Source: http://committeefortheconstitution.org/?m=201207
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 06:37:42+00:00

Document:
America was supposed to be the land of self-government. Citizens were to govern themselves politically and morally. They would practice the virtues of self-reliance and responsibility to foster this independent character. Forged through hard work, self-reliance would prevent citizens from depending on the state. A notion of personal responsibility would encourage these independent citizens to understand the limits of government and to solve problems for themselves.
But such an independent citizen is proving to be less common every year.
Now, more people than ever before depend on the federal government for housing, food, income, student aid, or other assistance. Some 67 million Americans, from college students to retirees to welfare beneficiaries, enjoy federal support for things that were once considered to be the responsibility of individuals, families, neighborhoods, churches, and other civil society institutions. That’s about 20 percent of us on the take.
This is no accident. Federal welfare programs are growing by leaps and bounds. And the food stamps program is serving as a “gateway drug” to draw people into depending on Washington.
As Heritage experts Robert Rector and Katherine Bradley report, in the average month in 2010, roughly one of every five households in the U.S. received food stamp benefits. And those on food stamps today tend to rely on government more tomorrow. At any given moment, the majority of recipients are or will become long-term dependents. In fact, half of food stamp aid to families with children has gone to families that have received aid for 8.5 years or more. Plus, most people who receive food stamps also participate in other government aid programs as well. So those costs multiply over time.
It’s tempting to say the welfare state is expanding because the economy is weak, but the fact is that the recession isn’t the problem here.
Before the current recession, combined federal and state spending on food stamps nearly doubled. Under the Bush administration, it rose from $19.8 billion in 2000 to $37.9 billion in 2007. Since taking office, the Obama administration has more than doubled spending on food stamps again: Spending rose from $39 billion in 2008 to a projected $85 billion in 2012. Even after adjusting for inflation and population growth, food stamp spending is now nearly twice the level of any previous recession.
For example, the program was largely unaffected by the welfare reform legislation of 1996, which replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), even though TANF and food stamp caseloads overlap to a great degree. TANF worked, and helped millions of people move off welfare and become self-sufficient. The same principles, rewarding work and discouraging dependency, should be applied to food stamps today.
The goal of the War on Poverty, President Lyndon Johnson said, would be “making taxpayers out of taxeaters.” He declared, “We want to give the forgotten fifth of our people opportunity not doles.” LBJ was not proposing a massive system of endlessly increasing welfare benefits doled out to an ever-enlarging population of beneficiaries. His proclaimed goal was not to create a massive new system of government handouts, but an increase in self-sufficiency: to create a new generation of Americans capable of supporting themselves without government handouts. LBJ planned to reduce, not increase, welfare dependence.
It’s still possible to make welfare temporary and to encourage individual initiative. But doing so would require major changes in anti-poverty programs, starting with food stamps.
Following the welfare reform model, food stamps should be transformed from an open-ended entitlement program that gives one-way handouts into a work activation program. Non-elderly, able-bodied adults who receive benefits should be required to work, prepare for work, or at least look for work as a condition of receiving aid.
Policymakers should also crack down on fraud, and eliminate application loopholes that permit food stamp recipients to bypass income and asset tests. Finally, Congress should cap spending on food stamps at pre-recession levels, to force the program to focus on the truly needy. That would help people move from dependence to independence.
The history of the United States is rooted in the fight for independence. The best way to ensure our country endures is to rekindle that spirit. Slashing dependence on government is a crucial step.
When I visited Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government last winter as a presidential candidate, I mentioned how the Left — big bureaucracy and big unions — helps entrap the poorest Americans in permanent poverty.I suggested that poor teenagers could be employed part-time in the safety of their schools to do light janitorial work or assist in the cafeteria or offices.
My belief was and still is that work would benefit young people — especially poor young people — by helping them earn money and develop a strong work ethic at an early age. In the following weeks, hundreds of people approached me to tell me the stories of their first jobs and how they personally had learned the value of hard work.
