Ah. Another wacademic professor of law, struts his stuff in the White House. It remains to be seen whether or not we can survive the lessons they've been teaching us, the last one nearly did us in... will this one make us stronger? Listen to this:
"“While there is no law, or set of laws, that can prevent every senseless act of violence completely, no piece of legislation that will prevent every tragedy, every act of evil, if there’s even one thing we can do to reduce this violence, if there’s even one life that can be saved, then we’ve got an obligation to try. And I’m going to do my part.
This will not happen unless the American people demand it. If parents and teachers, police officers and pastors, if hunters and sportsmen, if responsible gun owners, if Americans of every background stand up and say, “Enough, we’ve suffered too much pain and care too much about our children to allow this to continue,” then change will come. That’s what it’s going to take..”"
Yeah. One of the more straight forward things he's said.
My understanding however, is that, although it took a couple tries for Mr. Obama and Justice Roberts to get it right, he did take an oath of office, and that oath was this:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Leaving aside the splitting of legal hairs... how does any reading of the Constitution of the United States of America, condone the President, the Chief Executive of the Administrative branch of the Federal Government, issuing executive orders that 'clarify' how individual, private, doctors, should attend to how,
"...The Administration is clarifying that no federal law in any way prohibits doctors or other health care providers from reporting their patients’ threats of violence to the authorities, and issuing guidance making clear that the Affordable Care Act does not prevent doctors from talking to patients about gun safety."
Clarify. Yeah. As Don Corleone's muscular friend Vinny 'clarifies' that
''doz are sum nice kidz youse got dere... it'd be a shame should sumthin' happen to 'em."
These have NOT been attacks upon the 1st and 2nd amendments, so much as they are attacks upon the very concepts and principles of Rights as such. Getting people to comply with justifying their rights - or not - as I tried to point out the other day, is but a means of sweeping them aside by reducing the One concept of Rights in the public's understanding, to many particular chips, which can then can be easily stacked up, measured and bargained away.
Pay closer attention to what the President said with "This will not happen unless the American people demand it". Worse than targeting specific amendments that protect our Rights, they are targeting our thoughts and the words we think them with. After over a century, they are succeeding in getting people to think of their Individual Rights as being simply a fluctuating set of privileges and pleasures, to be justified, and re-justified (or discarded) as reflects their present popularity. Once that is complete, and it is frighteningly close, then all of our Rights will have been transformed into favors and privileges to be bestowed upon us by those we've given the power to do so.
You don't really have to destroy the amendments, only what people believe they are.
Make them think that the Right to bear arms in defense of your life, and all aspects of it, is something to be measured by what might be useful for hunting or taking down burglars - and it ceases to be a Right.
Make them think that the Right of liberty to follow your conscience depends upon making allowances for birth control, or exemptions from it - and it ceases to be anything other than administrative concessions to mollify those who can raise a ruckus.
I'll go a step further. What Obama actually said yesterday, as he signed his executive orders and called for legislation, was no more important than what he said the day before yesterday, in calling for such. Why? Because what is truly important right now, is not how those in power go about doing what they've been saying they're going to do, but in what you say and do about it (Sen. Rand Paul did make a nice start at getting the conversation started).
What is or is not Constitutional, hasn't changed all that much since it was ratified. As I pointed out in an earlier post "♫ ♪ ♬ You say you want a Constitution ... wellll ya know, we all want to change the world ♬ ♪ ♫", when a Federal Roads bill was passed in 1817, President Madison vetoed it as unconstitutional. When a Federal Roads bill was passed, and it was signed, by President Wilson, in 1916, and was not overturned as being unconstitutional, by the courts. Something had changed in that century, and in this regard, it wasn't the constitution, but We The People.
The Constitution records what We The People established for what may, and may not, be considered lawful. If any President or functionary seeks to act in contradiction to the Constitution, they are outside the bounds of law, as defined by the Constitution, which we defined.
If we forget the meaning of what it defines, and the reality behind that, then it's gone. A steady drip, drip, drip corrupting our understanding of what is, and is not, true, has been nibbling away at our Rights for 150 years. The more we forget that that paper serves only to remind us of who and what we are, that our Rights must be recognized and respected, that in order to 'pursue happiness' we must secure ourselves from what those in power would do - the more we forget that, then the more they will get away with doing what they will.
With FDR's outright theft of the citizens gold, where Supreme Court Justice McReynolds stated “This is Nero at his worst,” he thundered. “The Constitution is gone.”, but a case could be made that had happened twenty years earlier with the establishment of the first alphabet agency, the FDA. The Constitution has been dead and all govt actions have been those of outlaws for quite some time... but they can only get away with what you, We The People, forget about what they shouldn't be doing.
At the very least, the govt has been engaging in outlawry for a century. Thanks to an educational system that has taught us how to not only not understand what it means to be an American, but to actively wish that we weren't, we've now got a media, a culture, a President, a Congress, and a Supreme Court, who not only routinely disregard, but discard and disparage, the Constitution which they are formed from.
