Over the past several weeks, Democrats have spent their time defending the absurd notion that America is in the midst of a constitutional crisis. What, pray tell, has initiated this crisis? The supposed unwillingness of Attorney General William Barr to turn over to Congress unredacted sections of the Mueller report, plus underlying grand jury materials. Barr, for his part, correctly points out that the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure bar him from revealing grand jury testimony. That rule was put in place by Congress itself. Nonetheless, Democrats, seeking to manufacture a feeling of Nixonian chaos, have claimed that the Trump administration is now seeking to block the release of a report that Barr himself released. The Mueller report is, indeed, public.

Playing politics with our institutional health is a dangerous game. Here's the truth: Our system of checks and balances is working just fine. Our politicians proclaim that the messy friction between the legislative, executive and judicial branches demonstrates that our politics is unworkable. But that friction is a feature of the system, not a bug. As James Madison explained in Federalist No. 51: "The great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. ... Ambition must be made to counteract ambition."

The founders worried greatly that the supremacy of the legislature would make the executive a mere footstool, propping up legislative authority. To that end, they created a unitary executive with control over law enforcement. And they gave a check against the power of the executive to Congress, which has the ability to defund departments or impeach officials.

Democrats know this. They have the power to impeach William Barr. They're choosing not to do so, because they recognize that their complaint is itself corrupt. Democrats have the power to impeach Donald Trump. They're choosing not to do so, because they recognize that their grounds for such activity are weak in the extreme.

Instead, they participate in a cynical game in which they attack the system of checks and balances itself. That's far more dangerous than any action taken by the Trump administration to date. The same Democrats who claim today that they are deeply concerned about the system of checks and balances are proclaiming from the rooftops that they would be happy to shatter the system to facilitate their agenda. We've heard from Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., that as president, she'd simply use executive authority to set gun law. We've heard from a bevy of Democrats that they'd consider packing the Supreme Court or abolishing the Electoral College. A few leftist commentators have even suggested abolishing the Senate, given its non-popular representation. We've heard from failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and her Democratic allies that her failures were the fault of election fraud; we've heard the same about Andrew Gillum in Florida.

And now Democrats say that Barr's adherence to law is somehow violative of the constitutional order. Undermining the constitutional order publicly, supposedly in order to save it, is nothing but cynical partisanship. But here's the good news: The founders designed a durable system to withstand such nonsense. It continues to work, even if Democrats would prefer it to collapse.

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If Republicans merely got through their tenures without increasing net spending, it would be an unprecedented victory. Thankfully, President Trump is finally putting his foot down on yet another $17.3 billion disaster package winding its way through Congress.

In April, Republicans were ready to throw another $13.5 billion in disaster aid at the gods of political pork. Thankfully, they were stopped by the intransigence of the Left. Democrats felt that the $600 million earmarked for nutrition assistance for Puerto Rico wasn’t enough, even though they have already appropriated $40 billion in disaster aid and Puerto Rico has already received a quasi-bailout for its culture of debt.

But given how sensitive Republicans are to the identity politics inherent in squabbles over funding for Puerto Rico, they were on their way to pursuing their favorite pastime – caving to the Democrats on their spending demands – until President Trump stepped in and demanded an end to all new aid for the mismanaged island.

Today, House Democrats will vote on their $17.3 billion version (H.R. 2157) of disaster aid in the face of the looming veto threat from the president. While it’s not news that Democrats will pass this bill, what should be alarming is that Senate Republicans are planning to follow suit. Republicans continue to move to the Democrat position, begging them to accept even more money for Puerto Rico rather than holding their ground.

Agreeing to the entire premise of the Democrats that Puerto Rico is a national emergency instead of our border, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said yesterday, "We're open to additional Puerto Rican assistance" and, “We need to pass it out of the Senate before the Memorial Day recess.”

Here’s the reality. Under regular spending, all of the relevant agencies and departments receiving funding under this supplemental spending bill, particularly the Department of Transportation and HUD, have record high budgets thanks to huge spending over the past few years. Spending is now 13.7 percent higher than under Obama’s final year, and that is with the economy doing much better. On top of that, over the past few years, Congress already passed $117.5 billion in disaster spending in 2017 and included numerous disaster relief provisions in the appropriations bills of the past two fiscal years.

Additionally, much of the disaster aid has nothing to do with immediate emergency needs, but with filling the already bloated coffers of liberal HUD and Department of Agriculture programs. Much as with any package that is titled “children,” any bill titled “disaster relief” is beyond reproach, circumspection, or any verification of the need for each line item. Given that so much money has already been appropriated, no new funds should be appropriated in a rush without any oversight unless they are clearly urgent needs, not long-term policies.

This bill throws more money at the Community Development Block Grant program. The CDBG has long been a wasteful welfare program for low-income housing assistance and other local parochial projects that should have been shouldered by local governments long before any natural disasters hit. Trump’s OMB suggested eliminating it altogether, and even the Obama administration proposed cuts in fiscal year 2012 because, in their words, the program lacked a “focused impact,” making “the demonstration of outcomes difficult to measure and evaluate.” But the hurricanes provided liberals with a good opportunity for those always looking to expand this program to do so under the veneer of emergency spending, even though Congress already grew its budget by 88 percent in the budget deal last year.

