Author Archive
NY-26 Post Mortem
Today POLITICO Arena asks:
Reacting to yesterday’s NY-26 election results, Paul Ryan this morning said, “I saw the ads. I saw burning people’s Medicare cards. If you can scare seniors into thinking that their current benefits are being affected, that’s going to have an effect. And that is exactly what took place here.” Do Republicans have a messaging problem on Medicare?
My response:
Some Republicans have a messaging problem — that partially explains the NY-26 result. Others, like Paul Ryan, are telling it straight, for which they should be commended.
Medicare “as we know it” will soon end, as every honest analyst has recognized. If Democrats continue to demagogue the issue, we have a character problem on our hands. And if enough voters fall for that flim-flam, we have a national problem of lethal proportions. Hard reality doesn’t play politics.
Religion in Service of the Welfare State
Here we go again: To read E.J. Dionne’s piece in the Washington Post this morning, you’d think that God Himself had ordained the modern welfare state. Dionne’s nominal target is the media for its failure to sufficiently cover John Boehner’s recent commencement address at the Catholic University of America. But his larger aim is to promote his reading of the proposition that “From the apostles to the present, the Magisterium of the Church has insisted that those in power are morally obliged to preference the needs of the poor.”
That’s from the opening paragraph of a letter to Boehner from a group of Catholic academics, including some leading members of the Catholic University faculty. It added, “Your record in support of legislation to address the desperate needs of the poor is among the worst in Congress.” And it singled out the House-passed Ryan budget for special condemnation, Dionne tells us, approvingly.
It’s hardly news, of course, that Catholics, along with other denominations, are divided on the “social justice” question. But as I wrote last month in the Wall Street Journal, the idea that Jesus taught that we should be forced, by government, to aid the poor is a serious misreading of Christian doctrine, to say nothing of the Decalogue. Virtue arises from voluntary actions, of which there is no shortage here in America — at least so long as the burdens of the welfare state don’t crowd them out entirely. This use of the gospel to promote that state is not only unAmerican but unChristian as well.
Ron Paul on the General Welfare Clause
Now that Rep. Ron Paul is again a presidential candidate, his constitutional views will come under increasing scrutiny, as happened yesterday when he was interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. Not surprisingly, critics immediately leapt on Paul’s “crankish view” that Social Security, Medicare, and other such programs are unconstitutional. Even Wallace seemed taken aback, citing the document’s General Welfare Clause:
The Congress shall have the Power to lay and collect Taxes … to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.
“Doesn’t Social Security come under promoting the general welfare of the United States?” Wallace asked, incredulously.
One does not have to agree with everything Paul has said or stood for over the years to grant that he has a point, and a very important one. It’s a mark of how widespread our constitutional misunderstanding is that so many Americans take it for granted, at least until the Tea Party came along, that most of what the federal government does today is constitutional.
In a nutshell, the Constitution was written and ratified to both authorize and limit the government created through it. It was designed to do the latter not through the Bill of Rights — that was an afterthought, added two years later — but through the doctrine of enumerated powers. Article I, section 8, grants the Congress only 18 powers. Nothing for education, or retirement security, or health care: Those responsibilities were left to the states or to the people, as the Tenth Amendment makes clear.
So what about the General Welfare Clause, the first of Congress’s 18 powers? To be sure, the clause was inartfully drafted, like several other provisions in the Constitution. But it was understood by nearly all as granting Congress the power simply to tax (in limited ways: see the full text). The terms “common Defence” and “general Welfare” were meant merely as general headings under which the 17 other specific powers or ends were subsumed.
In fact, the question came up almost immediately, during the ratification debates, and in early Congresses as well, so we have a rich record of just what the General Welfare Clause meant. Here, for example, in Federalist #41, is James Madison, the principal author of the Constitution:
Some, who have not denied the necessity of the power of taxation, have grounded a very fierce attack against the Constitution, on the language in which it is defined. It has been urged and echoed, that the power “to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States,” amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction…. Had no other enumeration or definition of the powers of the Congress been found in the Constitution, than the general expressions just cited, the authors of the objection might have had some color for it…. But what color can the objection have, when a specification of the objects alluded to by these general terms immediately follows, and is not even separated by a longer pause than a semicolon?
Indeed, as was often asked: What was the point of enumerating the 17 other powers if Congress could do anything it wanted under this single power? The Framers could have stopped right there. They didn’t because they meant for Congress to have only certain limited powers, each one enumerated in Article I, section 8. And taxing for the general welfare limited Congress even further by precluding it from providing for special parties or interests.