The Constitution hasn't changed. What Rights are, hasn't changed. You have.
And the more you continue to play along with their arguments, instead of pulling them up short, as any adult should do to an errant 8 year old trying to bargain their way around the rules, then those Rights which the Constitution serves to record for us, and which it does its best to uphold and defend, will be lost.
The secret of America and of the Constitution, is that the document doesn't actually do anything about your Rights - You do. It has always been you. The problem with Conservatives, especially, is that they have been foolish enough to believe in the magical talismanic power of paper. It has no power.
Never has, never will.
The Constitution does nothing more than serve as a reminder to us, all of us, that we do have Rights which are inherent in our nature as human beings, and which require a careful, orderly, defense - from our inherent nature as human beings. If we forget that it is every bit as much part of our nature to desire to exert power to get what we want, which is the reason why those Rights must be recorded, understood and defended - by us - if we get carried away with thinking that all is well because of some asinine notion that 'We are the people we've been waiting for!", then what chance can Rights have to be respected and defended? And lacking that, what chance does Liberty itself possibly have? If you TRUST those who seek power over you, what chance has liberty got?
If we forget our Liberty and the Rights which enable it, or if we don't bother learning what they mean and require, if we are foolish enough
, deluding ourselves into thinking that lines on paper are somehow going to prop your liberty up for you so you don't have to strain yourself - then it will be lost.
Period.
Stop looking to politicians and start looking to your own understanding, or lack of it. If you don't understand Liberty and the Rights it requires, then you have already lost it. If that is the case... what are you going to do about it?
To my 'Practical' friends - you failed. Now can we move on to something that works? We've tried playing to public opinion, striking appealing bargains, etc. The 'Debt Deal' is what that strategy has produced. It doesn't work. Know why? The people who'd be worth winning over, don't believe it. And the ones who are focused on the politics of seeming, can't look away from the dazzling bright lights long enough to tell whether or not those lights are illuminating anything worth seeing.
Your idea of being 'practical' has amounted to saying that
'the typical American is too stupid to understand ideas of liberty and the constitution.'
I'm tired of hearing it. You failed. You failed, because the notion (a favorite comment of people like Bill Maher, btw) is itself a deeply stupid thing to say. While it may be true that the majority of the American people do not understand the meaning of Liberty and the Constitution, it isn't because they cannot understand them, but because elitist pieces of poop (valid editorial statement) such as yourselves, who supposedly do understand them, haven't been doing what it is your responsibility to be doing, which is to help to spread, communicate and teach their meaning!
You say people just don't understand John Locke anymore, people just don't understand how the government is eating away their liberties, they're just too comfortable. You know what? They didn't understand them either when Sam Adams first began alerting and informing people about them back in the early 1760's. You know what? Because he, and others started informing their fellows, We The People came to understand the nature of the problem they faced, and understood the importance of the concepts involved. You know why? Because they were, and are, intelligent people who had been under and misinformed.
That is all.
Speaking of Witch
Laura Ingraham recently said about the latest debt deal:
"Some conservatives may not be satisfied, but then again, no one is. This is simply a step in the right direction."
Dear Laura: Just as I reject the notion that 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend', I also reject the notion that 'The Bill which the Left says is bad, is one I should consider to be Good'. You know why? Because it's a Stupid proposition!
I suggest that Laura, O'Reilly and others like them, are so focused on moving from left to right, that they've forgotten about taking into account the whether or not they are moving forwards or backwards at the same time. Taking a step towards the right, while moving backwards, is not progress. Sorry, it's just not.
Ingraham might have been at least partially correct if this political agreement reflected a political solution for the real situation. It doesn't. At best the political agreement has roots which go no deeper than the politics of popular opinion. The real problem is that this politics of public opinion goes no deeper into the reality of the situation than the uninformed opinion of the person on the street who gets a laugh line on Leno for identifying Washington D.C. as a type of electric current.
The govt has defined functions (see Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1 through Clause 18) which make up a small portion of our monthly budget, and many, many programs which are not covered by that. We have put ourselves on the hook for 50 or so billion dollars a month which the Left AND the Right have managed to convince themselves it is ok to borrow against in order to pay. On top of that, if for some reason, fiscal responsibility or some other such madness, we choose not to borrow more for what we cannot afford, that same public opinion insists that we cut not the extraneous programs, but those that are vital to the functions of government.
And pardon me if I seem extremist, but in a time of war - Three Wars! - even considering cutting defense by half a trillion dollars, is INSANE! Agreeing to the possibility of that, in order to seem reasonable, is unreasonable insanity!
The Politics of Seeming
Might this have been the best that could be hoped for? No, I don't think so. But let's say it was, the Republicans, if they had to go along with something similar, should have done so in such a way as to clearly define the issues involved, should have clearly pointed out that this practice of spending more than we have is, as Vladimir Putin said, parasitism. They could have, and should have, identified and won the moral argument, even as they lost the political one.
