I never thought that I would utter these words, but we need a new congressional agency. This new agency, the Congressional Constitution Office, or CCO, would be modeled after the independent Congressional Budget Office.
The Congressional Budget Office has been in the news recently for reporting higher costs for some proposed legislation than Democrat supporters of those proposed laws have claimed. Essentially, the CBO’s charter is to go through a proposed bill in order to analyze its costs and the effects of that spending on the budget and national debt. Douglass Elmendorf, the current director of the CBO, has come under harsh fire from supporters of health care legislation for his more critical financial analyses than those put forth by the statist propagandists Democrats who seek to take over the US health care system.
This new CCO is a great idea for an ambitious politician to seize right now, perhaps a conservative firebrand like Michele Bachmann.
The Congressional Constitution Office would be a mandatory part of the legislative process. All legislation that made it through the House or Senate would require an addendum from the CCO analyzing exactly where the US Constitution grants the legislative branch of government the power to pass the particular legislation (please see the 10th amendment). Rule changes stipulating that bills must be constrained to one similar topic would be required to make this work, for example no social program spending can be combined with a military appropriations bill, and would provide the side benefit of making the legislative sausage-making process more transparent.
The second part of the CCO would be its requirement to be completely transparent. The CCO website would be required to show a graphical representation of the amount of money spent by government and the purported constitutional provisions involved. Clearly this would consistently show that they use two basic approaches: the flawed “General Welfare” argument and their overreaching (and illegitimate) interpretation of the commerce clause.
If you look at the following breakdown of the 2009 budget from Wikipedia you can see that they break the spending numbers out into many agencies:
In order to get my arms around the truth of the spending versus the constitutional authority I decided to break the spending items out into three groups. The first group consists of powers that are delegated to the legislative branch by Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. The second group are exercises of power that can only be justified by a dishonest interpretation of the General Welfare clause, and the third group are spending items that can only be justified by relying on the Interstate Commerce clause. As a constitutionalist, I argue that only those items in the first group are legitimate, constitutional exercises of legislative branch power.
Article 1, Section 8:
Interest on National Debt (8.5%)
Department of Defense (16.85%)
Global War On Terror (4.75%)
US Dept of Veterans’ Affairs (1.46%)
Homeland Security (1.23%)
Dept of Justice (.66%)
NASA (.58%)
Dept of Treasury (.41%)
Judicial Branch (.21%)
Legislative Branch (.15%)
Executive Office of the President (.01%)
Total: 34.81%
General Welfare:
Social Security (21.05%)
Medicare (13.34%)
Medicaid and SCHIP (7.32%),
Unemployment, welfare, other mandatory spending? (11.77%)
Health and Human Services (2.3%)
US Dept of Education (1.93%)
HUD (1.26%)
Social Security Administration (.27%)
EPA (.28%)
National Science Foundation (.23%)
Corps of Engineers (.15%)
Other Agencies (.24%)
Other Off-Budget Discretionary Spending (1.27%)
Total: 61.41%
Interstate Commerce:
Energy (.82%)
Dept of Agriculture (.68%)
Transportation (.38%)
Interior (.35%)
Labor (.34%)
Small Business Administration (.02%)
Total: 2.59%
Interestingly, though my intent with this post was simply to propose this new agency, my own analysis of the budget breakdown illustrated some interesting points.
The dishonest statist’s best friend: the General Welfare Clause
When arguing with people on the Left, I have often made the statement that at least two-thirds of the federal budget is extra-constitutional, meaning that the legislative branch has no constitutional authority to legislate in those areas. After breaking up the budget data into these three groups I can see that my previous gut feeling about that was not far off – by my count over 60 percent of the federal budget is justified with egregiously dishonest references to the General Welfare clause. Note that the Left’s position on that clause is completely contradictory to the very clear 10th amendment. For example, CNS News asked Nancy Pelosi where the Constitution grants her the power to force Americans to purchase health insurance. Her classic statist response was “Are you serious?”.
Interestingly, it is not hard to find a response to that General Welfare clause dishonesty from the founding fathers themselves, who presciently predicted that we would have charlatan politicians like Obama and Pelosi and Reid. The man considered to be the father of the US Constitution, James Madison, specifically addressed this:
With respect to the words “general welfare,” I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.
– James Madison
Interstate Commerce Clause
Though most observers are familiar with the argument that the Interstate Commerce clause is abused by the legislative branch to control things that it has no authority to control, it was interesting to find that (based upon my breakdown) they do not use that clause to justify spending as much as they use it to justify legislation that controls the states and usurps the states’ 10th amendment protections. FDR, no friend of the Constitution, managed to get the Supreme Court to overturn 150 years of precedent in the horrible Wickard v. Filburn decision, which held that Congress could regulate intrastate commerce under the guise of interstate commerce.