After all the media-generated uproar that followed my discussion of work as a core American value, I was fascinated in June to see on CNN the story of a high school senior named Dawn Loggins. Dawn was a straight A student in Lawndale, North Carolina. She was also poor and homeless — having been abandoned by her parents earlier in the year. Every morning, Dawn arrived at school hours before her classmates for her paid job as a janitor. Through her work, Dawn earned a modest amount of money and managed to finish high school. In fact, she even earned a full scholarship and will be going to college this fall. At Harvard.
Dawn is a living tribute to one of the highest American virtues: hard work. Our heroes here are hard workers. We think of the early colonists, who toiled through long winters merely to survive. Of Abraham Lincoln, who was so poor he taught himself to read and write with the aid of just a few borrowed books. Of Andrew Carnegie, who like millions of other immigrants arrived in America with nothing and became one of the most successful businessmen in history. Of Thomas Edison and the Wright Brothers, whose designs failed hundreds of times before finally succeeding, and of Henry Ford, who rose from humble beginnings to manufacture mass produced, affordable automobiles.
We’re inspired by stories like Dawn’s or like Henry Ford’s not merely because they achieved great things, but because they achieved these things through hard work.
In America, we believe that work is an indispensable good, that it is crucial to independence and self-reliance, that even menial work offers its own dignity. After all, for many of us, to support ourselves and our families, to better the lives of our children, is an achievement equal to those of Edison or Carnegie. Without work, our lives are incomplete.
When Barack Obama was a candidate for president in 2008, he seemed to indicate support for this belief. He told Pastor Rick Warren at Saddleback Church that he had misjudged the welfare reform we passed in the 1990s, and that he now realized, “We have to have workas a centerpiece of any social policy, not only because ultimately people who work are going to get more income, but because [of] the intrinsic dignity of work, the sense of purpose … .”But in a recent one week period and two revealing statements, President Obama shredded any last hope we may have had that he truly believes in this quintessential American value.I’ll begin first with the latter statement, one week ago today, when the Obama Department of Health and Human Services quietly released a memorandum announcing a change to welfare policy. Though full of bureaucratese, the gist of the memo was clear: the Obama administration was unilaterally eliminating the work requirement from welfare, declaring it would grant waivers to states — and in doing so, tearing at the heart of the 1996 welfare reform.The centerpiece of that reform was just what candidate Obama said it was: work. We required recipients to go to work after two years on welfare. This, experience and an entrapped generation had taught us, was absolutely necessary to ensure that welfare’s enervating dependency was only temporary.An overwhelming majority of Americans — 83 percent, according to a recent poll — continue to support these work requirements. The Left, however, has long sought to subvert them. A 2005 report by the Government Accountability Officefound that some states had sought to categorize as work activities including “bed rest, short-term hospitalizations … physical rehabilitation, which could include massage, regulated exercise … personal journaling, motivational reading, exercise at home, smoking cessation, and weight loss promotion.” Congress subsequently acted to ban states from counting these activities as work, but the Obama administration’s new policy will remove the obligation completely.If the memo that effectively eliminated welfare reform’s work requirement was opaque, it was President Obama’s revealing remarks a few days earlier that explained it.Enlightening us as to why Americans with incomes of $200,000 are obligated to pay even more taxes, he said, “If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.”In this one paragraph, President Obama clearly lays out his philosophy — a philosophy he shares with others on the Left and which guides the liberal opposition to work and provoked the elite media’s hysterical reaction to the idea of teenagers working in their schools.What the president is saying is that society owns you. If you’re successful, you don’t own your success. The government does, because your success depended on others all along.
Notice, the president goes out of his way to chastise those who feel they have achieved anything by their own hard work. “Somebody else made that happen,” he says.
These ideas are, of course, fundamentally opposed to the American values of hard work and self-reliance, not to mention the principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence.
But they are also the same ideas which justify, even compel, the welfare state. If, as the president suggests, it is the government to which we owe anything we might achieve, then we are all, rich or poor, dependents. If we have made bad choices, if we have failed, then this too must be the fault of others — others who didn’t help, who didn’t teach us well, who didn’t build the right bridges for us.