That is what people such as myself expected of those we sent to Washington D.C. in the last election. That is not what we got. Instead we got politicians who went along with the charade of this budget having 'Cut' trillions of dollars, which is simply obfuscation and lies. Reducing the excessive amount you propose to spend over your income, to a slightly less excessive amount over your income, and which results in spending more than you did the previous year, is not a cut. Only spending less than you are spending now, is a cut! But by going along with the democrat's political narrative, the republicans legitimized that view where spending more is made to seem to be spending less, which enables those who are recklessly spending money they don't have to seem responsible, and makes those making an effort, however lame, to block such 'cuts' to seem to be extremists, or as Joe Biden and his fellow dim dem's put it, like 'terrorists'.
That is the politics of seeming, and it is madness. How dare you 'practical' people contribute to convincing the public that this is a legitimate proposal. Shame on you.
*Too much borrowing
*Too much spending
*Too much government control
*Too much taxing
Those who argue that America needs to borrow, spend, regulate, and tax more are simply wrong, wrong, wrong. Their argument is absurd on its face..."
Any supposed solution which does not address any of those issues, is not a practical prescription for anything other than self administered poison. Do we really have to say this again? Read the bill! It doesn't address any of these issues - it engages in phony-baloney semantics, gimmicks and potentially disastrous contingencies, all of which amounts to planning to add additional trillions of dollars of expenses over its term, and through more word games and lies of omission, adds even more taxes and opens the door to more regulations to boot.
"The Congressional Budget Office currently projects that $9.5 trillion in new debt will have to be issued over the next 10 years. Even if all of the reductions proposed in the deal were to come to pass, which is highly unlikely, that would still leave $7.1 trillion in new debt accumulation by 2021. Our problems have not been solved by a long shot.
Those of you who are congratulating yourselves on either putting another one over on the American people, or who have convinced themselves that the politics of seeming is actually something of substance, are in for a very rude awakening.
"Debt surges to reach 100% of GDP as U.S. stock market barely avoids worst losing run since Jimmy Carter was president"
Yes, I know you want to get 'the right people' elected, well, I've got news for you, 'the right people' just went along with a bill that plays to public opinion, but accomplishes nothing worthwhile and a great deal that is positively harmful. No, the current bill did not accomplish anything worthwhile, changing our plans to leap from the 10th floor of a building, for plans to leap from the 6th floor of a building is not an accomplishment, and any viewpoint which suggests it is, I suggest to you is not a view that's worth pointing at.
Changing our plans to no longer considering leaping from the building, now that would be an accomplishment.
Something else. Winning over people on our side alone, is a losing strategy, attempting only to win others over to our side, is a losing strategy, or at best it's one that leads to real conflict - which is a losing strategy. There will always be two or more points of view on what is proper govt policy; John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison - they had four very different (yes, four) points of view, but they were united in their principles.
Forget about winning people over to 'our side', try winning them over to understanding what is actually at stake, try winning them over to seeing things as they actually are, rather than how others would like them to seem to be. That is what we need. We will always disagree over how to handle a situation, but as long as we are arguing over the actual situation, rather than someones opinion of how it seems to be, then we can make progress. Then, no matter which 'side' wins, we will be progressing, rather than regressing.
We must focus on getting both sides to understand the actual principles involved and what is actually at stake. Nothing less will allow us to succeed. Nothing less will enable a 'win' to also be successful.
The only, practical, winning strategy, is to make the principles of freedom known and understood once again. Left and Right, must see that their well intentioned notions are counterproductive, at best.
Both the left and the right say, and probably believe, that they are for freedom and liberty. It is not effective to tell them that they are wrong, and it doesn't improve your effectiveness any at all to say it while smiling with a Green Energy product in your hand, we've got to get We The People to look at the concepts for themselves so that they can understand and convince themselves and see what is right and what is not.
Anything less, is ridiculously impractical. Do you really think liberty and freedom can be achieved without understanding them? If you do, thenyou don't understand them!
I gave a start in a recent post "Liberty - It all hangs together, or we all hang separately", and I'll continue adding to that, instead of less practical matters such as appealing to a 'broader audience', because if we don't manage to relearn and care about the fundamentals, nothing else can possibly work.
If you're not practical enough to realize that... you're even dumber than you seem to be.
Is it the Taxes? No it's not the taxes, it's not even the budget, it's the philosophy stupid!
While I'm viscerally opposed to unwarranted tax hikes, here's an image that comes to mind when I hear people screaming primarily about raising taxes.
Picture a person who has been beaten, eyes closed, lips pressed tightly and silently together as he is being tied to a stake with thick red duct tape, tinder is gathered at his feet and the edges of it have been lit. Next the attacker reaches into the victims pocket for his wallet and begins pulling dollar bills out. The victim now opens his eyes and screams "No! Don't take my money!".
