EPA says it will eliminate its scientific research arm

If we followed the constitution the EPA wouldn’t even exist! Clearly the founders didn’t create this complicated three-branch system only to have most of the government being run by “independent agencies” exercising executive, legislative, and judicial powers.

These agencies work with delegated powers. It is completely impossible for such a limited number of people as the American Congress to be experts on everything. They need advisors and structures to help them understand the world and make the right decisions, but also to make sure that these decisions are enforced.

This may not be fully developed in the US constitution because the world was much simpler back then, but it is entirely compatible with it.

The notion of Congress “delegating powers” to administrative agencies is entirely incompatible with the constitution.

The administrative agencies do not merely “advise.” They make regulations with the force of law (legislative power), enforce those regulations (executive power), and adjudicate violations of the regulations (judicial power). That concentration of the three powers into a single entity is the very thing the Constitution goes to great lengths to avoid.

> The notion of Congress “delegating powers” to administrative agencies is entirely incompatible with the constitution.

With which article specifically?

Yes, enforcement should not be managed by these agencies. The way to fix this is to reshape them, not give in and let the executive run the show without checks. Of course, that requires a working legislative body and a judiciary that is not fixated on the end times.

Ok, so after you burn down this system what’s the replacement? Nothing?

The constitution has already existing answer: instead of agencies passing regulation, Congress passes laws. Agencies continue to enforce the law, and appeals are adjudicated by actual federal courts.

Man, we have executive imposition of regulations since the very beginning of the republic. Hamilton's treasury department and customs. The 1792 postal act.

You can't have an effective executive without some kind of rulemaking authority.

Marshall wrote in 1825--

"The line has not been exactly drawn which separates those important subjects which must be entirely regulated by the legislature itself from those of less interest in which a general provision may be made and power given to those who are to act under such general provisions to fill up the details."

(And, of course, subsequent decisions have helped to draw that line more exactly).

> adjudicate violations of the regulations

You can always go to a real Article III court, but you need to exhaust the remedies within the agency first.