And if it’s society to which the successful owe what property they have and society to which the unsuccessful owe their condition, then the government is right to confiscate property from those with more and give it as maintenance to people they’ve never met, who’ve never earned it, who themselves might not work at all. Why work, anyway, if your achievements are not your own?
Mr. President, I invite you to take your theory to your alma mater in Massachusetts this September. Tell Dawn Loggins, the homeless, straight A student janitor from Lawndale, North Carolina, that she didn’t get there on her hard work.
Two new reports out yesterday continue to knock down President Obama’s promises about Obamacare: his “If you like your plan, you can keep it,” and the promise to significantly shrink the ranks of the uninsured.
According to a new study from consulting firm Deloitte, almost one of out of 10 employers said they are going to drop coverage for their employees because of Obamacare, while another 10 percent said they “remain unsure” about what they are going to do. As the vast majority of Americans have health insurance through their workplaces, this is a huge blow.
Yesterday the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) dealt another blow with its updated outlook on the health care law, as it attempted to integrate the Supreme Court’s ruling into its projections.
Although Obamacare spends more than $1 trillion to get people covered, CBO predicts it will still leave 30 million Americans uninsured, falling far short of what was promised.
CBO’s announcement said that Obamacare could cost less than originally projected—but the reason for the drop was that fewer people will be covered.
Since day one, it’s been clear that Obamacare will not achieve universal coverage, and every time CBO revisits the law, the numbers show just that. In March 2010, when the law passed, CBO predicted that there would be 22 million people still without insurance in 2019. In March 2012, the estimate increased to 27 million in 2022. Now, the number has once again increased—to 30 million. So Obamacare leaves just as many people uninsured as it covers.
“It leaves just as many people uninsured as it covers” wouldn’t have been a very convincing slogan for the lawmakers who believed that Obamacare would help the uninsured. Even this CBO projection is merely a guess. The agency is guessing what will happen now that states aren’t being forced to expand their Medicaid programs. Though the Supreme Court allowed Obamacare’s individual mandate to stand as a tax, it struck down the law’s forced Medicaid expansion as unconstitutional. But as the CBO said, “what states will be able to do and what they will decide to do are both highly uncertain. As a result…[the] estimates reflect an assessment of the probabilities of different outcomes.” Those outcomes are up in the air, because most of the nation’s governors haven’t decided whether to expand their Medicaid programs yet. States that do may face “a large extra cost,” the CBO said. Heritage’s Nina Owcharenko warned states not to buckle under Administration pressure to move forward with the expansion of Medicaid. And for good reason—the unintended consequences continue to mount, and the story grows worse with every day that the law stays on the books.
Somehow the mainstream media has failed to report the most significant effect of Obamacare on all Medicare recipients. In 2014, every person on Medicare will pay an additional $2,964 to the Federal government for healthcare coverage they earned. In addition, those on Medicare will see their access to healthcare restricted as doctors are forced to not see Medicare recipients as Obama’s commissars of healthcare cutback doctor’s payments.
Remember also that like Social Security, working Americans paid for these retirement benefits that a failed Congress has embezzled to fund the undeserved unearned entitlements given to welfare recipients to bribe them for their vote. Where is a president of a character of a Washington and Lincoln and a Congress with integrity and honesty representing those who contribute to society rather than the parasites taking unjustly without any responsibility? Patriots loyal to the Framers’ original intention must no longer tolerate those who violate the Constitution by willfully and knowingly failing to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity”! Is this not taxation without representation?
The creation of the United States Constitution — John Adams described the Constitutional Convention as “the greatest single effort of national deliberation that the world has ever seen”—was a seminal event in the history of human liberty. The story of that creation in the summer of 1787 is itself a significant aspect in determining the meaning of the document.
In June 1776, amid growing sentiment for American independence and after hostilities with the British army had commenced at Lexington, Massachusetts, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia introduced a resolution in the Second Continental Congress for the colonies to collectively dissolve political connections with Great Britain, pursue foreign alliances, and draft a plan of confederation. These actions resulted in the Declaration of Independence of 1776, the Franco-American Alliance of 1778, and the Articles of Confederation, which were proposed in 1777 and ratified in 1781.