It's a matter of perspective, don't you see? Is it bad that the attacker is stealing his money? Of course it is, but there are a few other issues that should be foremost in the victims mind - screaming for help might be a good start. Kicking away the tinder wouldn't be bad either, but mostly breaking free of the red tape ought to be numero uno on his list of things to do.
The attacker of course, is the statist (Left and Right), and the submissive and misordered victim is the American people, particularly the businessmen, and the red tape... is red tape (sometimes a cigar is just a cigar).
Government red tape, regulations, rules, requirements, are the real physical threat, the thing that is holding us back from escaping this disaster that is heating up all around us - regulatory law IS the disaster! Raising taxes is bad, it would be even more disastrous for our economy if it happens, but not raising taxes will do nothing to fix the economy, not raising taxes will do nothing to get America back to creating jobs and producing wealth.
Reducing taxes would be helpful, but they wouldn't fix the problem.
The taxes are bad and they are everywhere, they are involved in everything we do and buy. But even more pervasive and destructive, are the regulations which saturate and burden our lives more deeply than mere taxation could ever manage - taxes are applied to what you do, Regulations prevent you from doing it as you judge best, or even at all. I'd wager that there is nothing in your life that is free from the direct burden of regulations; regulations have hurt us beyond measure, and we are blind to them, deaf to them, and mute about them, even as we complain about the very real disasters which they have wrought upon us.
Why are businesses fleeing the country? Taxation is certainly a part of the equation, but far more integral to the matter are the tyrannical regulations which make every effort to make it impossible to operate a profitable business, make it impossible to make the decisions that need to be made as they need to be made on a daily basis, especially regarding manufacturing, in the United States of America.
Listen closely to this man who is trying to create a productive business, a coal mine, which could employ hundreds in his town, as he has listened for hours about how he would be hurting the town rather than helping it:
“Nearly every day without fail…men stream to these [mining] operations looking for work in Walker County. They can’t pay their mortgage. They can’t pay their car note. They can’t feed their families. They don’t have health insurance. And as I stand here today, I just…you know…what’s the use? I got a permit to open up an underground coal mine that would employ probably 125 people. They’d be paid wages from $50,000 to $150,000 a year. We would consume probably $50 million to $60 million in consumables a year, putting more men to work. And my only idea today is to go home. What’s the use? I see these guys—I see them with tears in their eyes—looking for work. And if there’s so much opposition to these guys making a living, I feel like there’s no need in me putting out the effort to provide work for them. So…basically what I’ve decided is not to open the mine. I’m just quitting. Thank you.”
It wasn't taxation that drove this man to Shrug away his plan to create a new and productive business. It wasn't taxation that drove Boeing to abandon Seattle to invest millions of dollars in a new plant across the country in South Carolina, and it isn't taxation that is now threatening to hang them with their best efforts to open their new operations. It isn't taxation that is threatening to destroy the thousands of new jobs which Boeing was creating in that state.
There is no more difference between the NLRB, EPA, FDA, FTC, EEOC, SEC, WTF, ETC, than between the positions of defensive linemen preparing to execute a blitz - they are all on the same opposing team and the name of the game is to plow through our line (businesses), sack our Quarterback (the Constitution, if you hadn't guessed), take them out of the game and defeat us.
If that's not clear to you by now... I can't help you out.
John Mauldin is a popular financial commentator, someone who is thoughtful, informative and whose conclusions I usually disagree with, at least in part, but he made several excellent points in one of his recent letters. He discusses the economic crisis centering around Greece, our own economic situation and how they show more than a few similarities to the tightly shut eyes & mouth of our own red taped victim, down to his misplaced alarm over the lesser threats to his life.
Here he's relating a very depressing examination by a well connected friend of his who was trying to explain to him about the employment numbers, and the amount of jobs needed to begin returning us to the 6% rate which is thought 'ideal', and the futility of focusing on the wrong issue. I won't bother with the stats, but his ending summary is quite good:
"The times Barry talks about, of large job creation, were during periods of either high innovation or significant home and infrastructure building and increasing leverage. That is just not in the cards now. It requires an economy rocking and rolling north of 4% GDP growth. We are barely at 2%. In May, total state payrolls (the data came out today) were down 64,000; in June they were up 65,200, averaging out to +1,200 for the two months combined.
We keep hearing about what the government should do to create jobs. And the reality is that it can do precious little. Private businesses create jobs, and nearly all net new jobs for the last two decades have come from start-up businesses. What government can do is create an environment that encourages new businesses, get rid of red tape (especially in biotech, where the FDA is mired in the 1980s!), stop creating even more rules that make it costly for new businesses to hire, and so on. I could go on, but the fact is, we are in for a rather long period of higher-than-comfortable unemployment. And that means lower tax revenues and a more difficult economy."
We have been bound and tied to the stake by regulations, even more so than by bad laws – NLRB, EPA, FDA, FTC, EEOC, SEC, with their progeny in 'Cap and Trade', 'Net Neutrality' and so forth and so on, these are the things that have driven manufacturing out of the country, taxation is simply the final straw... removing that last straw will do very little to bring those jobs back, and it will do little to enable small businesses to be able to do the things they would do, if regulations didn’t bar them, or intensely slow them, from doing them.
