Thursday, April 30, 2009
Spending and the Enumerated Powers
| "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce." So claimed James Madison. The statement is true and it is clear. There “are few” things that the constitution requires or allows the federal government to do but many responsibilities that it considers to be in the jurisdiction of the individual states. So what has come of our nation? What has come of a nation with a federal government that has limited enumerated powers but is slowly but surely making more and more of the decisions that our constitution suggests to be the responsibility of each individual state and each individual American? It has gotten us a federal government that is intrusive, bloated, ineffective and stripping us of the very freedoms that it is suppose to promote and protect. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than in the area of federal spending. It is here where the incremental role of our federal government is directly related to the incremental cost of life in America. A federal government in tune with our American constitution would require a meager tax on each individual American. The collective sum of that meager individual tax would result in a budget substantial enough to allow the federal government to effectively do the job required of it by the constitution. What are those constitutionally required responsibilities? Article I Section 8 of the Constitution calls upon the federal government to: Borrow money Regulate commerce among the states Regulate naturalization Regulate bankruptcies Coin money Fix weights and standards Punish counterfeiters Establish post offices Establish post roads Record patents Protect copyrights Create federal courts Punish pirates Declare war Raise an army Provide a navy Call up the militia Organize the militia Those are the duties your federal tax dollars are suppose to fund. That was the case yesterday but it is certainly not the case today. Today the role of the federal government has expanded to include the governing and financing of far more than those 20 legal responsibilities. Today our nation is financing everything from county roads to local schools. Today the federal government is spending money on the bailing out of businesses and industries and suggesting federal programs for everything from the payment of individual mortgages to the backing of warrantees for individual purchases of automobiles and medical care for individual in America. Such spending is nowhere enumerated in the constitution, the document that it is suppose to be the guiding light to the federal government’s role in our lives. To clarify that fact and to prevent any exaggerated claims to federal powers that do not exist, the Ninth and Tenth Amendments state: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” and “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Those two amendments reinforce what our founding fathers originally intended and essentially closed the door to a situation that, over the course of at least 150 years, Americans have slowly opened the window to. Over the years, Americans have increasingly looked toward the federal government for direction and assistance that, in constitutional fact, are “reserved to the states” and in many instances the ultimate decisions and responsibilities lie not with the states but actually the more local governments within the states. It is also on these local levels where the local representative governing bodies are more in tune with the needs and sentiments of the issues most directly affecting the citizens of the communities in question. It is at this local level where the decisions made through democratic representation is more in sync with the needs of its people. Who knows better what is best for the people of Brooklyn, New York than other individuals elected to represent Brooklyn, New York? But today, with the increasing role of the federal government, decisions that should be left to the people of Pennsylvania’s Port Matilda or Florida’s Indialantic are being made based on the opinion of representatives from Glastonbury Connecticut and Hagans Crossing Montana. Beyond the arguments of the ineffective results of decisions made through the collective will of representative federal governance, when it comes to issues that are best left to the states, is the federal budget which, more often than not, operates at a deficit while still absorbing more money from the pockets of citizens, than most find acceptable. This bloated, deficit producing budget is not necessarily a result of out of control spending. Although that does not help, the high price of government is the result of a federal government that is doing far more than it was ever suppose to. Congress was never suppose to provide the savings that senior citizens anticipate living off of in their golden years. The federal government was never suppose to pay for the homes we hope to live in, or the $40 rebate for the digital conversion of your television. Yet along the way, the evolution of society and technology has found a need for the federal government’s expanded involvement in our lives. In many cases that expanded role can be seen as legitimate. There are many aspects of a nation’s life which require national standards. Each of our fifty states do not live in a bubble where economic or ecological environments are limited to their borders. The sources of beef from Texas that make its way to the dinner table in California needs to be as healthy for the people in one state as it is in another. The pollutants produced in Los Angeles makes its way east and effect those in Charlottesville. The result is a jointed existence that provides fodder for national standards. But to what extent? Certainly not to the extent that we have come to today. Despite the need for a healthy environment, nowhere in the constitution is the Environmental Protection Agency outlined. Despite the need for safe food or safe products that cross state lines or even continental divides, nowhere in the enumerated responsibilities of Congress, is there a provision mandating the Food and Drug Administration or a products safety commission. At the time the constitution was created, no founding father fathomed that man