From its conception, the inherent weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation made it awkward at best and unworkable at worst. Each state governed itself through elected representatives, and the state representatives in turn elected a weak national government. There was no independent executive, and the Congress lacked authority to impose taxes to cover national expenses. Because all thirteen colonies had to ratify amendments, one state’s refusal prevented structural reform; nine of thirteen states had to approve important legislation, which meant five states could thwart any major proposal. And although the Congress could negotiate treaties with foreign powers, all treaties had to be ratified by the states.
The defects of the Articles became more and more apparent during the “critical period” of 1781–1787. By the end of the war in 1783, it was clear that the new system was, as George Washington observed, “a shadow without the substance.” Weakness in international affairs and in the face of continuing European threats in North America, the inability to enforce the peace treaty or collect enough taxes to pay foreign creditors, and helplessness in quelling domestic disorder, such as Shays’s Rebellion—all intensified the drive for a stronger national government.
If that were not enough, the Americans faced an even larger problem. Absolutely committed to the idea of popular rule, they knew that previous attempts to establish such a government had almost always led to majority tyranny—that of the overbearing many disregarding the rights of the few. In The Federalist No. 10, James Madison famously described this as the problem of faction, the latent causes of which are “sown in the nature of man.” Previous solutions usually rendered government weak, and thus susceptible to all the problems with which the Founders were most concerned. This was the case in the individual states, which, dominated by their popular legislatures, routinely violated rights of property and contract and limited the independence of the judiciary.
In 1785, representatives from Maryland and Virginia, meeting at George Washington’s Mount Vernon to discuss interstate trade, requested a meeting of the states to discuss trade and commerce generally. Although only five states met at Annapolis in 1786, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton used the failed conference to issue a clarion call for a general convention of all the states “to render the constitution of government adequate to the exigencies of the Union.” After several states, including Virginia and Pennsylvania, chose delegates for the meeting, the Congress acquiesced with a narrower declaration that the “sole and express purpose” of the upcoming Convention would be to revise the Articles of Confederation.
As its first order of business, the delegates unanimously chose Washington as president of the Convention. Having initially hesitated in attending the Convention, once decided, Washington pushed the delegates to adopt “no temporizing expedient” but instead to “probe the defects of the Constitution to the bottom, and provide radical cures.” While they waited in Philadelphia for a quorum, Washington presided over daily meetings of the Virginia delegation (composed of Washington, George Mason, George Wythe, John Blair, Edmund Randolph, James McClurg, and James Madison) to consider strategy and the reform proposals that would become the plan presented at the outset of the Convention. Although he contributed to formal debate only once at the end of the Convention, Washington was actively involved throughout the three-and-a-half-month proceedings.
There were three basic rules of the Convention: voting was to be by state, with each state, regardless of size or population, having one vote; proper decorum was to be maintained at all times; and the proceedings were to be strictly secret. To encourage free and open discussion and debate, the Convention shifted back and forth between full sessions and meetings of the Committee of the Whole, a parliamentary procedure that allowed informal debate and flexibility in deciding and reconsidering individual issues. Although the Convention hired a secretary, the best records of the debate—and thus the most immediate source of the intended meaning of the clauses—are the detailed notes of Madison, which, in keeping with the pledge of secrecy, were not published until 1840.
As soon as the Convention agreed on its rules, Edmund Randolph of the Virginia delegation presented a set of fifteen resolutions, known as the Virginia Plan, which set aside the Articles of Confederation and created in its stead a supreme national government with separate legislative, executive, and judicial branches. This was largely the work of James Madison, who came to the Convention extensively prepared and well-versed in the ancient and modern history of republican government. (See his memorandum on the “Vices of the Political System of the United States.”) The delegates generally agreed on the powers that should be lodged in a national legislature, but disagreed on how the states and popular opinion should be reflected in it. Under the Virginia Plan, population would determine representation in each of the two houses of Congress.
