why is that crazy? legislative supremacy is an extremely common pillar of many theories of democracy. the executive has only the powers enumerated in the Constitution and explicitly granted by Congress. if Congress wants to set up an agency independent of POTUS, that "should" (scare quotes because who knows what this activist SCOTUS will do) be well within its constitutional purview
The Constitution was, after all, written by people who had just fought a war to throw off an overreaching executive. No goal was more important to them than to prevent another one.
Except they fumbled the ball by creating a unitary executive. I don't blame them too much because that's all they'd known, the US was a hundred times smaller, and they were making it up as they went.
Democracy would be more resilient to an executive coup if its powers were split among several independently elected officials, like we see in some state governments today.
They did not create a unitary executive. The concept of a unitary executive as rule of law did not exist until a 2020 decision by the John Robert's court
Unitary in the sense that they debated whether to have one guy in charge or several. They defaulted back to what they knew, the rule of one dude with limited but sole executive power.
Edit: This is what I'm referring to and it has direct bearing on the current controversy.
The legislature also has only the powers enumerated in the Constitution. As "create independent agencies" is not one of those powers, it comes down to a matter of interpretation as to whether one of the powers granted to Congress implies the ability to create independent agencies. But once you enter the land of interpretation, it's, well... open to interpretation, and thus it's not unreasonable for someone to take issue with a certain interpretation.
Proposal: constitutional amendment granting Congress the power to institute independent agencies lead by independently elected officials directly responsible to the voting public and subject to Congressional impeachment.
For example, make attorney general an elected, independent position.
