The executive branch exercises more than its proper share of constitutional responsibilities. Same for the judicial branch.

But Congress is AWOL.

That dereliction of duties has upset the Constitution’s separation of powers, which anticipated an equilibrium between the three branches to protect liberty. The consequences are appalling—a secret, lawless, runaway, extravagant government that has taken the nation to the brink of bankruptcy (a $34 trillion national debt and soaring) and self-ruination by pointlessly attempting to police the world.

The Constitution envisions Congress as primus inter pares. Article I entrusts Congress with the lion’s share of responsibility for both domestic and foreign affairs. As to the latter, Alexander Hamilton elaborated in Federalist 69: “The President is to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States. In this respect, his authority would be nominally the same as that of the king of Great Britain, but in substance, it was much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces as first General and admiral of the Confederacy, while that of the British king extends to the DECLARING of war and to the RAISING and REGULATING of fleets and armies, all which, by the Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature.”

The Constitution’s architects worried that Congress would be too muscular, not too anemic. The worry was misplaced.

Congress has eagerly reduced itself to a constitutional inkblot to hide from accountability and the risk of primary challenges to retain incumbents. How do you run against a member of Congress who has never taken a clear stand on a significant issue and assigns responsibility for all ills to the executive or judicial branches?

Congress makes banker’s hours seem arduous. Members customarily begin work on Tuesday and leave on Thursday. The number of committee hearings is a tiny fraction of what was customary a few decades ago. There were no oversight hearings on the ill-conceived, 20-year Afghanistan War, returning the Taliban to power and squandering a staggering $3 trillion—the costliest misadventure in world history. Instead, Congress fixated on the flea, not the elephant—the Biden administration’s errors in exiting Afghanistan. Compare the celebrated hearings of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the 1960s organized by Chairman J. William Fulbright, which exposed the monumental lies and follies of the Vietnam War.

There is no congressional oversight over the bloated, $100 billion intelligence community that targets the entire population for warrantless surveillance in hopes of thwarting an international terrorist attack in the United States. Not a single such attack has been thwarted notwithstanding the infinite data collected by the 17 intelligence agencies since 9/11—or 23 years. Maybe Congress should consider the need for a new, targeted surveillance strategy that protects the fundamental right of citizen privacy—the right to be let alone from government snooping. But Congress has no stomach for a reprise of the landmark intelligence hearings conducted in 1975 by the Senate Select Committee to Study Government Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities headed by Chairman Frank Church. The Committee uncovered alarming intelligence abuses, including assassination attempts and massive violations of civil liberties that gave birth to reforms. But the latter has died on the vine because later Congresses preferred sleeping on the job.

Congress has given away its power to declare war to the president, handing over the ability to take the nation from a state of peace to a state of belligerency or co-belligerency. The Constitution’s authors believed the congressional power to declare war was the crown jewel that would save the nation from dictatorship and self-ruination. James Madison, father of the Constitution, explained, “In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department…[T]he trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man…War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement.”

Yet Congress has idled while President Harry Truman initiated war in Korea, President Lyndon Johnson initiated war in Vietnam, President George H.W. Bush initiated war against Iraq in Kuwait, President William Clinton initiated war against Serbia, President Geroge W. Bush initiated war against Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia, and President Barack Obama initiated war against Libya, Syria, and Yemen. President Biden has asserted unilateral power to initiate war against China if it attacks Taiwan or against Russia if it invades a NATO member without pushback from Congress.

Brown University’s Cost of War Project has calculated the costs of unconstitutional presidential wars since 9/11 as more than $8 trillion! What has the United States gotten in return? Mainly failed, terrorist states and soldiers returning with PTSD and unprecedented suicide rates. Yet Congress has watched complacently like an uninvolved spectator. Compare the Congress in 1973, which brought closure to the disastrous $1 trillion Vietnam war by prohibiting the expenditure of any monies of the United States to conduct offensive military operations in or over Indochina.

Congress has also yielded its authority over domestic affairs by limitless delegations of legislative powers to executive agencies to escape from responsibility for governance. During an average year, the agencies promulgate 30 times as many legislative rules as Congress enacts. Anything that goes awry embers blame on the agencies.

Irresponsibility, thy name is Congress. Things will change only if the voters throw the craven members out.

With all its multiple imperfections and venality, Congress is still a more trustworthy steward of our liberties and the rule of law than the presidents whose paramount ambitions are to rule like a Caesar to achieve a few lines in history books.

Armstrong Williams (awilliams@baltsun.com; @arightside) is a political analyst, syndicated columnist and owner of the broadcasting company, Howard Stirk Holdings. He is also part owner of The Baltimore Sun.