To protect their equal standing, delegates from less-populous states rallied around William Paterson’s alternative New Jersey Plan to amend the Articles of Confederation, which would preserve each state’s equal vote in a one-house Congress with slightly augmented powers. When the delegates rejected the New Jersey Plan, Roger Sherman proffered what is often called “the Great Compromise” (or the Connecticut Compromise, after Sherman’s home state) that the House of Representatives would be apportioned based on population and each state would have an equal vote in the Senate. A special Committee of Eleven (one delegate from each state) elaborated upon the proposal, and then the Convention adopted it. As a precaution against having to assume the financial burdens of the smaller states, the larger states exacted an agreement that revenue bills could originate only in the House, where the more populous states would have greater representation.
In late July, a Committee of Detail (composed of John Rutledge of South Carolina, Edmund Randolph of Virginia, Nathaniel Gorham of Massachusetts, Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut, and James Wilson of Pennsylvania) reworked the resolutions of the expanded Virginia Plan into a draft Constitution; the text now included a list of eighteen powers of Congress, a “necessary and proper” clause, and a number of prohibitions on the states. Over most of August and into early September, the Convention carefully worked over this draft and then gave it to a Committee of Style (William Johnson of Connecticut, Alexander Hamilton of New York, Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania, James Madison of Virginia, and Rufus King of Massachusetts) to polish the language. The notable literary quality of the Constitution, most prominently the language of the Preamble, is due to Morris’s influence. The delegates continued revising the final draft until September 17 (now celebrated as Constitution Day), when delegates signed the Constitution and sent it to the Congress of the Confederation, and the Convention officially adjourned.
On September 28, Congress sent the Constitution to the states to be ratified by popular conventions. See Article VII (Ratification). Delaware was the first state to ratify the Constitution, on December 7, 1787; the last of the thirteen original colonies to ratify was Rhode Island, on May 29, 1790, two-and-a-half years later. It was during the ratification debate in the state of New York that Hamilton, Madison, and John Jay wrote a series of newspaper essays under the pen name of Publius, later collected in book form as The Federalist, to refute the arguments of the Anti-Federalist opponents of the proposed Constitution. With the ratification by the ninth state—New Hampshire, on June 21, 1788—Congress passed a resolution to make the new Constitution operative, and set dates for choosing presidential electors and the opening session of the new Congress.
There had been some discussion among the delegates of the need for a bill of rights, a proposal that was rejected by the Convention. The lack of a bill of rights like that found in most state constitutions, however, became a rallying cry for the Anti-Federalists, and the advocates of the Constitution (led by James Madison) agreed to add one in the first session of Congress. Ratified on December 15, 1791, the first ten amendments—called the Bill of Rights—include sweeping restrictions on the federal government and its ability to limit certain fundamental rights and procedural matters. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments briefly encapsulate the twofold theory of the Constitution: the purpose of the Constitution is to protect rights, which stem not from the government but from the people themselves; and the powers of the national government are limited to only those delegated to it by the Constitution on behalf of the people.
The effect of representation—of individual citizens being represented in the government rather than ruling through direct participatory democracy—is to refine and moderate public opinion through a deliberative process. Extending the Republic, literally increasing the size of the nation, would take in a greater number and variety of opinions, making it harder for a majority to form on narrow interests contrary to the common good. The majority that did develop would be more settled and, by necessity, would encompass (and represent) a wider diversity of opinion. This idea that bigger is better reversed the prevailing assumption that republican government could work only in small states.
As the delegates came forward, one at a time, to sign their names to the final document, Madison recorded Franklin’s final comment, just before the Constitutional Convention was dissolved. Referring to the sun painted on the back of Washington’s chair, Franklin said that he had often in the course of the Session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting. But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting Sun.
“The business being thus closed,” George Washington recorded in his private diary, the delegates proceeded to City Tavern, where they dined together and took a cordial leave of each other; after which I returned to my lodgings, did some business with and received the papers from the Secretary of the Convention, and retired to meditate on the momentous work which had been executed. . . .