Nor does it change anything to note, as Wallace did yesterday, that the Supreme Court upheld the Social Security Act in 1937 — as if that settled the question. As a practical matter it settled things, of course, just as Plessy v. Ferguson settled the “separate-but-equal” issue in 1896, only to be reversed in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, and Bowers v. Hardwick settled the issue of homosexual sodomy in 1986, only to be reversed in Lawrence v. Texas in 2003. It’s well understood that the 1937 Court, cowed by Franklin Roosevelt’s infamous Court-packing threat, simply reversed 150 years of understanding and precedent concerning the doctrine of enumerated powers. And that removed the Constitution’s main restraint on federal power — not by constitutional amendment but by judicial fiat.
But it’s not been “extreme liberals” alone, Wallace went on to say, who’ve read the Constitution as the 1937 Court did, noting that conservative Justice Antonin Scalia recently told a congressional gathering: “It’s up to Congress how you want to appropriate, basically.” To be sure, from fear over “judicial activism,” many conservative judges have bought into the New Deal’s constitutional revolution. Perhaps the most that can be said on their side is that the Court cannot alone, this late in the day, reverse these mistakes.
In fact, this unconstitutionality cannot be undone overnight even by the Congress. Here again there are practical concerns, as Paul has recognized. Vast numbers of people have come to rely on these welfare schemes, however unsustainable they are in the long run, as has become increasingly clear. If constitutional fidelity can serve to spur fiscal discipline, however, we may yet slowly work our way out of our present and long-term fiscal dilemma. But that felicitous result will not happen until we admit both our infidelity and our indiscipline — the two are intimately connected.
By reading the General Welfare Clause in isolation, therefore, Wallace and others turn the Constitution on its head. Rather than a document aimed at limiting government, it becomes a document authorizing unlimited government. And let’s be clear: The basic issue here is nothing more — nor less — than legitimacy. Do we live under the Constitution, or don’t we? If Ron Paul’s views on this fundamental question are “cranky,” so too were those of Madison, Jefferson, Washington, and the rest of the Founders we revere.
Will Republicans Come to Grips With Immigration?
Today POLITICO Arena asks:
Given President Obama’s speech today in El Paso, Texas, is immigration a winning issue for Democrats?
My response:
Immigration will be a winning issue for Democrats only if Republicans allow it, which they’re quite capable of doing. Where’s the anti-immigrant part of the Republican base going to go — to the Democrats? Hardly. With so much else at stake, will they sit out the 2012 elections, over this one issue? Please.
If Republicans play it right, this can be a winner. No one seriously believes that the estimated 10 to 12 million illegal immigrants in the country, most working, can or should be sent back to their countries of origin. So the main issues are paving the way to legalization, better securing the borders, and providing for a rational guest worker program. If Republicans got behind a package like that, immigration would cease to be a Democratic issue. This isn’t rocket science.
The Boundless Executive State: From Global Warming to Sexual Harassment
Two days ago Cato held a book forum to mark the publication of an excellent new book, Climate Coup: Global Warming’s Invasion of Our Government and Our Lives, edited by Pat Michaels. I coauthored chapter one, which shows how the modern executive state arose over the 20th century such that today the Environmental Protection Agency is able to regulate vast areas of life without ever having to go to Congress for authority to do so. It’s a remarkable inversion of the Founders’ vision. With emphasis added, the very first sentence of the Constitution, after the Preamble, reads as follows: “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress …” — not in the executive branch, not in the courts, but in Congress. Yet today we are governed mainly by over 300 executive branch agencies that themselves exercise legislative, executive, and judicial powers, leaving the separation-of-powers principle in tatters.
And the executive’s reach extends, of course, far beyond environmental regulations. Thus we now learn from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) — a fine organization dedicated to defending students and faculty caught in the jaws of higher education’s obsession with political correctness — that just last month the United States Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), all on its own, issued regulations requiring that colleges and universities receiving federal funding must employ not the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard, nor even the clear-and-convincing-evidence standard, but the low preponderance-of-the-evidence standard (a 50.01 percent, “more likely than not,” evidentiary burden) when adjudicating student complaints concerning sexual harassment or sexual violence. Institutions that fail to comply face federal investigation and the loss of federal funding.
