The House of Representatives is supposed to be for the people by design. It has shorter elections and smaller constituencies because its members are meant to be closer to the interests of the American people. For Speaker Nancy Pelosi, however, the people have been shut out both literally and symbolically. The things Congress does matter, but so does how it does them. When it comes to making laws for a republic of hundreds of millions of people, how representatives do things matters a great deal, and it’s time for Congress to get serious and do them the right way.

Wednesday on Capitol Hill felt a little like an episode of “Super Friends.” The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust held a hearing on the market power of tech companies and featured an all-star panel of witnesses. Testifying before the subcommittee were Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

Congress may be out of session this week, but when lawmakers return, we all know they will get back to their favorite pastime of spending taxpayer dollars. The phase four coronavirus relief bill, which will almost certainly be in the ballpark of $1 trillion or more, is inevitable. In addition to increasing the deficit, lawmakers, particularly Democrats, are willing to incentivize Americans to stay far more than six feet away from the economy.

With the reauthorization of expired portions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act poised to sail through the House of Representatives to await his signature, President Trump radically changed the game with just a few words on Twitter: “WARRANTLESS SURVEILLANCE OF AMERICANS IS WRONG!”

Congress has already passed relief packages totaling $3.6 trillion in response to the coronavirus pandemic. It may soon spend trillions more bailing out the U.S. Postal Service in addition to the airlines and city and state governments that have for so long embraced fiscal irresponsibility. Strange priorities in a crisis.

The airstrike that killed Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani and the subsequent tensions between the United States and Iran have sparked a new debate in Congress over the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for the Use of Military Force, or AUMFs, against al Qaeda and Iraq. These nearly 20-year-old authorizations for war have been interpreted far too broadly by Republican and Democratic presidents alike. The AUMFs have been used as the justification for conducting military actions in several countries beyond what was originally intended, and it's time for Congress to repeal them.