Part of the reason for the Constitution‘s enduring strength is that it is the complement of the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration provided the philosophical basis for a government that exercises legitimate power by “the consent of the governed,” and it defined the conditions of a free people, whose rights and liberty are derived from their Creator. The Constitution delineated the structure of government and the rules for its operation, consistent with the creed of human liberty proclaimed in the Declaration.
By the diffusion of power—horizontally among the three separate branches of the federal government, and vertically in the allocation of power between the central government and the states—the Constitution‘s Framers devised a structure of government strong enough to ensure the nation’s future strength and prosperity but without sufficient power to threaten the liberty of the people.
That “all men are created equal” means that they are equally endowed with unalienable rights. Nature does not single out who is to govern and who is to be governed; there is no divine right of kings. Nor are rights a matter of legal privilege or the benevolence of some ruling class. Fundamental rights exist by nature, prior to government and conventional laws. It is because these individual rights are left unsecured that governments are instituted among men.
The “consent of the governed” stands in contrast to “the will of the majority,” a view more current in European democracies. The “consent of the governed” describes a situation where the people are self-governing in their communities, religions, and social institutions, and into which the government may intrude only with the people’s consent. There exists between the people and limited government a vast social space in which men and women, in their individual and corporate capacities, may exercise their self-governing liberty. In Europe, the “will of the majority” signals an idea that all decisions are ultimately political and are routed through the government. Thus, limited government is not just a desirable objective; it is the essential bedrock of the American polity.
“In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to controul the governed; and in the next place oblige it to controul itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary controul on the government; but experience has taught mankind necessity of auxiliary precautions.
These “auxiliary precautions” constitute the improved science of politics offered by the Framers and form the basis of their “Republican remedy for the diseases most incident to Republican Government” (The Federalist No. 10).
Equally important to the constitutional design was the concept of federalism. At the Constitutional Convention there was great concern that an overreaction to the inadequacies of the Articles of Confederation might produce a tendency toward a single centralized and all-powerful national government. The resolution to such fears was, as Madison described it in The Federalist, a government that was neither wholly federal nor wholly national but a composite of the two. A half-century later, Alexis de Tocqueville would celebrate democracy in America as precisely the result of the political vitality spawned by this “incomplete” national government.
But institutional restraints on power were not all that federalism was about. There was also a deeper understanding—in fact, a far richer understanding—of why federalism mattered. When the delegates at Philadelphia convened in May 1787 to revise the ineffective Articles of Confederation, it was a foregone conclusion that the basic debate would concern the proper role of the states. Those who favored a diminution of state power, the Nationalists, saw unfettered state sovereignty under the Articles as the problem; not only did it allow the states to undermine congressional efforts to govern, it also rendered individual rights insecure in the hands of “interested and overbearing majorities.” Indeed, Madison, defending the Nationalists’ constitutional handiwork, went so far as to suggest in The Federalist No. 51 that only by way of a “judicious modification” of the federal principle was the new Constitution able to remedy the defects of popular, republican government.
The view of those who doubted the political efficacy of the new Constitution was that good popular government depended quite as much on a political community that would promote civic or public virtue as on a set of institutional devices designed to check the selfish impulses of the majority. As Herbert Storing has shown, this concern for community and civic virtue tempered and tamed somewhat the Nationalists’ tendency toward simply a large nation. Their reservations, as Storing put it, echo still through our political history.
At bottom, in the space left by a limited central government, the people could rule themselves by their own moral and social values, and call on local political institutions to assist them. Where the people, through the Constitution, did consent for the central government to have a role, that role would similarly be guided by the people’s sense of what was valuable and good as articulated through the political institutions of the central government. Thus, at its deepest level popular government means a structure of government that rests not only on the consent of the governed, but also on a structure of government wherein the views of the people and their civic associations can be expressed and translated into public law and public policy, subject, of course, to the limits established by the Constitution. Through deliberation, debate, and compromise, a public consensus is formed about what constitutes the public good. It is this consensus on fundamental principles that knits individuals into a community of citizens. And it is the liberty to determine the morality of a community that is an important part of our liberty protected by the Constitution.