You think our tax rate is high? Try calculating the man hours, the actual expenses and the forcible prevention of productive decisions and actions, which regulations impose upon our economy.
Spending will always be an issue, we will always argue about it, and some of us will always holler that taxes - no matter the form - are too high. That is a given. It's human nature.
What is also human nature, but is not unavoidable, is the urge to control your neighbor for their own good. Primitive societies are held down to subsistence level by their refusal to let their fellow make their own decisions, their refusal to let anyone break with the tribe, and their unrestrained willingness to use physical force to keep things as they are. That is why stone age tribes remain stone age tribes, even in our day.
But what began to lift civilization out of the darkness of pre-history, was the slowly developing idea of freedom and liberty, which, ironically, given the news of the day, first began to dawn in Greece, and culminated 2,500 years later with the Constitution of the United States of America.
With the enshrinement of individual rights anchored upon an understanding of property rights, under the protection of the rule of law, for the first time in human history, preserving the ability of each citizen to engage in "... life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness..." became the purpose of the power of government.
And before the ink was dry, of course, the old, primitive urge, to keep everyone down, to keep everyone equal, and under the delusion that such ideas would be progress, rather than regress, the proregressives have been gradually perverting our rule of law and subverting our understanding of property rights, in order to impose unjust restrictions upon us all, in the name of egalitarian "Equality of results for all" - which translates best into Justice for none.
Victor Davis Hanson's compatriot, Bruce Thornton, recently wrote a post "It's the philosophy stupid", which hits a part of this theme,
"... the real issue here isn’t economics, it’s philosophical. The essence of the progressive vision is the equality of result predicated on the assumption of radical egalitarianism, the notion that “those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects” as Aristotle put it. And since people in reality aren’t all equal and success reflects differences in ability, virtue, and hard work, the coercive power of the state must be used to achieve the aim of what Plato criticized as “dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike,” a form of injustice that ignores differences of talent, effort, and achievement.
As always, behind every policy is a good idea or a bad idea about human nature and existence. The progressive notion that the power of the state wielded by techno-elites can create a more just world is one of modernity’s worst ideas. Pace Bill Clinton, it’s not “the economy, stupid,” it’s the philosophy. That’s where the battle of 2012 must be waged."
And with that, I agree entirely.
The foolishness of thinking that these ancient and primitive tribal notions of egalitarianism can lead an advanced civilization in any direction resembling progress, is nearly incomprehensible. Mauldin captured a bit of that in this bit as well, as he tries to wrap his mind around putting failed ideas in charge of managing successful ones, summarizing the view as:
"Ok, the Greek economy is in a depression, so let’s fire up a jobs program. Run by socialists and bureaucrats. The entire Eurozone is slipping into a slow-growth recession, and these guys are just focusing on Greece.
It’s Not Just Greece - And that’s the problem with this latest patchwork fix. It assumes that Greece is the problem and if we solve Greece everything else will get solved."
Truly, there's nothing so destructive as bad ideas in the service of good intentions.
It isn't Greece, it isn't the taxes, it isn't even the budget, it's the philosophy stupid!
Things are coming to a head with the budget default in this and the upcoming week in Washington D.C. - I really don't think we've seen anything yet - and one of the well meaning proposals being touted as being able to save the day is the "H.R.2560 Cut, Cap and Balance" proposal, a significant portion of which is S. J. RES. 10: Balanced Budget Amendment.
Would it be a good idea for congress to balance the budget? Absolutely. Would a Balanced Budget amendment be a good idea? Maybe. Is the current Balanced Budget Amendment a good idea? Absolutely not.
Why? I've got a number of problems with the amendment, but let me give you the least first, by looking at the current problem, and what's proposed to remedy it.
What's our current budget problem? That Congress spends money on programs which it was never granted the authority to engage in. What congress is authorized to engage in is stated under Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution; what it does state there, congress may do - what it doesn't state there, congress may not do. Not a complicated concept.
Is congress currently following Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution? No. That's the problem.
And sooo the proposal for fixing this problem – that of congress not following the written wording of the constitution – is what? The proposal is that in order to force congress to follow the text of the constitution, we should add more text to it – and by doing that, congress, which is currently ignoring the constitution, and/or deliberately misreading particular clauses of it, such as the Commerce Clause, General Welfare clause, etc, so that they can do whatever it is that they want to do, this same congress is now going to pay close attention to the meaning and intent of this new text in the constitution?
They already know what they should do, but they don't do it, because they want to do something else - what magical power will these new lines of text have which the existing text of the constitution doesn’t have? Shouldn’t a new solution contain something more than the same old problem?