When you think about it, it’s amazing how many of today’s problems in America were instigated by that statist jerk Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I’d like to walk my dog around his grave until nature called.
While my proposed Congressional Constitution Office would not solve all of our problems it would clearly illuminate the perennial constitutional dishonesty that is par for the course for the United States Congress. Obviously it will never pass because it takes away their power, but during an election year it could be used by savvy conservatives to show the contrast between conservatives and the socialists that now own the Democrat party.
Though he dropped it as soon as he was elected, didn’t candidate Obama espouse transparency in government?
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“We Need a New Congressional Agency”
At first thought I would have thought you have lost your mind. Then I had the second thought when I read your proposal for the Congressional Constitution Office, or CCO. Your sanity has been restored. The litmus test of Constitutionality should slam on the breaks of this runaway train of stateism that is taking over our country.
You have suggested it be modeled after the CBO as an independent nonpartisan agency. That is a good suggestion. Here’s the rub, the CBO was created by the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974. An act of Congress! I just don’t see this Congress being willing to allow such an oversight agency to be established. It will stand in the way of too much of the statist’s efforts to centrally control our country. Although that was pessimistic (pragmatic) I think that the CCO is an idea worthy of the fight. I recently had the thought that all legislation needs to be exposed, publically, to exactly the kind of examination that this office would do. This task would be monumental to do from the private sector but a federally charter independent nonpartisan agency could get it done.
Imagine the effort involved in dissecting the 2,000 page Health Care Proposal for Constitutional justification for each action proposed within such a monstrosity. That thought must be why you propose: “Rule changes stipulating that bills must be constrained to one similar topic would be required…” With such a constraint a proposed bill will be reduced to a manageable comprehensible size that, dare I say this, anyone can understand. This is similar to the battle in the 1380′s AD by John Wycliffe, an Oxford professor, scholar, and theologian to produce English language Bibles. Just like the church of Wycliffe’s time Congress will lose control if the American people are able to read and understand, for themselves, legislative proposals without the need for the High Priests of Stateism telling us what they mean. These are the same folks who are willing to pass major legislation without even bothering to read these proposals themselves.
Something MUST change and this CCO proposal just might be what is needed now.
Thank you for the thoughtful response, Tom. Perhaps more importantly, thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt (with respect to my sanity) long enough to get through enough of the post for me to ramble my way to my point. Sometimes it takes me a while. ;^)
Like you, probably, I have been observing politics for a long time. In fact, I have had an unnatural interest in politics ever since watching the Watergate hearings on TV with my then-liberal father when I was in the first or second grade. Based upon the inevitable cynicism that comes from 30+ years of watching American politics, I have no expectation that many politicians would sign on to this idea. But I do think the CCO could be used effectively to provide a clear contrast between the two sides, much like the Contract With America did in 1994.
It seems obvious that the stakes are so much higher now than in ’94 and our empty-suit president is proof that we cannot support non-conservative, non-constitutionalist people in the GOP. If our side does not provide a clear *different* choice that contrasts with the other side, the myrmidon voters easily get enamored with shallow shiny objects like a Barack Obama.
My CCO idea could be used by some sharp, anti-statist politicians to demonstrate how bad the other side is. I could see someone like Michele Bachmann or Jim DeMint leveraging on something like this simply to illustrate the problem in a clear form.
Now, to get someone to notice this idea is the next problem…. I Tweeted it, and replied to Bachmann and Levin on Twitter with it, but they probably get so much noise that it got lost in the crosstalk.
Or maybe it’s just not that great an idea at all! :^)
“Or maybe it’s just not that great an idea at all!”
Don’t sell yourself short. I, for one, think this is an idea whose time is coming. It will take some time to make it happen. Just as Rome was not built in a day so too will time be on our side. We must have a long view of history and remember that this statist takeover was accomplished one step at a time. Each step, on its own, was non-threatening so it was allowed to happen. Each step was one more accomplishment toward a goal unperceived by those who did not have a copy of the playbook. Now it is time to return to the playbook given to us by the Founding Fathers, The Constitution of The United States. The CCO is the way to make this happen.
Here is a suggestion of another member of congress who may get on board with this idea, Congressman Mike Rogers of Michigan’s 8th Congressional District. See: http://mikerogers.house.gov/Default.aspx and watch, again, his opening statement on Heath Care Reform.
I think we already have this – it’s called the Supreme Court.
Heh – good one. Four of them have either never read the text of the Constitution or simply do not let what it says get in the way of their government-love ideology. Those four are obviously Sotomayor, Stevens, Ginsburg, and Breyer. Anthony Kennedy does not seem to know what he believes in, as evidenced by his siding with the majority on the hideous Kelo v. New London.
Only four of the nine (Thomas, Roberts, Alito, Scalia) seem to take their job seriously as arbiters of the Constitution. The rest are just ideologues.