A Few Quick Words About Small Government

it only took a couple days... (0.00 / 0)

...of facing the media to scare paul right off of "meet the press"--so try this on the tea party candidate of your choice, and watch the fun.

"The Pilgrims Were Not Illegal Aliens"- Bart Simpson writing on the chalkboard.

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by: fake consultant @ Sat May 22, 2010 at 07:22:58 AM UTC

Well, lets be very honest. (4.00 / 1)

Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are of questionable Constitutionality and even more questionable solvency.  It is difficult, at least with a straight face, to find an enumerated power to justify them.  I understand, yes, the US Supreme Court justified Social Security in Butler, but any case that values Story as a persuasive source over Madison is questionable.

Much of the debt was incurred through other Constitutionally illegitimate and fiscally unsound actions, like the "Stimulus" package, over the years.

That leaves the Defense Budget, which is unquestionably Constitutionally legitimate, but is probably fiscally excessive.

So let's do this:

1) lets use the ideas proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan to vastly reduce the costs of Social Security and Medicare;

2)  let's scrape ObamaCare and introduce Ryan's ideas of market based reform;

3)  let's use Ryan's idea of association plans to replace Medicaid and State Child Health Plus (which ObamaCare expands);

4)  let's sell off public land and government holdings at FMV for the express purpose of paying down debt;

5)  let's follow up on the work Sec Gates has been doing to reduce the structural costs of DoD;

6)  let's determine what are national interest really is and determine a Force Structure that lets us protect our interests without bankrupting the country; and

7) let's limit the Federal Government to its enumerated powers and those things REALLY necessary and proper to effectulate them, as Madison did when he vetoed Henry Clay's Bonus Act, for example.
 

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by: John Minehan @ Sun May 23, 2010 at 20:56:28 PM UTC

there is an entire sidebar... (0.00 / 0)

...that we could have regarding the 10th amendment...but if we're going to be very honest, we'll have to acknowledge that it's a distraction, at best.

if you really want to get back to "enumerated powers", then let's close the border patrol today (collecting customs and excise taxes: enumerated; border control...not so much), and let's shut down the air force, and let's do all of that stuff that, frankly, doesn't make any sense...except in an artice 1, section 8, "common defense and general welfare" context.

if you are looking for a good commentary on the 10th, i'd suggest taking a look at us v darby, 312 us 100:

"...The power of Congress over interstate commerce is not confined to the regulation of commerce among the states. It extends to those activities intrastate which so affect interstate commerce or the exercise of the power of Congress over it as to make regulation of them appropriate means to the attainment of a legitimate end, the exercise of the granted power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce..."

"...While this Court has many times found state regulation of interstate commerce, when uniformity of its regulation is of national concern, to be incompatible with the Commerce Clause even though Congress has not legislated on the subject, the Court has never implied such restraint on state control over matters intrastate not deemed to be regulations of interstate commerce or its instrumentalities even though they affect the commerce..."

"...Congress, having by the present Act adopted the policy of excluding from interstate commerce all goods produced for the commerce which do not conform to the specified labor standards, it may choose the means reasonably adapted to the attainment of the permitted end, even though they involve control of intrastate activities. Such legislation has often been sustained with respect to powers, other than the commerce power granted to the national government, when the means chosen, although not themselves within the granted power, were nevertheless deemed appropriate aids to the accomplishment of some purpose within an admitted power of the national government..."

"...Our conclusion is unaffected by the Tenth Amendment which provides: 'The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the [312 U.S. 100, 124]   States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people'. The amendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered. There is nothing in the history of its adoption to suggest that it was more than declaratory of the relationship between the national and state governments as it had been established by the Constitution before the amendment or that its purpose was other than to allay fears that the new national government might seek to exercise powers not granted, and that the states might not be able to exercise fully their reserved powers. See e.g., II Elliot's Debates, 123, 131; III id. 450, 464, 600; IV id. 140, 149; I Annals of Congress, 432, 761, 767-768; Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, secs. 1907, 1908.