That is seriously the proposed fix for our problems? My first reaction is that the problem doesn't lay in the Constitution, but in the people, especially with We The People, who are no longer so very concerned with following it. If you want to fix our problems, it seems to me that you've go to fix that issue first. Do that, and the rest will fall into place.
At which point I'm usually called impractical. Okay, so let's move on to what modernity considers to be practical, which is laying out plans to mandate that effects precede their causes. And I'm the impractical one!
But taking things on their terms I'll admit that a balanced budget would certainly be a good thing, and an amendment to bring that about could possibly help... that is if it said no more than something like this:
"Congress shall balance its budget each year, will always meet its financial obligations, and will take on no further non-essential defense obligations than it can meet."
But the present Balanced Budget Amendment doesn't say only that, in fact it says a great deal more. Keep in mind, that if that was what it was the amendment was meant to accomplish, then that would be all it said. You can pretty much judge the legitimate aims of a law by its brevity - the longer it is, the less the law likely has to do with its stated aims, and the more likely it is that it's going to be concerned with the real business of politics - disbursing favors and gathering, retaining and exerting power (Compare our original Bill of Rights with the healthcontrol law for further reference.)
And while as modern laws go, this one is fairly brief, but one sentence would have done the trick, the rest is there to expand power, not to restrain it. And you can see how little it will restrain government from doing what it wants, by taking note of how weak it's restraints are. What are they?
What this amendment says is that,
in Section 1, it will balance it's budget... unless it's too difficult to do:
"unless two-thirds of the duly chosen and sworn Members of each House of Congress shall provide by law for a specific excess of outlays over receipts by a roll call vote."
It also says it will make congress pay its obligations... unless it's too difficult, Section 2:
"unless two-thirds of the duly chosen and sworn Members of each House of Congress shall provide by law for a specific amount in excess of such 18 percent by a roll call vote."
In Section 3 it gives... well, I'll come back to that in a moment.
It goes on to claim that it won't raise taxes to fix the budget... unless of course that seems like the easiest way to get what they need, Section 4:
"...Any bill that imposes a new tax or increases the statutory rate of any tax or the aggregate amount of revenue may pass only by a two-thirds majority of the duly chosen and sworn Members of each House of Congress by a roll call vote."
And, very timely for today, it says it won't increase your debt, it won't buy more than it can pay for... unless it really wants something, Section 5:
"The limit on the debt of the United States shall not be increased, unless three-fifths of the duly chosen and sworn Members of each House of Congress shall provide for such an increase by a roll call vote."
Borrowing? Congress isn't about to harsh it's mellow over concerns about its available income with trifles such as how much of its income is borrowed, or how much of what it pays is going towards principle on the debt,
"‘Section 9. Total receipts shall include all receipts of the United States Government except those derived from borrowing. Total outlays shall include all outlays of the United States Government except those for repayment of debt principal."
Those are the serious, hard-hitting restraints, this amendment proposes?
Now congress being what it is, and always will be - gloriously imperfect - I could maybe live with such a mushy amendment, at the very least it'd draw more publicity than normal to their bad behavior. And, I'll admit, that the required two thirds or three fifths majorities (in most sections), are not minor hurdles to overcome, they'd require congress to exert some measure of united effort to override those barriers.
But that is not the worst of it, not even close, as you'll see with these next two issues. First, lets have a look at Section 10. It says that
Congress will have, and use, it's power to make whatever laws it thinks this mushy amendment enables them to make (but pay special attention to the last part):
"The Congress shall have power to enforce and implement this article by appropriate legislation, which may rely on estimates of outlays, receipts, and gross domestic product."
Did you catch that? "which may rely on estimates"... what estimates? And more importantly, whose estimates?
Good question, and this begins to bring us back to the most momentous part of this whole proposal, the section I skipped over earlier, Section 3.
Good stuff here... from Caesars point of view anyway. You see, the estimates about the nations Gross Domestic Product aren't known until well after the year in question is over and all the deposits are tallied, sooo what they rely upon are estimates of what the GDP will be.
Who makes those estimates? Experts, of course, you know, those same experts who have been noted month after month over the last several years in news stories about the economy, in phrases such as "Experts were surprised today by higher than expected..." loses, unemployment numbers, poor performance, etc.
Yep, those experts. But there's more to it than that, we're not talking simply any ol' run of the mill experts, no, we're talking about the "Bureau of Economic Analysis", and would you care to guess where you can find that particular group of experts hanging their hats? Why, in the Department of Commerce, of course. And under whose control do you suppose you'll find the Dept. of Commerce, and it's Bureau of Economic Analysis to be? Hmmm? Whose thumbprint is it that is pressed firmly down upon all of their pointy little pinheads?
Why, that would be the President of the United States of America, that's whose.
Really, congress has it rough in comparison, they've at least got to get 2/3 of themselves together in order to ignore the 18% of GDP cap, but the POTUS, he's got it easy, he doesn't have to fit his wish list to their estimates, he simply has to see to it that his wish list doesn't conflict with what his experts will estimate 18% of GDP to be.
