John Tamny

In the near week since President
Obama’s State of the Union speech, commentators from all sides of the
political spectrum have weighed in on the
good, bad and innocuous of Obama’s vision for the country’s future. What’s perhaps not been commented on enough
is how unfortunate it is that Obama’s policies – or those of any President for that matter – concern us so much such that we’re compelled to watch, comment, and worry about the implications of State
of the Union speeches at all. For background, it’s fair to suggest that every reader of this column has
approached Presidential elections at one
time or another with a great deal of
excitement, dread, or a combination
of both depending on what pre-election
polling data suggests. Possessed with strong views about what should be the
future direction of the country, elections
are important to all of us; so important
that sometimes we stay up all night to
catch the returns on the way to forming
an optimistic or negative view of the policy landscape going forward. At first glance this speaks to the wonders
of American democracy, and our ability
to participate in it. But given a second
pass, the American obsession with
national politics and policy speaks to a
hugely negative trampling on the Constitution by both political parties. To put it simply, national elections
shouldn’t matter that much, and if the Constitution even remotely informed the
policy directions of politicians, the vast
majority of Americans could with good
conscience ignore national elections
along with much of what’s going on in Washington. That’s the case because as any cursory reading of the Constitution
makes very plain, the document first
authorizes the federal government, and
then it severely limits its power. The various amendments in the
Constitution are for the most part not
meant to limit our infinite rights as
American citizens, but instead they
exist to explicitly constrain the activities
of our elected officials in Washington. The amendments clearly list the powers
of the federal government, and any not
listed quite simply do not exist. But just to ensure that there be no
confusion as to what they meant in
writing the Constitution, the Founders
made sure to insert the 10th
Amendment. Some call the latter “the Amendment for Dummies”, as it makes very clear that any power not
enumerated to the federal government
once again does not exist. Back to national elections, they shouldn’t matter because assuming a government
operating under the strict constraints laid
out in the Constitution, there’s not much the federal government could do to
profoundly alter our lives. Basically
Washington is empowered to provide a
military to defend us, a stable currency,
protection of our property from
unreasonable search and seizure, plus it must secure our right to live as we want
so long as our actions don’t encroach on the rights of others. So when we consider elections and
major Presidential speeches, much of
what our leaders promise us goes well
beyond clearly set constitutional limits.
President Obama spoke of our “Sputnik Moment”, and the need for government to promote growth through various
assaults on taxpayer wallets, yet in his
defense, he’s no different from Republican presidents promising
“Ownership Societies”, targeted business/research tax breaks meant to
“create jobs”, and other government- driven concepts that ultimately trample
on our freedoms. The problem for both political parties is
that there’s no mention of economic growth in the Constitution; instead, it
was correctly assumed that a free people
would grow in all ways, including
economically. Again, the federal
government merely exists to secure our
freedoms, after which we as individuals are supposed to find individual happiness
on our own. Of course, politicians wouldn’t be politicians if they were actually willing to
abide by the document that they all
swear to, so Democrats promise
universal healthcare, investment in “solar shingles” and education all paid for by others, while Republicans offer “faith- based initiatives” to “strengthen” families, bailouts of failed economic
concepts that are well-connected in
Washington, and devalued dollars on the
wholly false premise that U.S. exporters
will prosper. To pay for all of this they tax us at
nosebleed rates, despite the vision at our
nation’s founding that we would pay the vast majority of our taxes to our local
governments; how much we pay a
function of how much government we
want. With the federal government’s powers very limited, there wouldn’t be a huge need for revenues. More modernly we’ve reversed the above, so rather than choosing how we’ll be taxed based on the city/state we live
in, now we pay the biggest tribute to
Washington, and that
reality unquestionably makes us captive
to tax rates that have long been way too
high no matter the party in power. That our productivity has thrown off trillions in
revenues to the U.S. Treasury makes
things worse, and makes potent a
Washington political class that was
largely meant to be impotent. Is it any
wonder that Congresses and Presidents ignore the Constitution’s limits when they have so many trillions at their disposal? To justify their constitutional
eviscerations, both parties to varying
degrees trot out the Constitution’s General Welfare Clause along with the
Commerce Clause as their defense. The
problem there is that the mention of
either one is a total perversion of the
Founders’ intentions with both. The Commerce Clause was written to
make sure that states within the U.S. did
not protect nascent industries through
tariffs. In short, the purpose of the
Clause was not to regulate trade, or
enforce the purchase of something the citizens otherwise wouldn’t buy; instead it was meant to make trade within the
states regular. Translated, states could
not put up barriers to goods coming from
other states. As for the Welfare Clause, far from
some ambiguous insertion meant to
allow politicians to do whatever they
wanted with our general welfare in mind,
the Welfare Clause was written to
ensure that any actions taken by the federal government that fell within its
enumerated powers had to be
considered with the general welfare of
the citizenry in mind. To suggest
otherwise – as many do – would be to turn the Constitution itself on its head,
not to mention that the document would
never have been ratified. Some politicians claim that the
Constitution is a “living, breathing document” meant to be read with changing times in mind. This too is false.
Far from a malleable document, the
Constitution was created to establish a
limiting framework on government, all
the while enabling legislators to amend it
through the amendment process. The latter has largely been forgotten, and
now Washington, extremely bold given
all the dollars at its disposal, simply does
what it wants, constitutional limits be
damned. And there lies the problem today. It’s not so much that we should ignore what
President Obama or congressional
leaders have to say, as much as what
they say and do shouldn’t concern us that much. Limited by a very clear
document, their actions shouldn’t impact how we live to a very high degree. But with the Constitution largely
irrelevant in the eyes of our leaders in
Washington, we’re sadly forced to care. Washington has too much power, and
the result is that elections, speeches and
legislation matter much more than they
should. In short, the state of our union is
an excessive amount of state.