MY SAY: AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME FROM RAEL ISAAC
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/a-modest-proposal-to-buttress-the-constitution-restore-confidence-in-government-and-promote-domestic-tranquility?f=must_reads
A Modest Proposal to Buttress the Constitution, Restore Confidence in Government and Promote Domestic Tranquility By Rael Jean Isaac
Nothing is more melancholy than to see the level of contempt directed at one of the three key institutions of government established by our Constitution. A Rasmussen poll in December 2015 found only 9% of likely voters thought Congress was doing a good or excellent job-down from 56% in 2001. Strikingly, Republicans and Democrats are in agreement on these miserable approval ratings. Contrast this with the public’s approval level of the President and the Supreme Court: 46% rate Obama’s job performance favorably and 36% think the Supreme Court is doing a good or excellent job (both also according to 2015 Rasmussen polls). To be sure, these approval ratings are nothing to boast about, but even the Supreme Court is four times as well-regarded as Congress.
There is only one surefire step that can buttress the Constitution and restore public confidence in our institutions. Abolish Congress. Admittedly it is counter-intuitive to argue that we strengthen our Constitution by abolishing one of its crucial provisions. But hear me out. It is undisputed that, to quote Dr. Joseph Postell, writing for the Heritage Foundation, “over the past 100 years our government has been transformed from a limited, constitutional, federal republic to a centralized administrative state that for the most part exists outside the structure of the Constitution and wields nearly unlimited power.” This bureaucratic web of agencies and departments is frequently referred to as a “fourth branch” of government. By eliminating Congress we will in fact be returning to the vision of the founders, restoring a three part system of governance.
There are many other advantages to shutting down the Senate and House of Representatives.
1. The financial savings will be roughly $6 billion a year. Admittedly this is small change compared to the $100 billion-most of it to come from the United States–the Paris climate conference last month agreed to bestow each year on developing nations in return for their agreement to file a non-binding climate change plan. And it’s a rounding error in relation to the trillion dollars per year for developing nations demanded by Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Nonetheless, even if paltry, this is $6 billion a year which can go toward saving the planet, a cause surely trumping any and all others.
2. By taking out Congress, we restore confidence in our government. That’s because Congress, unlike all those agencies and departments, is in the public eye. House members are up for election every two years, forcing them to start campaigning for the next election as soon as they win the last one. They make promises those who vote for them then have unrealistic expectations they will keep as in practice they go along to get along. Much of the current outrage toward Congress among Republicans stems from the fact they voted in Republican majorities in both houses with minimal discernible impact on government policy. Indeed, they are so angry that the top-polling Presidential candidate’s main draw is that he has no experience in government and knows little or nothing about the major issues that will confront him in office. When legislation is exclusively the prerogative of unelected and unseen bureaucrats, there will no longer be individuals to disappoint voters and attract their wrath.
3. Congress is already superseded and unneeded. It has delegated such broad powers to a plethora of agencies that they can easily carry on without it. Take the EPA. It decided in 2011 to add “sustainability” to its regulatory responsibilities and commissioned a study which found it was free to do this without any further Congressional action. The study by the National Research Council concluded the broad, vague mandate in the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (“to create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony”) provided all the authority EPA needs. The National Research Council includes under “sustainability” everything from population growth to income inequality to climate change to public health to women’s rights and on and on. In other words, the EPA is staking out the right to regulate everything we do. You hardly need any other agency, let alone Congress.
4. Congress, in exercising its right to oversight, throws up annoying barriers to the smooth operation of the administrative state, spotlighting actions that should remain behind the scenes. For example, in 2012 then Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Darrel Issa hauled in then EPA head Lisa Jackson to complain the agency had overreached its powers under the Clean Air Act. Or take the Department of Homeland Security. Overseeing it are 108 committees and subcommittees that can only get in each other’s way, let alone that of Homeland Security.
5. Members of Congress will themselves benefit from its abolition. That’s because their last legislative act will be to carve out a special rule that allows each member to become a civil servant at any of the several dozen agencies or departments he chooses. It’s a win all around. The President will be happy to sign a bill that rids him of the need to devise ploys to bypass Congress, as he had to do with the Iran nuclear (non) treaty or the Paris climate deal which Secretary of State Kerry explained was drafted so as to deny Congress oversight. Although they may initially be hurt or angry to lose their status, members of Congress will soon realize that they come out best of all. No more reelection campaigns, no more tiresome town meetings, no more pressures from constituents or lobbyists. While it’s true that as incumbents they were rarely turned out of office, now they will have ironclad job security. (Fewer than one tenth of one percent of civil servants employed by the federal government have been fired for incompetence over recent years.) Stress free, they can even look forward to longer lives. Currently, according to the Social Science Research Council, the average American outlives a Congressman by one and a half years. Finally, as part of the administrative state they will have far more impact than they did as Senators or Representatives. They will truly be running the show, acting as policemen, investigators, prosecutors, legislators, judges and jury all rolled into one.
Any objections to this scheme that can be raised are easily overcome. How will the government be funded, you may ask, with no Congress to exercise its power of the purse? As things stand, the President provides Congress with a proposed budget. Since the Congress does not dare risk a government shutdown by passing a budget the President will not sign, the President gets his budget, although not without arousing much public anxiety as obstreperous Congressmen warn of massive budget deficits and the like. Given that the President gets his budget anyway, public tranquility will be promoted if Congress is taken out of the picture and the President has full authority for its passage.
Critics may say “Why stop with Congress?” If the administrative state combines executive, legislative and judicial functions, why do we need the President or the Supreme Court? Why not abolish them as well? The answer is that it would be too much of a shock to the system. We want to buttress the Constitution with its formal separation of powers. So at least for now we must retain the other branches of government. To be sure, the path to conflict remains open as the President legislates with his pen and his phone and the Supreme Court legislates ever more creatively as well. (It would have knocked the long white socks off the framers to learn they had incorporated the right to gay marriage in the Constitution.) If conflict mounts between these competing law-makers, domestic tranquility may best be preserved by leaving only one of the three standing, but we won’t attempt to prejudge which one at this time.
This writer remains open to alternative possibilities, like those offered by Dr. Postell: that the administrative state be dismantled, with Congress restoring its Constitutional responsibility to make the laws, that regulations be compatible with individual rights and liberty (not guided by some vague, abstract notion of the common good), that Congress be forced to approve each regulation, that Congress periodically review existing regulations to eliminate those no longer needed or wanted, that courts, with their legal protections and predictable rules, not regulatory agencies untied to precedent, administer the law, that regulatory decisions be decentralized as much as possible.
Yes, it’s a more attractive alternative, but I’m not holding my breath.
Rael Jean Isaac is the co-author (with Virginia Armat) of Madness in the Streets: How Psychiatry and the Law Abandoned the Mentally Ill (The Free Press)
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