People like to say, “Ron Paul’s got a great domestic program, it’s just his foreign policy I don’t like.” Really, people only say that because they don’t take the time to understand what Ron Paul’s domestic program is all about , or at least the more insane details thereof. One particular example of this is Ron Paul’s view on monetary policy. Paul, who likes to present himself as some sort of Constitutional scholar, has said in his last several concession speeches that “the Constitution still says that only gold and silver can be legal tender!” This absolutely absurd reading of the Constitution is universally rejected by anyone who can read English. Let’s look at Article 1, Section 10, from which Ron Paul draws his support: No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts ; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility. Emphasis mine. However, it is also worth noting that Article 1, Section 10, is conveniently titled “Powers Prohibited of States .” Ron Paul might still have at least a non-farcical point if it were not for the existence of Article 1, Section 8 (helpfully titled “Powers of Congress”): The Congress shall have Power. . . To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof [.] Get it? The reason states do not have the power to create their own legal tender (other than gold or silver coin) is because that is a power expressly reserved to the Federal government. Remember that this was one of the central evils of the Articles of Confederation – that every state had its own currency, which hindered trade and created economic chaos – and so the founders reserved to the Federal government the right to establish a single currency for the whole nation. States are absolutely and completely prohibited by these sections of the Constitution from generating their own currency other than literal gold and silver coins . Therefore, even if you ignore that Article 1, Section 10 is expressly confined to restrict the powers of the States, it would not stand for the proposition that Ron Paul wants it to stand for, which is that the Federal government must constitutionally adhere gold/silver standard. It would instead mean that the Federal government was prohibited from using currency that was not literally gold or silver coin. This conclusion is of course absurd (and ultimately would have no salutary effect on monetary policy whatsoever) which is why no person who hasn’t suggested that the government is using paper money to try to track you has ever suggested it. I get that some people want someone who is a principled, small government isolationist constitutionalist. Sadly, Ron Paul is not that person – he’s just a nut onto whom people are projecting those qualities.
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Ron Paul, Constitutional Scholar
Ross Douthat: ” Government and Its Rivals ” Karl Rove: ” Romney, Gingrich and the Power of Ideas ” Mickey Kaus: What does Obama do all day?
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Happy Hour: Government’s Rivals
Ross Douthat: ” Government and Its Rivals ” Karl Rove: ” Romney, Gingrich and the Power of Ideas ” Mickey Kaus: What does Obama do all day?
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Happy Hour: Government’s Rivals
“Conscience is the most sacred of all property.” James Madison Yet another aspect of the American Affordable Care Act has caused the Obama Administration to come-a-cropper with the United States Constitution. The act has already inspired a dense thicket of law suits over its individual mandate provision that forces people to buy insurance or pay a penalty tax for not so doing. Recently, Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Sibelius, has added more fuel to the legal bonfire that has erupted over ObamaCare. The law entails that all health plans provide “preventive services” free of charge. This previously included the sorts of things you would want to have to prevent disease. This would include child vaccinations, physical check-ups and other practical medical services that wise people would want from time to time. Now Kathleen Sibelius has decided to add contraception to include RU-486. Secretary Sibelius issued the following news release. Today the department is announcing that the final rule on preventive health services will ensure that women with health insurance coverage will have access to the full range of the Institute of Medicine’s recommended preventive services, including all FDA -approved forms of contraception. Women will not have to forego these services because of expensive co-pays or deductibles, or because an insurance plan doesn’t include contraceptive services. (www.hhs.gov) Archbishop Timothy Dolan had previously made his concerns about this plan known to President Obama in a personal audience with the president at the White House. He had been informed that the Obamacare mandate would not be forced upon the various services and schools run by The American Catholic Church. However, like most of what Barack Obama promises, this guarantee came with an expiration date. That expiration date was 20 January 2012. Secretary Sibelius explains below. After evaluating comments, we have decided to add an additional element to the final rule. Nonprofit employers who, based on religious beliefs, do not currently provide contraceptive coverage in their insurance plan, will be provided an additional year, until August 1, 2013, to comply with the new law. Timothy Dolan responded to this obvious betrayal in language that was about as forceful as you could expect to hear from a man of the cloth. He explains how the decision has now forced The Catholic Church to start funding insurance coverage for abortions and sterilizations as of 1 August 2013. On Friday, the administration reaffirmed the mandate, and offered only a one-year delay in enforcement in some cases — as if we might suddenly be more willing to violate our consciences 12 months from now. As a result, all but a few employers will be forced to purchase coverage for contraception, abortion drugs and sterilization services even when they seriously object to them. All who share the cost of health plans that include such services will be forced to pay for them as well. (See individual mandate). I’m not a Catholic. On a very limited, personal level, I have no skin in this particular power-struggle. But then I stop and realize the fact that our current, statist administration has once more done rough and intentional violence to the fundamental precepts of the US Constitution and its accompanying Bill of Rights. The First Amendment thereof reads as follows. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. (HT: Wikipedia) Catholics are bound by the Law of Moses expressed in The Decalogue not to commit murder. The Catholic Church considers an unborn child a fully-corporate, living human being. Abortion, kinetic or chemical, terminates this life and hence violates the Sixth Commandment of the Ten. Paying for this act to take place (by buying insurance or paying the penalty fee for not providing the insurance) would make the Church morally culpable for every one of these murders that occurred under the auspices of an ObamaCare-approved employer insurance plan. Sec. Sibelius has just ordered the Catholic Church to directly violate a fundamental precept of their faith. To understand where to go from here, the church will have to ask itself a lot of questions. Do they actively enforce a moral law, or do they just dress a guy up in a clown-suit on Sunday and pass around the collection plate? Do they limit their activities to legalistic challenges and then accept any ruling that goes against their stated doctrine on when human life begins? Do they change church doctrine to appease Barack Obama and NARAL? If they do enforce a moral law and they will not change it in search of political consensus, does The American Catholic Church shut down in protest and put The United States under interdict until our government changes its regulatory course? Or if they don’t believe they are directly subsidizing the murder of unborn children through their compliance with the mandates of ObamaCare, do they now believe in Leprechauns? Such are the questions that the power-hungry statists have posed to one of the oldest religious organizations on the face of the planet.
