The idealist in me also hates the idea of unelected "government experts" having a wide berth to do whatever they think is best since I know that 50% of the time they'll be appointed by / taking orders from [Insert part(ies) I don't like] and thus they'll be against my interests.
But the pragmatist in me still winces at all the stupidity that happens in the real world because Congress hasn't passed many useful laws in 25 years. Most ideas are put into place by executive fiat because we only have two functioning branches of government now. (Yes, I agree that it's still better than just having one!)
You should set aside an hour or two and research how the administrative state actually works. These agencies aren't full of political appointees, rather they're staffed with engineers and scientists who are dedicated to keeping our water potable, food safe, weather tracked, air travel safe, etc.
It's literally not possible for the unelected lobbyists who write bills for Congress to write imperative-style laws. Even if they could manage to promptly draft and pass updates to laws as infrastructure, tech, the situation, etc evolve, it wouldn't be able to get the information needed to provide coherent instructions, and it would hamstring implementation forever. It's obviously much better for Congress to write in a declarative style, e.g. "1251.A.3. It is the national policy that the discharge of toxic pollutants in toxic amounts be
prohibited;" [0]. Clearly an important goal, but absolutely impossible for Congress and its unelected lobbyists to write out executable instructions for achieving this (also, Congress regularly explicitly delegates implementation to actual experts via clauses like this "1251.d. Except as otherwise expressly provided in this chapter, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (hereinafter in this chapter called ‘‘Administrator’’) shall administer this chapter."[0])
Just listen to the oral argument in the recent San Francisco vs EPA Supreme Court case [1] (or review the transcript [2], or get the summary from Oyez [3]). During heavy rains, San Francisco's city govt dumps a lot of effluent into the Pacific ocean. The EPA requires they get a permit, track the amount of effluent, work to remediate the issue, and develop a Combined Sewer Overflow control plan. The EPA wants to help, but San Francisco has failed for decades to provide adequate information about their sewage system to the EPA to enable the EPA to help develop said control plan (e.g. pg 98 of the transcript).
There's just no way Congress's unelected lobbyists could hope to write imperative laws. The experts staffing the administrative state aren't receiving partisan orders from the Democrats to harass San Francisco. Republicans don't issue partisan orders to agencies either (the Republicans just throw sand into the machine by tying up agency experts in frivolous lawsuits).
But in any case, it's the agency experts and their hundreds of thousands of years of knowledge and experience who keep America running.
