Government by Bureaucrats or Congress is Irrelevant by Keith Snelson - HTML preview

Chapter 12

Return to the Constitution

Put not your faith in men but bind them down with the chains of the Constitution Thomas Jefferson

The Progressive/ liberal/ socialists did not subvert and destroy our Constitution in one blow. They have worked diligently and quietly at it over the last hundred years (to paraphrase a Bible statement in Matt 15, 25-28, “An enemy hath crept in among you and hath done this while you slept) .

Under the cover of the Great Depression FDR started to implement the plan that had been developed by early Progressives Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and their associates. Lyndon Johnson did his part and Jimmy Carter added what he could. George Bush (3) really pushed us into debt and bigger and bigger government and now with President Obama the plan and their program is becoming more visible and scary ($3.8 trillion budget for 2011 before they implement ObamaCare and Cap and Trade). Rush Limbaugh once stated, somewhat in jest, that Obama might be the best thing that had ever happened to the conservative movement for now everyone could see their plan and take steps to stop it.

1. The first step is to realize and admit that our financial problem is huge, immense and significant and that it threatens our very existence and that it can not be solved by tax increases. It will require substantial reductions in expenses- reductions that can not accomplish solving our problem by cutting expenses from existing programs. We will need to eliminate departments and agencies.

On March 8, 2010 Douglas Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, reported that the U.S. federal budget deficit is on a trajectory that poses, “significant economic risks “ and will become unsustainable. “U.S. fiscal policy is on an unsustainable path that can‟t be resolved through minor tinkering.” Mr Elmendorf said, “the problem posed by the federal budget not at its current level but on this trajectory…poses a growing risk to the recovery.” If current tax policy is extended …the deficit will swell from the $6 trillion baseline forecast by 2020 to just shy of $20 trillion.

In addition, the debt held by the public with current tax policies extended would soar to 90% of GDP by 2020 making the U.S. public debt load one of the world‟s highest” .

As stated before, solving this problem will require something more than raising taxes. It will require massive spending cuts and eliminating agencies and departments.

2. Article. 1 Section 8 of the Constitution reads, “Congress shall have the power … To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in the which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals. Dock-yards, and other Buildings;…”

That seems to indicate that the states own and control the land of our country and that the Federal Government is required to get permission from the states to have operations in the states.

The Federal government is entitled to use land for specific purposes that pertain to their operation and function. Presently, the Federal government owns 29% of our land that the portion that is not being used as defined should be turned over to the states. In many cases that would substantially increase the financial positions of certain states. In addition, if the states had control of the land in the states they should be able to determine how that land could be used. Drilling, mining, logging and such activates could be authorized by our state governments.

3. Abolish the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and transfer all of the property it owns to the states. It owns lots of property, and in fact it is the largest landlord in our country. As indicated before it has a record of building and tearing down housing complexes. All of the administration of the housing is done in the states and we could save a bunch of money by eliminating the federal part of this operation. The removal of HUD in Washington would save lots of money and the transfer of property to the states would enrich the states and enable them to have more income. It would especially help the states that have large cities where most of the HUD property is located 4. Abolish the Department of Energy. It has completely failed to accomplish the original objective established for it which was to reduce our dependency on foreign oil. That whole idea was wrong to start with. Government bodies, agencies or departments do not accomplish creating things or solving problems. They make rules and regulations and generally interfere. Businesses produce, invent, and make things. The thought that the Department of Energy would actually reduce our dependency on foreign oil would have required them to develop or mine or drill or build and those are not the activities of agencies of our government. We should abolish the Department of Energy and we will not need to transfer those functions to the states for we will be better off without them and their rules and regulations.

The laws that Congress has passed that prevents all of our development of our resources must either be rescinded or immunity must be granted from those laws to enable us to provide the energy and material we need.

5 . Abolish the Environmental Protection Agency. Our air and water is clean but now the agency is running amok issuing rules and regulations that are not needed and in fact are detrimental to our country.

Many are based on their acceptance of the idea global warming exists, that the small amount of carbon gas is detrimental to our health and that man is responsible for it. The more we find out about our planet the more obvious it becomes that global warming is a fraud and that even if it was happening it is unlikely that man has that much effect on our climate. It is only logical to recognize that this earth receives most of the warmth from the sun and that our land and oceans process that energy without much effect from puny men. Our recorded history of the last several thousand years indicates that the temperature of the earth fluctuates and it is reasonable to conclude that it will continue to do so without any help or assistance from us.

With that abolishment we should also abolish all of the existing environmental laws and rescind the Endangered Species Act. Each state has an EPA and each state can adopt the rules and regulations that they believe should apply to them. If they need “professional” help they can hire some of the 17,000

people presently employed by the EPA to assist them. That would save us a bunch of money and also enable us to mine our coal, to build nuclear power plants, to build new oil refineries, to process shale to produce oil, to start logging in our forests and would increase our wealth and reduce our unemployment.