In The Heritage Guide to the Constitution, we seek to present the Founders’ understanding of the Constitution and its various provisions, and examine the judicial interpretations and political circumstances that make up the historical development of constitutional law.
The Constitution is our most fundamental law. It is, in its own words, “the supreme Law of the Land.” Its translation into the legal rules under which we live occurs through the actions of all government entities, federal and state. The entity we know as “constitutional law” is the creation not only of the decisions of the Supreme Court, but also of the various Congresses and of the President.
Written constitutionalism implies that those who make, interpret, and enforce the law ought to be guided by the meaning of the United States Constitution—”the supreme law of the land”—as it was originally written. This view came to be seriously eroded over the course of the last century with the rise of the theory of the Constitution as a “living document” with no fixed meaning, subject to changing interpretations according to the spirit of the times.
In 1985, Attorney General Edwin Meese III delivered a series of speeches challenging the then-dominant view of constitutional jurisprudence and calling for judges to embrace a “jurisprudence of original intention.” There ensued a vigorous debate in the academy, as well as in the popular press, and in Congress itself over the prospect of an “originalist” interpretation of the Constitution. Some critics found the idea too vague to be pinned down; others believed that it was impossible to find the original intent that lay behind the text of the Constitution. Some rejected originalism in principle, as undemocratic (though it is clear that the Constitution was built upon republican rather than democratic principles), unfairly binding the present to the choices of the past.
Originalism, in its various and sometimes conflicting versions, is today the dominant theory of constitutional interpretation. On the one hand, as complex as an originalist jurisprudence may be, the attempt to build a coherent nonoriginalist justification of Supreme Court decisions (excepting the desideratum of following stare decisis, even if the legal principle had been wrongly begun) seems to have failed. At the same time, those espousing originalism have profited from the criticism of nonoriginalists, and the originalist enterprise has become more nuanced and self-critical as research into the Founding period continues to flourish. Indeed, it is fair to say that this generation of scholars knows more about what went into the Constitution than any other since the time of the Founding. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, in a significant sense “we are all originalists” now.
This is true of both “liberal” and “conservative” judges. For example, in United States Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton (1995), Justices John Paul Stevens and Clarence Thomas engaged in a debate over whether the Framers intended the Qualifications Clauses (Article I, Section 2, Clause 2 and Article I, Section 3, Clause 3) to be the upper limit of what could be required of a person running for Congress. In Wallace v. Jaffree (1985), Justice William H. Rehnquist expounded on the original understanding of the Establishment Clause (Amendment I), which Justice David Souter sought to rebut in Lee v. Weisman (1992). Even among avowed originalists, fruitful debate takes place. In McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission (1995), Justices Thomas and Antonin Scalia disputed whether the anonymous pamphleteering of the Founding generation was evidence that the free speech guarantee of the First Amendment was meant to protect such a practice.
Originalism is championed for a number of fundamental reasons. First, it comports with the nature of a constitution, which binds and limits any one generation from ruling according to the passion of the times. The Framers of the Constitution of 1787 knew what they were about, forming a frame of government for “ourselves and our Posterity.” They did not understand “We the people” to be merely an assemblage of individuals at any one point in time but a “people” as an association, indeed a number of overlapping associations, over the course of many generations, including our own. In the end, the Constitution of 1787 is as much a constitution for us as it was for the Founding generation.
Fifth, supported by recent research, originalism comports with the understanding of what our Constitution was to be by the people who formed and ratified that document. It affirms that the Constitution is a coherent and interrelated document, with subtle balances incorporated throughout. Reflecting the Founders’ understanding of the self-motivated impulses of human nature, the Constitution erected devices that work to frustrate those impulses while leaving open channels for effective and mutually supporting collaboration. It is, in short, a remarkable historical achievement, and unbalancing part of it could dismantle the sophisticated devices it erected to protect the people’s liberty.