From the beginning and for many years the amendment has been construed as not depriving the national government of authority to resort to all means for the exercise of a granted power which are appropriate and plainly adapted to the permitted end. Martin v. Hunter's Lessee, 1 Wheat. 304, 324, 325; McCulloch v. Maryland, supra, 4 Wheat. 405, 406; Gordon v. United States, 117 U.S. Appendix, 697, 705; Lottery Case, supra; Northern Securities Co. v. United States, supra, 193 U.S. 344, 345 , 24 S.Ct. 459, 460; Everard's Breweries v. Day, supra, 265 U.S. 558 , 44 S.Ct. 631; United States v. Sprague, 282 U.S. 716, 733 , 51 S.Ct. 220, 222, 71 A.L.R. 1381; see United States v. The Brigantine William, 28 Fed.Cas. 614, 622, No. 16,700. Whatever doubts may have arisen of the soundness of that conclusion they have been put at rest by the decisions under the Sherman Act and the National Labor Relations Act which we have cited. See, also, Ashwander v. Tennessee Valley Authority, 297 U.S. 288, 330 , 331 S., 56 S.Ct. 466, 475; Wright v. Union Central Ins. Co., 304 U.S. 502, 516 , 58 S.Ct. 1025, 1033..."

what about heath care?

if there is a national health care system that you can point to that currently incorporates the reforms you propose, and is achieving better outcomes than what we have today, at lower cost...let me know where it is, and we'll go from there.

some might point to singapore--but a system that works for three million, who live in a considerably different cultural milieu, may be not be quite as easily adapted here.

otherwise, i'm more inclined to look to copy systems that are today in place, in larger countries, and delivering results that i can model and apply here.

i would also be most inclined to support a system that's relatively easy to create, from an administrative point of view.

that's why i'm most inclined to support either the canadian model of "single-payer", or france's.

the difference? canada uses wait times to control access to non-essential procedures, france uses co-pays (as high as 40%) to do the same thing.

i do not support "nationalizing" the us health care infrastructure, a la the uk's nhs, as it looks to be an administrative nightmare, both to create and to operate.

if the public health service hospital network were more robust, there might be some way to create an australian-type system here, but that also appears to have high startup costs relative to results.

canada and france both pay about 2/3 of what we do, per person, for more-comprehensive systems that provide both longer life expectancy and lower infant mortality rates than we have here today...and that's a pretty good argument for "copying what works".

now let's talk about land.

why would someone sell off an asset that represents a permanent stream of royalty payments?

instead, why not charge market rates for access to the resources that we own on public lands?

instead, what we have today is a minerals management service that is bought and paid for by the industries that are robbing us blind...which, of course, wouldn't exist at all if the government was limitied to "enumerated powers"...because there is no enumerated power to either lease mineral rights or sell any assets owned by the federal government.

"The Pilgrims Were Not Illegal Aliens"- Bart Simpson writing on the chalkboard.

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by: fake consultant @ Mon May 24, 2010 at 22:34:20 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

i forgot to touch on defense. (0.00 / 0)

there is a very low probability that you'll see big cuts in the size of the defense department, at least for now, for a few reasons:

today, we have too few troops on rotations and deployments that are too frequent and too long. we need to rotate out of iraq and afghanistan before we can really begin to do much cutting there.

60% of the budget is payroll; that only leaves about 40% to work with.

we will have to replace the rolling stock that has been in use in the wars for the past 7 years, which reduces our flexibility in cutting even further.

replacement usually costs more because we tend to buy better stuff than what we're replacing...and as a liberal, i think that's often a good idea, since my take on it is: if we're sending our troops out in harm's way, they deserve the best equipment, bar none, on the planet.

an example: a lot of humvees will be replaced by ied-resistant mrap vehicles. it's more expensive, but it will help to save the lives of those troops who are in those vehicles, and that's a good investment.

in order to realign our commitments, we'll have to either transfer top-drawer technology to allies, or enter into a "business arrangement", for cash, that puts us profitably in the "national security services" business.

the "law of unintended consequences" effect of encouraging other nations to take up a greater share of their burdens will be the creation of numerous small "arms races" as nations such as south korea, india, turkey, japan, and the eu ramp up their forces, and north korea, pakistan, iran, china, and russia respond.

it's also reasonable to assume israel might do a bit of ramping up as well, and even more regional instability might be the outcome.  

