals, powers which are strictly and exclusively legislative.. Wayman v. Southard, 10 Wheat. (23 U.S.) 1, 42 (1825). (11) As Chief Justice Melville Fuller explained, a criminal offense created or clarified by an agency in the Executive branch is not valid unless the offense is fully and completely defined by the act of Congress. In re Kollock, 165 U.S. 526, 533 (1897). (12) By vesting legislative power in the Congress, the Constitution requires the Senate and the House of Representatives to enact statutes containing general rules to be executed by the President, as provided in article II, section 1 of the Constitution of the United States, and to be adjudicated in a case or controversy by such inferior courts as Congress may from time to time establish, or in the Supreme Court, as provided in article III, sections 1 and 2. (13) By abdicating its constitutional legislative responsibility to write the laws whereby the people are governed, and having unconstitutionally delegated that power to unelected bureaucrats, Congress has undermined the constitutional protections of— (A) the checks and balances of a bicameral legislative body; and (B) a Presidential veto. (14) As a direct consequence of Congress having abdicated its responsibility to properly exercise the legislative power vested by the Constitution of the United States, Congress has— (A) imposed onerous and unreasonable burdens upon the American people; and (B) violated the constitutional principle of the separation of the legislative, executive, and judicial processes and functions.