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The First Amendment And Obamacare
We have a legislative process, often referred to as “regular order,” for good reason. The committee, floor, and conference committee stages of the process are designed to maximize transparency and allow all members of Congress to offer their input on the impending bill. In recent months, there has been a disturbing trend among House leaders to jettison the floor process in the House in favor of a shortcut straight to conference committee with the Senate. They claim that this is needed in order to finish all the “must-pass” legislation on time. In reality, they are undermining their own majority in the House, while abdicating gratuitous power to the Senate. You would think that Republicans would be eager to leverage the power of the House – the one body they control – as much as possible. Instead, they have shown that their desire to forge deals supersedes transparency, as well as the leverage of their own conference. Under regular order, after a bill has been fully vetted and voted on by the members of the committee with jurisdiction, it is then sent to the floor so that all members can vote on amendments to the bill. The other body follows the same procedure, either concurrently or sequentially. At that point, the two legislative bodies reconcile their differences by instructing conferees to a conference committee or by ping-ponging the bill back and forth until one body acquiesces. However, under ‘House GOP order,’ they have agreed to send bills to conference committee even though the bills were never considered on the House floor. In some cases, the bills never even got out of committee. In other instances, they took obsolete bills that passed the House and totally transformed them without coming back to the conference for a floor vote. First it was Harry Reid’s minibus bills. After House Republicans worked assiduously to formulate a commonsense budget for FY 2012, House leaders went straight to conference on Senate appropriations bills – bills that eschewed all our budget figures and policy riders – that were never considered on the House floor. This allowed the statists in both parties to negotiate bad legislation behind closed doors. Once the conference committee reported its final product, each body was forced to vote up-or-down – without any opportunity to offer amendments. The same thing occurred with the $1 trillion omnibus. Those spending bills, which affect every facet of government, never went through regular order in the House. Even though one bill had already passed the House, Harry Reid tacked on new appropriations bills, funding massive components of government. These additional rider bills never passed the House, yet leadership in both parties felt that by using the name of the passed bill as the title, they would give the impression of using regular order. While they may be correct in the technical definition of regular order, they are clearly employing a stratagem that negates the transparency of the legislative process. Moreover, here is what Republicans promised on page 33 of the Pledge to America : “We will end the practice of packaging unpopular bills with “must-pass” legislation to circumvent the will of the American people. Instead, we will advance major legislation one issue at a time.” Another example is the payroll tax cut package. When Republicans caved on the two-month payroll tax cut package last December, the long-term bills were dead. They should have begun the new session by passing a new bill that would allow all members of the conference to ensure that unemployment insurance is reformed and that, at the very least, the entitlement spending in the bill is fully offset in a meaningful way. Instead, they chose to send it off to a conference committee. House Republicans will now be placed in an awkward position when they are forced to vote up-or-down on an agreement that will undoubtedly be offensive to most conservatives. Harry Reid is already talking about larding up the conference report with a proposal to extend over 80 temporary tax credits and deductions (the annual “tax extenders”) that expired last year. While some of those extenders are pro-growth, others are handouts to green energy . Is it really a good idea to force Republicans to vote up-or-down on a single bill that contains a tax cut on the one hand, and entitlement spending and green handouts on the other? These are all consequential and far reaching bills that require more attention from the full House than a simple up-or-down vote on a conference report. They should only go to conference based on a current bill passed by both houses, not based upon some tentative agreement between a few members, or an antiquated bill that has been abandoned prior to conference. The reality is that this pernicious precedent was already set with the idea of the Supercommittee, which was hatched from the inane debt ceiling deal. The idea that a small group of Congress could be given complete authority over every aspect of budget and taxation is an anathema to the traditions of our legislative process. Why would Republicans want to negate the leverage that is inherent in control over the most consequential body of Congress? They have control over all budget and taxation bills; let them use it to comply with their pledge for greater transparency. Are they worried that there is not enough time to pass all these wonderful bills through an open amendment process on the floor? Then stay in session longer. It’s not like they have other jobs. A tight schedule is not an excuse to short-circuit the legislative process, especially for the purpose of passing bad legislation. Cross-posted from The Madison Project
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Let the Full House Decide Major Legislation