While this bill covers long-term spending, not just emergency needs, it doesn’t offer long-term reforms that should accompany any immediate bailouts. Congress already enacted yet another $16 billion bailout of the flood insurance program without any desire to reform the government’s monopoly over flood insurance that has induced people to build in flood zones in the first place. This bill contains yet another extension of the program.

Perhaps the most egregious element is another $3 billion thrown at farm aid. Congress just passed a $900 billion farm bill in December, doubling down on massive subsidies for corporate farms and landowners who aren’t even farmers, while guaranteeing all protection from even “shallow loss” of revenue. This is the problem with Congress’ modus operandi of double- and triple-dipping. They embed endless individual and corporate welfare into the regular appropriations bills and then step on the gas pedal to raise the spending levels as quickly as possible. Then, when there is a disaster, they come back for more in supplemental disaster bills, as if they never spent money on these very programs before.

Then there is the issue of Puerto Rico. It’s terribly tragic that it was pummeled with a direct hit from Hurricane Maria, resulting in the death of thousands of island residents. But the hurricane was not the primary driver of Puerto Rico’s economic problems. The desire for more funding beyond the existing $40 billion aid package is coming more from the long-term fallout of its Venezuela-like Marxist economic system than from the immediate effects of the hurricane.

Puerto Rico managed to rack up more debt than its economic output long before Hurricane Maria. A huge 43 percent of its residents received food stamps long before Hurricane Maria. And 26 percent of Puerto Rican workers were employed by government and also receiving 30 days of vacation long before Hurricane Maria.

The bottom line is that there is no reason why the American people should be on the hook for throwing good money after bad money before Puerto Rico cleans up the systemic government corruption and socialism that existed before the natural disasters. Ideally, Puerto Rico should be given its independence, so it can prosper without any interference but also not rely on American welfare like a security blanket.

In the meantime, Congress should help Puerto Rico by repealing the 1920 Jones Act, which requires ships sailing within the United States to be built, owned, and managed by U.S. companies. It has hampered trade and imports for Puerto Rico by often doubling the cost of shipping.

Finally, there is the issue of the border. The true emergency we have is the invasion at our border, and neither party in Congress cares much about it. Not only does this bill fail to deal with that crisis, it explicitly bars the use of any defense funding for the border. Certainly, the GOP’s competing bill in the Senate will not contain this provision, but nor will Republicans push any legislation to fix the crisis by hiring more ICE agents, building more border infrastructure, or punishing sanctuary cities. Why is there no hell-fire rush from Mitch McConnell to treat that issue as a “must pass” before Memorial Day?

Many conservatives were concerned that President Trump would make the GOP the party of big spending. Turns out, for someone who is not known as a fiscal conservative, he sure is willing to cut spending more than GOP leaders in Congress.

After almost two and a half years, the post-Trump debate about how we as a country pick presidents has gotten incredibly tedious, probably because it’s not focused on the root problems behind it.

This week, 2020 presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., reignited the debate about whether or not America should keep the Electoral College. Fellow candidates Robert Francis O’Rourke and Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Mass., have since also expressed interest in getting rid of the constitutional process.

There are, of course, very good reasons why the framers opted against picking a president by national popular vote. Political thinkers from Aristotle to the Founding Fathers warned against the dangers of mob rule that go hand-in-hand with direct democracy. That’s why this country was founded as a republic and why electors choose the president, rather than the popular vote.

The Electoral College gives people throughout a voice that they wouldn’t otherwise have if the president were chosen by popular vote. It ensures that this country’s chief executive has to actually represent the entire country, rather than just the prevailing interests of its most populated areas. It also has ended up serving as a restraint on political party power.

In short, the Electoral College system is designed so that the president is chosen by groups of electors from every state. A state’s electoral votes are equal to its number of House members plus its two Senators. In that respect, it balances the concerns of more populous states that get more House members with less populous states whose interests are better represented in the Senate, where representation is fixed.

Without it, the president would be chosen more by the California coast and the megalopolis between Washington, D.C. and Boston and less by the whole of the republic. After all, why pay lip service to the concerns of farmers in rural states when you can reach millions in coastal cities without ever having to tweak your talking points?

But its opponents argue that it’s an outdated system designed for a Constitution that included slavery and didn’t give women the vote, one that unfairly disenfranchises people in more populous states.

The real challenge for defenders of the Electoral College isn’t explaining why it still exists and has merit. It’s convincing angry people in a deeply divided country that fellow citizens who don’t share their experience, culture, or worldview still deserve a say in how things are run.

And therein lies the real argument: Some people want only the urban liberal enclaves to decide the future of the executive branch.

In a country that has become as politically balkanized as ours has in the Trump era, it’s one thing to explain that the Electoral College gives a voice to people who don’t live in a densely populated urban center; it’s quite another to make the case for a system that put Donald Trump in the Oval Office when so many people’s politics seem to be so driven by anger, anxiety, and in some cases derangement about the current president.

The focused animosity toward Trump makes it easier for Electoral College attackers to make the case that voters in America’s deep-blue metropolitan areas should be able to run roughshod over the rest of the country, which is what would happen if the EC were abolished.

And since the ultimate leftist goal is “progress” through government action, saying the EC is “outdated” and handing urban leftist bastions the power to pick the president is a great way to accomplish that. If one truly believes that progressive and socialist policies are good for everyone, then running roughshod over the concerns of your fellow citizens elsewhere in the country is really for their own good, right?

Fortunately, the framers saw this sort of tyrannical temptation as a possibility, which is why they created an Electoral College in the first place.