The Constitution, and by extension, the very foundation of American democracy, is being undermined by the very people we elected to protect it. The guilty party: the executive branch of the American government; its crime: the executive order.
Countless presidents on either side of the aisle have twisted the wording of Article II of the Constitution’s “grant of executive power,” to overstep their own authority and bypass the legislature entirely. 
According to CNBC’s Mark Koba, “Presidents have used that language, along with their constitutional powers as commander and chief over the nation’s military, to issue executive orders—whether it be to change domestic policy or go to war.”
The dangers of this unchecked power could be catastrophic for the country, as all steps of policy making, including creation, enforcement and adjudication would rest with a singular person. The idea of a president with such authority is terrifying, and it is absolute madness how Congress continually avoids posing limitations on this power. 
The repercussions of allowing the executive power to create laws is far more dangerous, as the president can coerce those below him/her to create the policies he wants. This power mostly resides with federal agencies, but anyone in the executive branch can be granted this authority at the discretion of the president. Take the Environmental Protection Agency, for example. 
According to the EPA, they are “called a regulatory agency because Congress authorizes us to write regulations which explain the critical details necessary to implement environmental laws. In addition, a number of Presidential Executive Orders (EOs) play a central role in our activities.” In saying Congress authorizes their ability to write regulations, the EPA suggests Congress refuses to overturn presidential executive orders. 
Meanwhile, Koba said in the aforementioned article, “The legislative body is not required to approve any executive order, nor can it overturn an order. The best Congress can do if it doesn’t like an executive order is to pass a law to cut funding for the order’s implementation. But even then, the president can veto such a defunding law.”
Because Congress must endure such an arduous process to reverse a presidential executive order, the EPA and other government agencies were created from executive orders and now have the power to create regulations and policies to govern the entire country, all because one man allowed it.
The crux of this issue is unelected officials and ordinary citizens are capable of creating laws which affect everyone in the country without the consent of the governed. It is borderline totalitarianism. Despite this abuse of the executive branch’s constitutional power, the president is not the only one to blame for this attack on the American system. We cannot ignore the congressional willingness to routinely punt “tough policy decisions to the White House by giving deference to presidents,” as reported by Neil Siefring of The Hill.
It is imperative the American people confront their congressional representatives on this laziness. 
This misuse of the executive order is degrading the legitimacy of the legislative branch, and should it continue, Congress will become a mere formality to enact the will of the U.S. president, and will become a husk of its former glory. Congress needs to take these powers back from the president and the executive branch’s agencies by limiting both the frequency and the influence of presidential executive orders.
The erosion of legislative power and the constant increase in executive authority has belittled Congress and emboldened the president. The legislative branch must find the courage to reclaim the authority the Constitution divided at America’s founding. Should Congress fail to reestablish itself as a force in government, today’s version of the the all-powerful executive branch will horrifyingly embody the very reasons America was founded in the first place.