It’s well understood, of course, that allegations of sexual crime involve difficult proof issues. Given that, FIRE’s open letter to OCR’s assistant secretary points out that Supreme Court precedent argues strongly against using the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard in campus hearings concerning allegations of sexual harassment and sexual violence. Lowering the burden of proof, FIRE notes in its press release,
will reduce confidence in campus judiciary systems and inevitably result in more incorrect guilty verdicts. Rather than provide for the “prompt and equitable” resolution of student allegations, FIRE contends that OCR’s new requirement “serves to undermine the integrity, accuracy, reliability, and basic fairness of the judicial process.” Further, relying on the preponderance of the evidence standard in sexual violence claims “turns the fundamental tenet of due process on its head, requiring that those accused of society’s vilest crimes be afforded the scant protection of our judiciary’s least certain standard.”
Yet already, FIRE adds, OCR’s new regulations have prompted colleges and universities across the country
to abandon their commitment to due process protections for students accused of sexual harassment and sexual violence. Brandeis University, Stanford University, Yale University, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst all have announced revisions, either already instituted or forthcoming. Given the threat of federal investigation and the loss of federal funding for failing to comply with OCR’s directives, hundreds of institutions will follow.
Thus, the modern executive state is at work, in this and a thousand and one other ways, writing and enforcing rules that Congress alone has the authority to write. But Congress long ago abdicated that responsibility, delegating it to politically non-responsible bureaucracies and bureaucrats. And that is where power rests today.
Will Americans Bite the Bullet — and Vote for Individual Choice?
Today POLITICO Arena asks:
Rep. Paul Ryan, architect of House Republicans’ budget plan, has faced a series of angry questions at town hall meetings, thanks in part to groups like the Democratic National Committee and the progressive activist group Americans United for Change. Can they use town halls to turn public opinion against the budget plan, as happened with Democrats’ health care proposals in summer 2009? And is the fury organic or mostly manufactured?
My response:
Unlike the fierce Tea Party reaction to Obama’s health care scheme in the summer of 2009, which came spontaneously from the bottom up and continued through November 2010, the angry reaction at the moment to the House Republicans’ budget plan is largely manufactured by the Democratic left and is not likely to last — or, if it does, we’re in more trouble than we imagine. What the 2010 elections demonstrated was the ability of the American people to discern change they could not believe in, and to do something about it. One hopes they’ll see enough change in the Ryan plan that they can believe in.
Take, for example, Ryan’s proposal to change Medicare from a “defined benefit” to a “defined contribution” plan, which has generated the most early opposition. The bottom line here is really quite simple. The CBO projects that Congress would have to double all federal income-tax rates to keep Medicare and other entitlements on their current path. That would cripple the economy — and itself end Medicare as we know it, and much else besides — so Congress must reduce Medicare spending growth.
The basic question, therefore, is whether bureaucrats decide what health care seniors receive (the Democratic method) or seniors themselves decide which benefits are most valuable to them (the Ryan plan). Will more Americans prefer to have their health care rationed by others, or by themselves? We shall see.
All-Consuming Politics
Today POLITICO Arena asks:
Is Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour’s announcement today that he will not seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, and the reason he gave for his decision, the right call?
My response:
Gov. Barbour’s explanation for why he will not seek the 2012 Republican presidential nomination — because a candidate today “is embracing a ten-year commitment to an all-consuming effort, to the virtual exclusion of all else,” and he cannot make such a commitment — is not only refreshingly candid but points to a much deeper problem.
We are moving inexorably not simply to news but to politics 24/7/365. And what better example than our current part-time president who, with no primary challenger in sight, is already on the campaign trail (did he ever leave it?), when the election is 19 months away. Some of us are old enough to remember when elected officials served — and ran for office or reelection only around election time.
Part of the reason for the change is the need today for vast amounts of campaign cash. But the deeper reason, I submit, is because politics has taken over so much of life. When government was more limited, and we didn’t look to it to provide our every need and want, those who “governed” didn’t feel such a need to cater to us — and we had better things to do anyway than obsess over politics. Calvin Coolidge took naps in the White House — in his pajamas! Imagine that today.
Egalitarianism Run Amok
The modern liberal’s quest for equality over liberty takes many forms, and you can count on the editorialists at The New York Times to promote them all, sooner or later. Today, they’re urging the Pentagon to “officially integrate small armor and infantry units with women.”
