Smith Faculty Opinion Article
The 30 Seconds Outlook
January 15, 2011
“In 1794, . . . James Madison, the principal author of the Constitution,
rose on the House floor to object to a bill appropriating $15,000 for the
relief of French refugees . . .. He could not, he said, ‘undertake to lay
[his] finger on that article of the Federal Constitution which granted a
right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of
their constituents.’ The bill failed.”
- Roger Pilon, Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2011.
If the House of Representatives truly desires to get Congress, the
Administration and its regulatory agencies, the budget deficit, and government
spending under some control before the next presidential election, the members
have only to look to the Constitution and, of course, to follow it.
Roger Pilon provides such a guide in the remarkable simplicity of his
comments:
“The 111th Congress will have its hands full simply monitoring what the more
than 300 federal agencies are up to. But if new members want to get to the root
of the problem—if they want to start restoring limited constitutional
government–they’ll have to do far more.
First, they will have to keep the debate focused on the Constitution, not
simply on policy or practicality.
Second, they’ll have to reject without embarrassment the facil liberal
objection that the courts have sanctioned what we have today, and thus all a
member need do when introducing a bill is check ‘Commerce Clause,’ ‘General
Welfare Clause’ or ‘Necessary and Proper Clause.’
If these clauses in the Constitution enable Congress to enact the individual
health-care mandate, then they authorize Congress to do virtually anything. The
Supreme Court was wrong in allowing Congress to exercise power not granted it by
the Constitution, and courts today are wrong when they uphold those
precedents—even if they’re not in a position to reverse them until Congress
takes greater responsibility.
Third, Congress has to start taking greater responsibility. Congress must
acknowledge honestly that it has not kept faith with the limits the Constitution
imposes. It should then stop delegating its legislative powers to executive
agencies. Congress should either vote on the sea of regulations the executive
branch is promulgating or, far better, rescind or defund those regulations,
policies and programs that never should have been promulgated in the first place
. . .. And of course Congress should undertake no new policies not authorized by
the Constitution.
This is all a tall order, and it
will take years. But the alternative—our Leviathan state, which recognizes no
limits on Its power—is simply unconstitutional.”
John A. Haslem