What could possibly go wrong there?
But wait, there's more!
But even the fact that the President will be in charge of making a budget that will be made based upon the estimates of those agencies which he has total control and power over, misses the most serious issue amidst a diversion of estimates. Take a closer look, for this is the heart of the matter:
Section 3:
" Prior to each fiscal year, the President shall transmit to the Congress a proposed budget for the United States Government for that fiscal year in which--
‘(1) total outlays do not exceed total receipts [allow me to draw your attention back to Section 9]; and
‘(2) total outlays do not exceed 18 percent of the gross domestic product of the United States for the calendar year ending before the beginning of such fiscal year."
The worst, most egregious piece of this 'balanced budget' amendment, is that it removes from Congress, its most vital and exclusive Constitutional responsibility, that of the power of the purse, and it hands it over, pretty as you please, to be shared (for the moment) with the executive branch in the person of the President of the United States, via his brand new power, that of writing the Budget of the US Govt.
New? Really? Doesn't the President always propose a budget?
Sometimes, sometimes he does propose a budget, most presidents do, which Congress can choose to read, ignore or laugh at it, as they did with this President's last budget proposal... but in terms of the Constitutional power, he does not propose the budget of the Govt. of the United States - Congress does, as originated by the House of Representatives. This amendment undoes that.
Now that's a big f'ing deal.
The Power of Persuasion and the Persuasion of Power
Here's what the old dead white guys had to say about the budget:
"No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time."
The word Budget does not occur in the Constitution. At all. That may be a problem, an oversight. Perhaps. But also perhaps what wasn't said, but was understood, is something we should take note of. It was understood, expected, assumed (ASS-U-ME) that the members of the Govt, legislative, judicial and executive, would be responsible and protective, of the money of the people of the USA.
" The object is apparent upon the slightest examination. It is to secure regularity, punctuality, and fidelity, in the disbursements of the public money. As all the taxes raised from the people, as well as the revenues arising from other sources, are to be applied to the discharge of the expenses, and debts, and other engagements of the government, it is highly proper, that congress should possess the power to decide, how and when any money should be applied for these purposes. If it were otherwise, the executive would possess an unbounded power over the public purse of the nation; and might apply all its monied resources at his pleasure. The power to control, and direct the appropriations, constitutes a most useful and salutary check upon profusion and extravagance, as well as upon corrupt influence and public peculation. In arbitrary governments the prince levies what money he pleases from his subjects, disposes of it, as he thinks proper, and is beyond responsibility or reproof. It is wise to interpose, in a republic, every restraint, by which the public treasure, the common fund of all, should be applied, with unshrinking honesty to such objects, as legitimately belong to the common defence, and the general welfare. Congress is made the guardian of this treasure; and to make their responsibility complete and perfect, a regular account of the receipts and expenditures is required to be published, that the people may know, what money is expended, for what purposes, and by what authority."
Obviously, few if any, members of our govt still have that view... I however, question whether passing another piece of paper, with all the power of the paper which the Constitution currently holds over them, is going to do a damn thing to fix the problem. In fact, I believe it will exacerbate the problem. Big time.
What something actually means and intends, is not the concern of those in power - getting anything which has been said, to be interpretable as what they'd prefer it to mean, IS. For instance, look at this video clip from five years ago - for the moment ignore the fact that it's Sen. Harry Reid (D) talking - I've no doubt that I could dig up several Republican Senators and Representatives who were for raising the debt limit then, but not now.
Instead, I'd like you to see that here's A politician, in this case one who happens to be from the left, saying something he is at total odds with today,
"They should explain that more debt is good for our economy. How can the Republican majority in this congress, explain to their constituents, that trillions of dollars of new debt, is good for our economy. How can they explain, that they think it is fair to force our children, our grand children, and our great grand children, to finance this debt through higher taxes - that's what it'll have to be - why is it right to increase our nation's dependence on foreign creditors to finance this. They should explain this..."
Now ask yourself, why was it wrong to raise the debt limit for the 'worst economy in fifty years' of 2006, but ok for the worst economy in 80 years of 2011? The answer is that the Truth of the matter was the furthest thing from his mind; what he was concerned with was winning. Period. Swaying opinion, winning over public opinion to his favor was the only thing that mattered to Sen. Reid or Sen. Obama, and very likely Sen. McConnell as well; because for them the end justifies the means - and while I do believe that that view is more prevalent on the left than the right, it is spread liberally across both sides of the aisle.
And that is what spells disaster for us all in this Balanced Budget Amendment. Those reading and applying the constitution today are not doing so with an eye towards the power of reasonable persuasion, but towards using the persuasion of power to get what they want. Again, don't even concern yourself with who, or which party, is in the Oval office now, look at this responsibly - historically - with an eye to your grandchildren.