"The Pilgrims Were Not Illegal Aliens"- Bart Simpson writing on the chalkboard.

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by: fake consultant @ Mon May 24, 2010 at 22:58:33 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

As usual, (0.00 / 0)

you, like most people so don't feel bad about it, don't understand what the enumerated powers and the "necessary and proper" clause mean.

If you read McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCulloch_v._Maryland) and Federalist # 35 and # 45, as well as a series of letters written anonymously by John Marshall and critics (like the great Virginia judge Spencer Roane), you would understand that ours is a government of limited powers but that our federal government is given vast discretion in effectuating these powers.  

Acts of Congress are "necessary and proper" if:

1)  the enactment is not otherwise unconstitutional (e.g., an ex post facto law or a grant of a title of nobility); and

2)  it effectuates an enumerated power.

Such an enactment, Spencer Roane to the contrary, does not have to be the most limited effective means nor does it have to be necessary and sufficient to be "necessary and proper."  

Marshall used the mails as an example in his anonymous letters in the Richmond papers.  There are a very limited number of crimes that the federal government is specifically empowered to deal with under the Constitution: Piracy, Treason and Insurrection and the like.  However, quite legitimately, a federal criminal law developed.  

In the 1790s, as mail (running the Post Office is an enumerated power) was stolen, Congress made laws to punish this theft and hired people, US Attorneys (including young Andrew Jackson), to prosecute these crimes.  The federal government was not limited to the most limited solution, trying these cases in state courts under state law.  (This was the heart of Justice Samuel Alito's concurrence in the recent US v. Graydon.)

All of this grows out of the Articles, where the Congress was strictly limited to its enumerated powers and had no flexibility.  Hamilton criticized this structure in Federalist # 35 and Madison in Federalist # 45 (if memory serves).  In that sense, Justice Thomas's dissent in US v. Graydon seems to take an almost Anti-Federalist position: that some areas of law are closed to federal power, as with the Articles.

Thus, a VA Health System is "necessary and proper" to care for people who are injured defending the country (national defense makes up 8 of 18 enumerated powers).  The same is true of Tricare.  Federal employees need pay and benefits to do their (hopefully constitutionally legitimate) tasks, so FEHBP is not beyond the pale.  However, Medicare and Medicaid have no such Constitutional support.

The Border Patrol (and more more, importantly, INS and ICE) are simply ways that the federal government enforces "the uniform Rule of Naturalization" it is charged to make under Article I, Section 8.

The best answer to your digression about Health Care Reform is to note that there are major differences between Bismark Systems (as in France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands and Switzerland) and Socialized Medicine (the NHS in Great Britain) and Social Insurance (Canadian and Australian Medicare) and that the current status of the Social Insurance model in Australia has been compared to 'trying to dismount from an old, angry horse."

On defense, it might be worth noting that Secretary Gates has been trying to reduce the human costs of defense, notably by trying to reduce Tricare utilization.  A RIF is almost inevitable following the draw downs in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The long term solutions are apparent:

---a smaller active Army, used as the Byzantine Empire used theirs: to stiffen the spine of a coalition;

---a slightly larger, even more expeditionary Marine Corps;

---greater use of RPV/UAVs to replace manned air frames;

---greater Navy/Air Force cooperation to control the sea lanes, likely using more RPV/UAVs; and

---revamping the National Guard to give it less of a war-fighting mission and more of a nation-building and peace enforcement structure, for use here and abroad (replacing FEMA).    

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by: John Minehan @ Sat May 29, 2010 at 17:30:27 PM UTC

[ Parent ]