Sixth, originalism, properly pursued, is not result-oriented, whereas much nonoriginalist writing is patently so. If evidence demonstrates that the Framers understood the commerce power, for example, to be broader than we might wish, then the originalist ethically must accept the conclusion. If evidence shows that the commerce power was to be more limited than it is permitted to be today, then the originalist can legitimately criticize governmental institutions for neglecting their constitutional duty. In either case, the originalist is called to be humble in the face of facts. The concept of the Constitution of 1787 as a good first draft in need of constant revision and updating—encapsulated in vague phrases such as the “living Constitution“—merely turns the Constitution into an unwritten charter to be developed by the contemporary values of sitting judges.
Discerning the Founders’ original understanding is not a simple task. There are the problems of the availability of evidence; the reliability of the data; the relative weight of authority to be given to different events, personalities, and organizations of the era; the relevance of subsequent history; and the conceptual apparatus needed to interpret the data. Originalists differ among themselves on all these points and sometimes come to widely divergent conclusions. Nevertheless, the values underlying originalism do mean that the quest, as best as we can accomplish it, is a moral imperative.
Evidence of long-standing traditions that demonstrate the people’s understanding of the words.
Marshall’s dialectical manner of parsing a text, seeking its place in the coherent context of the document, buttressed by the understanding of those who drafted it and the generally applicable legal principles of the time are exemplified by his classic opinions in Marbury v. Madison (1803), McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), and Barron v. Baltimore (1833). Both Marshall’s ideological allies and enemies, such as Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, utilized the same method of understanding.
Section 1411 also imposes a new payroll tax on investment. This tax provision applies the new higher 3.8 percent Medicare tax to investment income—including capital gains, dividends, rents, and royalties—and is scheduled to become effective in 2013. Together, the Medicare tax hikes will raise $210 billion between 2013 and 2019.
Table 1 lists all of the tax increases in PPACA.
As a result, the tax hikes in PPACA will slow economic growth, reduce employment, and suppress wages. These economy-slowing policies could not come at a worse time. PPACA tax increases will impede an already staggering recovery.
They Will Slow Economic Growth and Destroy Jobs . Taxes transfer money from productive private hands to the less efficient public sector. A politicized allocation is less efficient than market-based allocation because political decisions do not consider the highest-value use of resources, while the private sector considers such issues and therefore does a better job of assigning resources where they will contribute the most to economic growth.
They Will Discourage Work and Savings. Congress must levy high tax rates to take more Americans’ money, and this has a number of negative implications. Higher tax rates decrease the incentives for individuals to work and save more, both of which are essential for economic growth. Additionally, high rates discourage individuals from working harder and saving larger portions of what they earn. Combined, these two effects impede economic growth and reduce the number of jobs that businesses would have created had tax rates been lower.
They Will Not Reduce Deficits. Higher taxes never close budget deficits because, in the short run, Congress will spend all of the extra revenue it receives from higher taxes. Congress always spends every dollar of tax revenue it raises and however much it can borrow from credit markets. In the long run, the extra revenue will dissipate as individuals adjust their behavior to minimize their tax liability. The only way to close deficits is to cut spending and align it with how much revenue the tax code typically raises.
All tax increases have negative economic effects because higher taxes take resources from the productive hands of the private sector and transfer them to the wasteful hands of politicians. Higher taxes also lessen the incentives for individuals and businesses to engage in activities and behaviors that expand the economy and create jobs.
The tax code is a severe drag on the economy and is badly in need of fundamental reform. Ideally, a revised tax code would adhere more closely to the well-known flat tax. This new tax system would tax all wage and salary income at one rate and provide for only minimal deductions, credits, and exemptions. Tax reform is not an excuse to raise taxes. The new tax code would raise the same amount of revenue as the current system but in a more efficient manner in order to enhance economic growth.
Joint Committee on Taxation, “Estimated Revenue Effects of the Amendment in the Nature of a Substitute to H.R. 4872, the ‘Reconciliation Act of 2010,’ as Amended, in Combination with the Revenue Effects of H.R. 3590, the ‘Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“PPACA”),’ as Passed by the Senate, and Scheduled for Consideration by the House Committee on Rules on March 20, 2010,” March 20, 2010, at http://www.jct.gov/publications.html?func=startdown&id=3672 (January 14, 2011).

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