If it is impractical to remove all of the environmental laws then we should pass a law granting immunity from those laws for those who want to build oil refineries or nuclear power plants or mine for coal or mine coal shale. Those laws have been used by environmental groups to stop building and mining so it is necessary to exempt them from those laws.

6. We should adopt the Flat Tax. It is not necessary for me to explain why we should scrap our present tax system. Everyone knows it is an absolute mess and that there is no hope of revising, amending and correcting it. The only sensible course of action is to abolish it- all of it. Naturally, we will need something to replace it and Steve Forbes has written a book, The Flat Tax, and it could be used to enact new laws and replace what we have. The Fairtax might even be better but it requires an amendment to the constitution and we need something now so we should adopt the Flat Tax now and then work on the Fairtax. Rep. Paul Ryan also has a very practical proposal for fixing all of these problems which could be considered. Something must be done.

Fiscal Associates of Alexandria, VA, an economic consulting firm, did an analysis of the Flat Tax and concluded that between 2005 and 2015, the Forbes Flat Tax Plan would generate $56 billion more in new government revenue than the current income tax.

7. Thomas Jefferson also suggests that “our affairs be disentangled from those of all other nations, except as to commerce…” Our Constitution does not provide for us to be in the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank, Nafta, Cafta and etc. Our founding fathers anticipated a need to deal with foreign nations and so we have a Department of State to handle those affairs and in dealing with other nations we are supposed to pass treaties which are approved by our Congress. We should withdraw from the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and discontinue all foreign aid.

Our Congress does not seem to realize that we are financially broke and that we can not afford to borrow money from China to finance all of this. In addition, it is very doubtful that any of these organizations or actions really help our cause. They are clearly unconstitutional and we should not be in them.

Our Congress has passed laws that were not constitutional with the excuse that people were helped by having those laws. That is especially true of our entitlement programs - Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. Those programs and our inept Congress is leading us to bankruptcy. That is well known but the Congress does nothing to stop it.

With Social Security the Congress has promised our citizens a certain amount of income and that promise should be amended to make it feasible. Since the present income is less than the outgo that must happen quickly. Yet, Congress has not even discussed this or indicated that they are aware and will take the necessary steps. They assume that when the recession is over that the income will be sufficient to cover the outgo.

Medicaid and Medicare should be transferred to the states where it should be altered to the extent necessary to make it financially possible. The states have to balance their budgets and so they will be legally forced to make those two programs workable. The programs must be removed from Congress for our Congress is not responsible and will not take the necessary action until it is too late. Even though these programs have helped some people financially they have discouraged our citizens from being responsible for themselves. That is deliberate for the Progressives want that to happen so that they can gain power and remain in power. The more they can get people to rely on the government the better they can achieve their goal of remaining in power. It would be ideal to have these two unconstitutional program discontinued but that is not possible at this time. The Progressives have won this one but maybe we can at least bring it under control and stop the bleeding.

7. The new health care bill is now law and it is a monstrosity. It is really not to help reduce our health care costs or to improve our health care. It is an attempt to socialize our government and must be repealed.

8. Medicaid should be completely transferred to the states. It is administered by the states and the savings from removing the Federal government from this function should be substantial. It is estimated that we experience somewhere around $60 to $100 billion in fraud every year and much of that is due to the states inflating the actual costs and then paying service providers who then return the excess paid. If the states were completely responsible for this that would eliminate that specific fraud. That would be a very nice savings. The Federal government presently pays around half of the Medicaid costs but the elimination of the fraud and the removal of the Federal government from this function could reduce our total costs substantially. For a short period of time it may be necessary for the federal government to provide money to some states until they can gain control over Medicaid.

9. Paul Ryan‟s proposal to keep Medicare as is for those over 55 and then issue vouchers of $7500 to those over 65 and let them buy their own insurance. This program has worked very well for our present Congress. Medicare is presently paid for through a 2.9% payroll deduction with Social Security. The two should first be separated. Part D (prescription drug benefit) was added and nothing was done to increase the deduction which is typical of our Congress. They just added the benefit and ignored the potential cost. It is estimated that the income from the 2.9% deduction will be inadequate by 2024 but at this time the deduction should be sufficient to take care of the costs. There could be a problem in some states where the age of the population is high and the income is low but that can only be determined by actually doing it . This function is unconstitutional and should be removed from the Federal government.

The states can then decide what to do with it. That could even include cancelling it entirely.

10. Social Security is already broke. Income in 2009 was less than was paid out and 2010 and 2011 is projected to be in the same situation. The Congress is aware but is ignoring it – maybe they hope it will go away. It is projected to get worse for in the future as our population ages there will be fewer contributing and more receiving the benefits. The bureaucrats have messed this one up so badly that it is impossible to transfer this to the states. The Congress will have to fix it. There are 31 other countries that have retirement systems and so there should be plenty of ideas and plans that could be adopted to fix this. Our Congress refuses and so they should be removed from office. The Democrat Congress has no plans to fix this and so they should be removed from office immediately.

There are lots of other reasons to remove them and this is just one more.

If the next Congress does not fix this then they too should be removed from office. This problem has been known for years and irresponsibly ignored. It is only going to get worse and must be fixed quickly.

