The American Founders designed a federal government of separated powers: They authorized Congress to pass the laws, the president to execute them, and the Supreme Court (and “such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish”) to apply them in judicial proceedings. But the lawmaking power is now, illegitimately, being shared. We currently have a president who feels free to grant unilateral executive amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants in plain defiance of federal immigration law, to decree myriad changes to Obamacare at his whim, even to rename mountains and to decide who is pictured on our currency. Meanwhile, our republican citizenry has grown so accustomed to viewing the presidency as being at the center of our political universe that most Americans think nothing of referring to Washington’s Birthday—the real name of the holiday—by a name that George Washington himself, that great opponent of “governments of a monarchical cast,” would surely have abhorred (“President’s Day”).

It is a welcome bit of good news, therefore, that several of the finest members of Congress, including Senator Mike Lee, House Financial Services chairman Jeb Hensarling, and Congressman Dave Brat, have just launched a new effort to try to reassert Congress’s constitutional role in our lawmaking process. As Lee put it at Wednesday’s formal launch of the “Article I Project,” Congress hasn’t been a helpless victim of the executive branch’s power-grabs; it has been a/the primary enabler of them. In Lee’s words, Congress has failed “to do its job,” as too many of its members prefer the notion of “surrendering…constitutional powers to the executive branch,” rather than casting tough voters and therefore accepting accountability.