RUTHFULLY YOURS

by Newt Gingrich (more by this author)

Posted 12/16/2009 ET

Tomorrow morning, the delegates at the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen will awaken to a very simple but powerful message:
    
“In America, We Have a Constitution. It Begins:  We the People…”

These are the opening lines of a message to the American delegates in Copenhagen and the rest of the world sent on behalf of the American people by American Solutions.  They are meant as a reminder to both Obama Administration officials and international climate activists that under our constitutional system, the American people, not government bureaucrats, are sovereign.

Ronald Reagan was right when he said that America is a nation that has a government — not the other way around.

And if you have any doubt that the delegates at Copenhagen need to hear this message, take a look at this:

 
This is a reference guide being handed out by one of the non-governmental organizations at Copenhagen to keep track of all the proposals to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation.  Its purposefully modeled after the Chinese mass murderer Mao Tse-Tung’s “Little Red Book of Communism.”

Can the profoundly undemocratic nature of this conference be any clearer?

Congress Has the Power to Protect the Constitution.  It Should Use It.

American Solutions’ message to the Obama Administration and the Copenhagen delegates is this:

President Obama cannot bind the American people to job killing international agreements on climate change without the advice and consent of the United States Senate.

Similarly, he can’t bypass the peoples’ representatives in Congress by having the EPA pursue the same goals through bureaucratic totalitarianism.

This message to the President is also a message to Congress.  Should the Obama Administration act unilaterally and subvert the Constitution, the American people will rightfully rise up in opposition.

Congress has the power to protect its constitutional role and protect the people’s voice in how we’re governed.  It should use it.

Substituting the Advice and Consent of the Senate with the Bureaucratic Power of the EPA

When he travels to Copenhagen this week, President Obama is reportedly going to pledge to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent by 2020.

The Obama Administration’s various threats to act unilaterally — both in Copenhagen and at home via the EPA — to achieve this goal occur against the backdrop of this inescapable fact:  The Senate, reflecting the will of the American people, refuses to pass the administration’s job killing cap and trade legislation.

The result is that the administration is preparing to bypass the Senate with its announcement last week that the EPA will regulate carbon dioxide as a dangerous pollutant.

Knowing that it lacks the votes in the Senate to ratify any binding commitment made in Copenhagen to radically lower emissions, the administration may well attempt to use the EPA’s newly asserted power — thus bypassing Senate ratification — to implement the agreement.

This would be a breathtakingly anti-democratic and unconstitutional arrogation of power on the part of the President.  But it is exactly what some groups are pressuring the President to do.  See this report, “Yes He Can: President Obama’s Power to Make an International Climate Commitment Without Waiting for Congress” by the Center for Biological Diversity Climate Law Institute.  

And Congressman Ed Markey (D-Mass.), the co-author of the energy tax in the House of Representatives, stated this past weekend on “Fox News Sunday”, in response to Chris Wallace’s question about whether President Obama could make a binding commitment at Copenhagen, that “without question, the President does have the authority to make a commitment based upon the endangerment finding — that is the authority the EPA will have.”

Such action would be a corruption of America’s constitutional system that the Congress must reverse.

Does Senator Webb Believe the Authority of the EPA Can Substitute for the Authority of the Senate?

Some senators seem to get this.  On “Fox News Sunday” last weekend Senator Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) stated flatly that the President doesn’t have the power to make binding emissions reductions commitments at Copenhagen.

And Virginia Democratic Senator Jim Webb recently wrote an open letter to President Obama in which he warned the President not to make binding commitments at Copenhagen.

“As you well know from your time in the Senate,” wrote Webb, “only specific legislation agreed upon in the Congress, or a treaty ratified by the Senate, could actually create such a commitment on behalf of our country.”

But Senator Webb wrote his letter before the EPA unilaterally declared the government’s right to regulate carbon dioxide.

And so the question must be asked of Senator Webb:  Does he believe that the authority of the EPA can substitute for the constitutional authority of the Senate — authority that he has so courageously defended?

Radical Environmentalism Is “The New Socialism”

Columnist Charles Krauthammer calls the shake down occurring in Copenhagen and the EPA’s domestic power grab “the new socialism.”  

Following the death of the old socialism with the Soviet empire, writes Krauthammer, “the cultural elites went straight from the memorial service for socialism to the altar of the environment.  The objective is the same:  highly centralized power given to the best and the brightest, the new class of experts and technocrats.  This time, however, the alleged justification is saving the planet.”

And if the question is, “Will the new socialism succeed?” the answer is, “Not if the American people have anything to do with it.”

The American People, United, Will Never Be Defeated

Last year, the “drill here, drill now” movement succeeded in removing both the executive and legislative bans on drilling offshore to capture American energy [www.americansolutions.com/drill].

The American people’s success in “drill here, drill now” opened up a national conversation on freeing America from dependence on foreign dictators for our oil.  Americans began to understand and believe that We Have the Power (see Callista’s and my movie on energy of the same name) to safely develop our own energy reserves and technology to achieve energy independence.

Today, American Solutions is issuing a similar rallying cry to the American people.

Our message is that no imperial presidency, no totalitarian bureaucracy, and no global international elite can or will usurp the power of We the People.

I conclude today, the 236th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, with the full text of our ad, which will appear in the daily newspaper of the Copenhagen conference tomorrow:

You can view a picture of the ad here.  Learn more at www.AmericanSolutions.com

Your friend,