The Republican Congress surrendered it's duties and authority to President Obamas regime, helping to create a truly Imperial Presidency.
It didn't start during the Obama regime. It seems, according to the article cited in the OP, to have been a gradual kind of migration
until the 1920s:
From the article:
Conservative Republicans recaptured control of the government in the 1920s, and when the Depression hit, they naturally
looked to industrial protection (which had been a staple of GOP politics up to that point). But, as with the experiments with
protectionism in the 1820s, this endeavor spiraled out of control, creating a massive logroll that jacked up tariff rates with
no rhyme or reason. Herbert Hoover signed the so-called Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930 despite grave misgivings. He was
right to doubt its merits: Smoot-Hawley worsened the Depression and helped Franklin Roosevelt win a smashing victory.
FDR brought with him to office the old Democratic favoritism toward free trade, but also decidedly Wilsonian views on the
relations between president and Congress. He encouraged Congress to transfer authority on trade matters (as well as most
regulatory matters!) to him. This time, the legislature agreed. It was as if Congress threw up its hands in exasperation and
said to the president, “We cannot handle our authority responsibly. Please take it off our hands, for we will screw things up
and lose reelection.â€
So more and more over the past 80 years, authority over tariffs, as well as over all manner of properly legislative functions,
has migrated to the executive branch, away from the legislative — even in instances (such as this aluminum-and-steel case)
where there is no compelling or immediate foreign-policy mandate. Trump’s move is purely a play for aggrieved industrial
workers, who should, in the constitutional schema, look to Congress and not the president for redress of their grievances.
And this is exactly the problem with our government in 2018. Nobody looks to Congress for redress of grievances anymore,
for it would be foolish to do so! Nobody respects Congress. Nobody likes Congress. Congress, at least to judge from its
members’ constant campaigning against it, does not even much like itself. Congress has systematically shrugged power off
its shoulders over the past 80 years, and it inevitably screws up the handful of authorities it retains, such as income taxes
and “discretionary†spending. The legislature is manifestly incapable of managing the burdens of a modern economy.
