Free Republic

It is high time Americans heard an argument that might turn a vague national uneasiness into a vivid awareness of something going very wrong. The argument is that the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (EESA) is unconstitutional. By enacting it, Congress did not in any meaningful sense make a law. Rather, it made executive branch officials into legislators. Congress said to the executive branch, in effect: "Here is $700 billion. You say you will use some of it to buy up banks' 'troubled assets.' But if you prefer to do anything else with the money -- even, say, subsidize...

While much of the debate over the $700 billion U.S. bailout plan has focused on whether the money is being spent wisely or well, concerns are growing among many conservatives about its constitutionality. Some conservatives have argued that the law creating the program, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which Congress passed hastily in October, violates constitutional principles that limit the amount of power that lawmakers can delegate to the executive branch. They also maintain that the enormous bailout plan has illegally grown beyond its original focus on the financial services industry to include a bailout of the auto...