Why? Well, female soldiers, they note, are already involved in de facto combat situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, at least peripherally. But the main reason, they make clear, is that women’s “careers are crimped as leadership promotions flowed more to men with combat experience.” Indeed, the editors tell us that the March 7 report of the Military Leadership Diversity Commission found “ethnic, gender and cultural problems hindering career advancement in the military,” leading the Times to aver that “the nation’s female soldiers deserve a fair chance at advancement.”
Never mind the Israeli experience with women in combat. (There’s a nation that can’t afford social experiments in its military.) The Times dismisses objections as mere “shibboleths.” And not at all do the editors acknowledge that our military has one and only one function – not global law enforcement, not humanitarian intervention, certainly not facilitator of equal-opportunity career advancement, but to protect our liberties against threats from abroad, by means that will ensure that end, swiftly and with the least cost to our soldiers and ourselves.
‘We’re All In This Together’
Today POLITICO Arena asks:
Given that Planned Parenthood’s online donations have shot up over the last two months, is Mike Pence (R-Ind.) correct to say it could — and should — operate without taxpayer funds?
My response:
Given that many Americans believe that abortion is murder, of course Planned Parenthood, the nation’s leading abortion provider, should not be publicly funded. (And please don’t say that no taxpayer funds go for abortions: money is fungible.)
Democrats think that almost everything should be publicly funded – education, health care, retirement, the arts. What’s next? News? Entertainment? Oh, I forgot: NPR and PBS. But only that programming that meets their exacting standards. FOX News? Faget about it! Where you from? Kansas? And they wonder why there’s a Tea Party.
It’s Bigger Than the Budget
Today POLITICO Arena asks:
Do the cuts (and increases) contained in the six-month spending bill House Republicans posted overnight make sense, and do they go far enough in attacking the deficit and national debt?
My response:
Today’s Arena question captures perfectly what’s missing from our current budget debate. In listing a few of the compromises contained in the six-month spending bill House Republicans posted overnight, and asking whether those cuts (and increases) go far enough in attacking the deficit and national debt, it invites us to imagine that America is one big family, arguing over how “we” should spend “our” money.
We’re not. As I wrote in last Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, we’re a constitutional republic, populated by discrete individuals, each with our own interests. Today’s question, perfectly understandable in the current climate, socializes us. The Framers’ Constitution freed us, to make our own individual choices.
To be sure, we have to start where we are today. But if that’s as far as we go, we’re doomed to never grasping the real problem. The Constitution was written precisely to check our appetite for “public goods.” It authorizes only a few, truly public goods. Not health care. Not education. Not most of what we spend “our” money on today. We’ve ignored the discipline it imposes, and we’re paying the price.
The Budget Impasse: Who’s to Blame?
Today POLITICO Arena asks:
Will there be a budget deal? And has Obama shown himself to be a capable leader throughout this budget impasse?
My response:
Will there be a budget agreement? Who knows. Has Obama shown himself to be a capable leader in this budget battle? Please. One thing is clear, though: It’s beyond rich for Democrats to blame Republicans for this budget impasse.
Let’s remember that we’re talking about the budget for the fiscal year that began last October, which should have been passed well before then — when Democrats held the White House and both chambers of Congress by wide margins. In all that time, however, they couldn’t pass even one appropriations bill. Why? Because they were trying to game the November elections.
Well they lost those elections — big time. Yet even in the lame-duck session, when they still held all the cards, they couldn’t pass a budget. Now they blame the Republicans? For listening to the voters? What do they think those elections were about? Chopped liver?
Paul Ryan and Political Discipline
Today POLITICO Arena asks:
Paul Ryan’s budget — hard-headed fiscal sanity or inhumane?
My response:
Either we discipline ourselves, painfully, or soon enough the Chinese and other lenders will do it for us, more painfully still, by refusing to loan to us any longer at currently low interest rates. And in that event, the debt service will be all consuming. Neither individuals nor nations can go down the road we’re on without paying the price.
Margaret Thatcher put it plainly: “The trouble with socialism” — let’s be honest, we’re socializing the costs of our appetites by imposing them on our children and grandchildren – ”is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”
Inhumane? The inhumanity is among those demagogues who put us on this path, promising something for nothing year in and year out. Paul Ryan deserves our gratitude for biting the bullet at last. The ball is now in the court of the demagogues.
Cato on Facebook
Cato on Twitter
Cato on Google+
Cato on YouTube
