The year 2021 is just around the corner. It’s popular in some places to make New Year resolutions. Who doesn’t want to eat better? Or start using that elliptical machine that’s in the family room?

But 2021 isn’t just an opportunity to get in better shape, personally. It’s also the start of a new presidential administration and a new relationship between the executive and legislative branches of the federal government. A return to some norms would be welcome. But we also believe the past four years have shown there is a need for strengthening the guardrails of our democracy.

Resolution One: Congressional oversight of executive actions. Congress needs to get back in the business of overseeing the executive departments in a meaningful way. We believe the Biden Administration will return to business as usual by providing executive branch witnesses at Congressional hearings – no matter if the Chair of the committee is a Democrat or a Republican. But, what about the next administration, and the one after that? There needs to be real penalties to defiance of Congressional oversight. Regardless of who is in control, Congress is a coequal branch and must demand to be treated as such.

Resolution Two: All the Congressional powers of the purse, as laid out in the Constitution, must once again be exercised. President Biden will propose a federal budget, but the Congress makes the final decisions on how federal funds will be appropriated. No more moving military construction funds to the Department of Homeland Security to build a fence at the border. That’s a violation of the Antideficiency Act. No more letting the president just decide to withhold military aid from Ukraine. That’s a violation of the Impoundment Control Act. No more using national park fees authorized for road maintenance on bathroom maintenance because you don’t want to shutter national parks during a government shutdown. That’s a violation of the Purpose Statute. No more using bogus “emergency” declarations as cover for presidential whims and power plays.

Resolution Three: Codifying controls on how federal employees, even the most senior of them, will be required to follow the law. What we’ve discovered in the last four years is we have taken for granted that people will act in good faith and within the rule of law. Like after the Watergate years, it’s time to consider reforms to civil and criminal statutes that keep our elected representatives and career civil servants working for us. At the same time Washington needs to reiterate support for a civil, civil service. Federal workers, and contractors, that oppose the politicization of public serving agencies need to have protections. So efforts like the last minute attempt to create a new Schedule F employee type to apparently fire long-time civil servants should be scrapped the afternoon of January 20th.

Resolution Four: Congress needs to help the Executive Branch get back to executing the law, not developing it. Case in point, the Farm Bill. Every five years or so Congress wraps itself around the axle debating the contours of the federal safety net for agriculture. Yet they’ve sat idly by while the Trump Administration has used Depression-era authority to send $25 billion in bribes subsidies to farmers harmed by the Trump trade wars. The administration has also drawn on these laws to undermine the Farm Bill-set annual subsidy limit of $125,000 per individual, authorizing up to $500,000 in trade bailout payments per individual. Congress should rescind the Secretary’s overly broad authority derived from the Commodity Credit Corporation Charter Act and insist he (or she) follows the letter of the farm bill law. In case you’re thinking this is just a Trump-era thing, proposed Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack abused this power (albeit in the millions, not billions, of dollars) when he was Secretary of Agriculture in the Obama Administration.

Resolution Five: Finally, another norm broken in the last four years is the concept of civilian control of the military. By law, a military officer has to be separated from service by at least seven years before serving as Secretary of Defense. This dates back more than 70 years and was first waived to allow former General and Secretary of State George Marshall (it was ten years then and wasn’t reduced to seven until 2007) to serve as Secretary of Defense near the end of the Truman Administration. The next waiver was given to General James Mattis at the beginning of the Trump Administration, three years after his retirement from the Marine Corps. Now President-Elect Biden intends to nominate General Lloyd Austin, who retired four years ago from the Army. Another waiver just four years later suggests there is some shortage of qualified civilians for the role. That’s ridiculous. Civilian control of the military is an important tenet of civil society.

We know that New Year’s resolutions are seldom easy. But when it comes to the nation’s finances and governance Congress and the next administration must try.