would someday be flying across America like the eagle we chose to symbolize our nation. But today, who could deny the legitimate purpose of the Federal Aviation Administration? The need for a congress that establishes a degree of national standards exists. But, based on the responsibilities that the constitution gives to congress, how far should the federal government be going? Should it really be taxing its people to bail out General Motors or A.I.G.? Should it really be running deficits that indebt future American generations while spending the peoples money in order to do for them what they should be doing for themselves or what they should be deciding within their respective states? Should congress really be finding ways to collect more taxes from all the people in order to provide some of the people with benefits and safety nets that we have come to expect? Is congress acting constitutionally when it creates programs that provide assistance which once laid in the domain of charitable endeavors? Truth is, such sincere minded intentions are not enumerated in the constitution and as such, they fall in the realm of a state’s responsibility. It is something that should and could be better provided by states and local communities where those who need helping hands reside. Besides, local governments are far more efficient than centralized governments. In New Jersey a town like Bogota of 8,000 people has a per capita spending of roughly $750 per person whereas nearby towns such as Teaneck with 40,000 residents spends $12 hundred dollars per person and Hackensack where 45,000 residents live, their per capita expenditure is close to $16 hundred per person. Although the town of Bogota only operates by spending approximately $750 per person, its citizens are getting services of equivalent, or in some cases, superior quality, to towns where the government is spending approximately $16 hundred a person. This demonstrates that smaller governments are more efficient governments. So why should the biggest government in our nation, the federal government, be the main source of control and spending on anything that the constitution does not require of it? Part of the problem is human nature. The human nature of those who represent us. Our federal representatives have a very large stake in a very large government, both by ideology and by their own salaries. Growing government is a monetary and power interest of those who hold office and they have no inclination to shrink government or relinquish federal control . The more constituents who are employed by the federal government or subsidized by the federal government, the more support their federal representatives can expect, so long as that representative continues to increase federal largess. The other part of the problem is our general laziness and anticipation for quick fixes. American society has incrementally shirked any sense of personal responsibility. Over time, Americans have come to anticipate that all problems to be solved not by themselves but by someone else in government, and quickly. To make matters worse, Often, that which is a legitimate government responsibility is often placed in the lap of the wrong government. Instead of looking to our mayors to crackdown on crime or our county leaders to repair county roads or our governors to improve the quality of education, we look to our U.S. Senators or Congressmen or even our President to make it a national issue to be handled by the federal government. We have erroneously placed so much responsibility on the federal government that regardless of whether it is Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama, no President can ever live up to the expectations we have created. And no federal government can ever effectively finance it all. We have developed such a drastic and misplaced burden of responsibility on the federal government that it can no longer effectively fund or manage the few responsibilities that the constitution calls for. We, the people, have placed so much unconstitutional responsibility on the federal government that some among us try to denounce foreign military actions, that defend our nation from foreign enemies, on the grounds that it is costing us money that we could invest in domestic initiatives….domestic initiatives which were never meant to be a federal expense or responsibility. Perhaps if we were to get back to the constitution’s itemized list of federal responsibility, we could have a federal government that carries out those responsibilities effectively. Perhaps a return to those enumerated duties would allow us to properly tackle and finance national issues like immigration or national security threats like Al Quaeda or the Taliban. As time has passed, we, the people, have lost sight of the road that the constitution set us out on. Since straying off the constitutional course, ever so slightly, over the years, the trajectory we have been on has taken us far away from the intended direction that our founding fathers directed us in. The course we are now on is an expensive and intrusive one. It is one where the government costs us more than just money, it costs us our privacy and our right to self determination. It costs us the very freedom that the constitution guarantees. For many reasons, we really need to get back on the constitutional course we strayed away from. When it comes to spending, getting back on the constitutional course would not only control federal spending, it would make federal spending that is constitutionally driven will be money well spent and more effective. These facts are not lost on every modern day member of congress. Arizona’s John Shadegg has drafted and sponsored H.R. 450. It is called The Enumerated Powers Act and it requires representatives to point to the specific language in the constitution that gives them and the federal government to propose and enforce new laws or spend taxpayer money. Passage of the Enumerated Powers Act could go a long way in helping to insure that our representatives in federal government work within the confines of the constitution and think twice before they spend another unconstitutional dime or further invade states rights. |
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