11. We would not have been involved in the Civil War, Korean War, the Vietnam War, the First Gulf War, the Afghanistan War or the Iraq War if we had followed the Constitution. In all of those wars our Congress did not declare war and our presidents did not even make an attempt to have our Congress declare war. In some cases they night have done so but they did not and therefore all of those wars were unconstitutional.

Article 1, Section 8 of our Constitution reads, “The Congress shall have the Power…to declare war.”

That has not been done but we find that we are involved in two wars that were started by President George Bush (43) and are being continued by President Obama. Plans have been made to withdraw from Iraq since that war seems to have been won. For some reason there are plans to retain 50,000 troops there for some time and that is not acceptable. They should all be removed as soon as possible. The war in Afghanistan is being fought and plans are to remove our troops in 2011. That should be done. We should also stop all activities involved with Libya.

We should also bring our troops home from Germany (66,418). Korea (30.983), Japan (35,571), Italy (11,841) and the United Kingdom (10,752) and encourage those countries to defend themselves. We would then have enough troops to defend our Mexican border. That is a total of 155,565 and those troops could be brought home immediately since they are not involved in fighting. When we leave Iraq and Afghanistan we could reduce our military by a big number and thus further reduce our expenditures.

We should not act as the world policeman but should use our armed forces for our own defense. Our military might, especially our air force, is capable of destroying any country that attacks us and we should not be involved in establishing new governments and being a police force for the world.

11. Congress shall pass a law defining the scope and limitation of “presidential executive orders” and rescind all executive orders which are not covered in that definition and further define the scope and limitation of “presidential signing statements.” Rep. Ron Paul(R-TX) has introduced a bill in the House which would solve all of these issues, HR 2655, the Separation of Powers Restoration Act. His bill would restore the proper division of power within the branches of government, thereby preventing further executive abuse. It would terminate existing states of emergency and grant Congress the exclusive authority to make such declarations.

12. The Aid for Dependent Children (AFDC) must be changed to encourage fathers to remain in the homes with their children. If it requires ignoring the income they earn or even if giving them income to stay there would be acceptable but something must be done. Perhaps a bonus could be given to any single mother who marries and remains married for five years. The AFDC program has destroyed the family institution among too many blacks as well as Hispanics and others and so the government is responsible for that and must correct it. The Progressive/liberals introduced it and now we must fix it. In addition, the present program must be changed so that additional children cannot be added after the initial child is enrolled. Payments for children who drop out of school should be discontinued and thus encourage those children to obtain a high school education.

13. Abolish the Federal Reserve. It has been the main cause of our present financial collapse (aided and abetted by our Congress) and has been a part of our past financial problems. Congress passed a law authorizing it in 1913 and it would be easy to pass another law abolishing it. There would need to be some preparation in doing that but it should be done

14. The Department of Education should be abolished. It is very expensive, extremely incompetent, and unconstitutional.

15. The number of Federal government employees should be reduced by 30%. I have no data to prove that is a good number but based on our past and our Congress that seems reasonable. That might be done by adopting the foregoing recommendations and by having a committee evaluate our present agencies, departments, committees and etc, to determine the constitutionality of the Federal government and removing all of the groups that are not constitutional.

. Thomas Jefferson was able to imagine what would happen and warned against it.

“What an augmentation of the field for jobbing, speculating, plundering, office-building & office-hunting would be produced by an assumption of all the State powers into the hands of the general government. The true theory of our Constitution is surely the wisest & best, that the States are independent as to everything within themselves, & united as to everything respecting foreign nations.

Let the general government be reduced to foreign concerns only, and let our affairs be disentangled from those of all other nations, except as to commerce, which the merchants will manage the better, the more they are left free to manage for themselves and our general government may be reduced to a very simple organization, & a very inexpensive one; a few plain duties to be performed by a few servants.”

This would not restore the Constitution for there are many agencies and committees that exist but this would be a good start. If all of the above were adopted we would see a huge savings and would also enable us to solve our energy problems and return the use of property to owners. The transfer of federal government land would enable many states to solve their financial problems and would also remove many restrictions placed on the use of that land by our Federal Government.

The more we see what they are planning to do the more respect we gain for our founding fathers for if the Constitution had been protected none of this would have taken place.

Our Congress is “for sale.” The above reviews some of our biggest problems- war and entitlement programs - but there are many, many other spending programs that should be removed from our Federal government. The reason there are so many lobbyists in Washington is that those lobbyists are able to get money from our Congressman who in turn are able to get campaign contributions from the lobbyists.

When the number of lobbyists in Washington is reduced to zero then we will know that our Congress is honest.

Is any of this possible? The reason we are in this situation is because of our Congress It is impractical to think of starting a new party but there is hope from the tea party group. Some of the new Congress will be heavily influenced by that group and may be able to enact some of the above – or at least stop the bleeding. Then 2012 will give us another opportunity to get an American president who would follow our Constitution. At least, the danger from the Progressive/socialists is now revealed and that in itself should give us hope.