Look again at Section 3, which declares that the President shall submit a budget. Now DON'T read that as a person possessed of common sense, remember, we're dealing with Congress and the courts here, look at this from the point of view such as that which decided the case 'Wickard v. Filburn'. This is a view which found that a private farmer who chose in 1941 to grow additional bushels of wheat for the private use of his family - not selling it, simply using and consuming it - could be contrived as unlawfully altering the economy of the nation, interfering with the federal govt's mandates on interstate commerce, and so constituted a federal offense, and it is a view that is still prevalent, and if anything more so, today.
Got that? Yes, it really happened. Got that in mind?
Now with that twisted perspective firmly in mind, add to it the fervent intentions of some sincere politico wanting desperately to do the GOOD which he just KNOWS could be accomplished... if he could just get govt to do what he knows is best... with that mindset in place, NOW try and imagine what such a person could do with this phrase:
"Prior to each fiscal year, the President shall transmit to the Congress a proposed budget for the United States Government for that fiscal year ..."
Remember, the Constitution has never before even mentioned a budget, let alone anything about the President having any part in proposing one or anything else with the POTUS having anything at all to do with the power of the purse. Prior to this proposed amendment that power of the purse has been the sole province of the House of Representatives. So why was this added? But no, Why is irrelevant, it really doesn't matter why it was added, not for someone looking to squeeze power out of what they have at hand to work with, what matters is only how a politician would try to argue it to their advantage in order to do the good they just know you need to have done to you. And it might go something like this,
Well obviously this amendment was proposed to remedy the previous system which congress and the people agreed had failed, and they agreed that the new system was to be improved by allowing the President to propose those necessary laws and bills required to balance the budget.
Isn't that about how it would likely go?
'Wha...? No...!' you say, 'This amendment doesn't say anything about the POTUS proposing bills and spending bills... only a budget!"
To which our doppelganger’s twisted mindset would don their best lawyer specs and say
"Now wait a minute... we're discussing a budget here, are we not? WHY propose a budget, except to do some particular things? Does a budget typically contain a broad and general lump sum only? NO, it contains line items, items to be proposed and acted upon! After all, this wasn't a "Proposed Spending sum limit' amendment, this was a Budget amendment! And as such the President has obviously now been given the power to propose budgetable items,which we all know typically consist of spending bills and other laws. Clearly that is the case, is it not? And really, it doesn't change things all that much, once the President proposes his budget, congress is still free to discuss & vote on these issues, they're still free to either ratify... or decline them..."
And don't let the last part about voting lull you, if the process didn't heavily depend upon the House being in sole control of proposing matters of the purse, it wouldn't have explicitly stated that only the House could originate raising revenue in Article 1, Section 7,
"All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills."
"The house of representatives can not only refuse, but they alone can propose the supplies requisite for the support of government. They in a word hold the purse;"
That power is an essential check upon the other houses and branches of government, it is the People's check upon them all, and it is vital to the balance of power in our government. Blackstone considered it the most effectual check upon would be tyrants, as did our Founders. This Balanced Budget Amencment is potentially a massive breach and destabilization of the constitution. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but certainly within the very near future.
The language of this proposed amendment will easily be interpretable in such a way, if not today, tomorrow, as giving the power of the purse to the POTUS. If you think that's far fetched, recall how the Fourteenth amendment has been twisted to modern purposes, or how the Commerce Clause was turned into absolute control over any activity that could conceivably be considered to affect the economy, down to the point of forbidding a private farmer from growing additional crops for his own family.
If the careful use of the meaningful language of our Founders could be twisted to that effect by simply ignoring the meaning of the language, imagine what can be done with the sloppy imprecise wording of this amendment.
If a balanced budget amendment was as simple as what I proposed above... it might have a chance of accomplishing what it claims to do... doubtful, but maybe. But this? It's hard not to question whether this conglomeration of half truths and weasel words was ever meant by its authors as a meaningful law, but however it was originally meant, it will be used, to expand power, not to restrain it.
The Balance of Power Unbalanced
Congress really ought to put down their polling numbers, turn off the T.V. News, toss out today's newspapers and instead pick up a history book or two. Either of these would do for our purposes here, Anthony Everitt's Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician, or Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor. No need to pay any attention to the particular details, you know, civil war, coups, assassinations, etc, those are simple details which apply to their time, not ours. No, look rather at how those with power, or who were fearful of power, reacted to turbulent and uncertain times, and gained control of the power to alter their government in ways a few felt would be better. Look less at the particulars and more at the methods which Octavius... aka Caesar Augustus, employed to get around the Senate, he made them irrelevant, while still managing to make them feel important and useful. Look at the regulatory agencies, and look at our proposed amendments. Think.
What Augustus accomplished, he accomplished with bureaucracies, executive orders, speeches, propaganda and the equivalent of photo-ops and so forth. Congress really ought to pay attention... it sure seems like someone at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue has.
And you know what they say about those who fail to learn from history, they are doomed to repeat it... or at least rhyme with it.
For a more in depth look at the Balanced Budget Amendment, have a look at this post by Publius Huldah, she nails it.
