Posted on 03/10/2011 6:06:29 AM PST by bsaunders
Almost everywhere you look, somebody is talking, writing, discussing, or editorializing about cutting spending responsibly or drastically or intelligently or across the board. The problem is that nobody is proposing cutting spending in a way that will reduce the national debt. Even the most austere proponents simply desire to pass a Constitutional Amendment that requires the Federal Government to have a balanced budget. Unfortunately, even a Balanced Budget Amendment would increase the debt as most proponents exempt interest on the debt and off budget spending from being included when balancing the budget. The Balanced Budget Amendment would only require the on budget spending not to exceed the estimated tax revenue for the coming year. My bet is the Congress and Administration would find some method to make estimated tax revenues be calculated in an inflated way to allow all the spending they planned while placing more and more expenditures onto the off budget ledger. To believe that more than a remote few in Congress honestly and truly want to limit spending is Pollyannaish thinking at best.
May I take this time to define what is meant by those in Washington D.C. when they claim to have reduced or cut spending. We’ll say Congress is discussing next year’s budget for an imaginary committee named the Committee for Employing New Taxes (CENT). We know that last year CENT was budgeted $75,000 and this year their budget was $100,000. That meant the budget received a 33% increase in funding this year, thus the minimum increase for next year must also be 33%. This would call for CENT’s budget for next year being at a minimum of $133,000. After much debate, it is decided that due to a tight financial situation much like we are facing currently, CENT’s next year budget will only be $120,000. For those of us in the real world, that would be an increase of $20,000 or 20%. In Washington D.C. that is called a cut in spending of $13,000 or approximately a 10% cut in funding. In our Congress, spending is automatically considered to increase by a minimum of the percent increase from last year or the average over whatever period of time will produce the largest increase. By this assumption, anything less than the accepted increase in funding is a cut even if the budget is increased over the previous year. Spending cuts for the Federal Government are not the same as spending cuts are for you and me. When we face tight financial times, we actually decrease our spending, not increase it a little less and call it saving.
What is needed in Washington D.C. is some real life spending cuts done equally and across the board. I would like to see them actually cut spending from this year’s budget for every department, committee, agency, program, and whatever else they name where our money goes by an actual 10%. I might even be happy with a mere 5%. And I want them to continue with such austere budgeting until we are able to start paying off the principle of the national debt and not simply paying on the interest each year. Simply paying the interest is no method for ridding our country of this Sword of Damocles that the debt hanging over our country has become. Until our Senators and Representatives show fiscal responsibility, we need to replace each and every one that contributes to continuing business as usual. America and her people cannot afford business as usual and we deserve a better and brighter debt free future, not more of the same spending like there is no tomorrow. Should our government continue spending like there is no tomorrow, soon there will be no tomorrow and no United States as we know them. We owe our children and grandchildren more than a future full of them owing due to our misspending habits.
There are four federal problems today. There is an “imperial presidency” that has always been an issue. There is a congress always willing to create unconstitutional laws. There is a bureaucracy always willing to create unconstitutional regulations. And there is a federal judiciary always ready to expand federal powers by taking State and local power and federalizing them.
The constitution is full of checks and balances of groups of people, against each others growth of power. The 14th Amendment recognized that the federal government needs the ability to protect the people from abusive State power; but with the 17th Amendment, the States are no longer able to protect the people from an abusive federal government.
The way to address all of these problems at once is with a single constitutional amendment, that restores the lost power to the States, and acts as a permanent trimming mechanism against excessive federal power. That creates a group of people representing the States, with the power to not just limit the growth of federal power, but to reduce existing overgrowth.
This amendment creates a Second Court of the United States. Modeled after the original US senate, each State legislature would elect two State judges to sit in this court, their six year terms parallel to the terms of that State’s senators.
Importantly, the Second Court of the United States would *not* be a federal court, but would perform two unique functions.
First, the currently 8,000 or so cases appealed from the federal district courts to the Supreme Court would be reviewed by the Second Court of the United States, not to determine their constitutionality, which would have been argued in the lower federal courts, but whether the cases themselves are within *federal jurisdiction*, or should be returned to the individual States for resolution.
Cases could still be appealed to the Supreme Court, but if they were found to be of State jurisdiction, while the Supreme Court could find for their constitutionality, the impact would be at a State, not federal level. And if a two-thirds majority of the Second Court of the United States found that it was a State issue, it could not be appealed to the Supreme Court at all. If the Supreme Court declined to hear a case, its first default would be jurisdictional. If it was a federal matter, only then would it revert to the decision of the district courts, as it does today.
Second, the Second Court of the United States would have original jurisdiction over lawsuits between States, and between the States and the federal government. This would mean that the States would determine, for example, if Arizona’s SB 1070 immigrant law was a State or federal matter. And if any State decided to sue the federal government for infringement of its constitutional authority, by challenging executive, legislative, or judicial decisions, it would be the States that would decide to accept or reduce federal power, without having to call a constitutional convention to do so.
Right now, there is no constitutional mechanism to reduce the power of the federal government, short of a constitutional convention, and no part of the federal government has demonstrated a willingness to show either self restraint, or to place restraints on other branches of the government.
The presidency, for example, has become an increasingly “imperial presidency”, almost from the start, with president Washington’s use of force in the Whiskey Rebellion. Then it accelerated because of the Marbury v. Madison SCOTUS decision, which the president refused to obey.
Today, the unconstitutional appointment of “Czars”, to evade the advise and consent of the US Senate, and the wholly unconstitutional use of “presidential signing statements”, which usurp power from both the congress and the judiciary, have paradoxically given the president the power to be a tyrant, while at the same time, overwhelmed the man who is the president with far more labor than anyone could perform.
The federal judiciary should not be overlooked for its usurpation of power from the States, as any of the 3,600 federal judges can “federalize” State and local laws at whim. Through the entire appeals process, there is no mechanism to “de-federalize” such a decision and return it to the State or local courts.
And the “fourth branch” of government, the bureaucracy, runs wild, mostly because it is so vast that congress cannot control its actions. As example, there are 16 major intelligence agencies, and over 50 federal police agencies, many of which are essentially unsupervised.
This is why a constitutional amendment to create a Second Court of the United States is essential. It puts, right in the middle of the federal government, what amounts to a permanent trimming mechanism by the States, by lawsuit against the president, the congress, and the bureaucracy, in original jurisdiction outside of the federal court system. And against the federal judiciary, by appeal from the lower federal courts.
Importantly, even the Second Court of the United States is limited in its power, to the extent that its decisions can themselves be appealed to the SCOTUS—unless those decisions have such a majority of support among the individual States that were they to want to do so, they could create a constitutional amendment.
But they would not have to call a constitutional amendment, with its associated risks, to do so. With enough States, it is, in effect, nullification of federal power.
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