Congress

By Mickey Edwards, a former member of Congress who represented Oklahoma’s 5th congressional district for 16 years

The underlying principle of America’s Constitution is pretty straight-forward. Americans are to be citizens, not subjects. Governments tell their subjects what to do but citizens tell their governments what to do. In the United States, that fundamental hallmark of citizenship is accomplished by (a) placing most of the major powers of the federal government in the hands of the national legislature, and (b) giving the people the right to determine who will serve in that decision-making capacity. Leaving the people with that power to determine what government shall and shall not do, and further arming them with specific restraints on government both within the original text and the subsequent Bill of Rights, the Founders gave citizens powerful weapons with which to defend their liberties.

They had not, however, counted on the pernicious effects of a modern political party system which renders almost moot the separation of powers at the heart of the constitutional check on executive overreach. America’s leading Founders (among them, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison) warned repeatedly against the creation of the kind of political parties we know today; limited and shifting factions were one thing but permanent factions were something altogether different, something to be feared. If there is one notable feature of today’s party system it is the extent to which American civil liberties are jeopardized by the tendency of congressmen to willingly defer to presidential claims of extra-constitutional authority if the President and congressman share a common partisan identity.

My own personal experience with that problem came when President George W. Bush began to regularly claim the authority to disregard clear federal law – legislation that had become binding law with his own signature – because he felt it impinged on his own broad definition of executive powers and because, well, it would be inconvenient to have to actually veto legislation that combined provisions he agreed with and those he found troublesome, even though the veto is the only remedy constitutionally provided to the President when he finds parts of the legislation distasteful. 

by Jeremy Leaming

Someday soon, perhaps not soon enough, the fear mongering over the landmark health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act, will be relegated to the dustbins of history.

The scare tactics we’ve lived with for what feels like a decade – the ACA’s minimum coverage provision, requiring Americans who can afford to do so to start paying for a minimum amount of health care coverage in 2014 is an unprecedented expansion of congressional power and a dire threat to liberty as we know it – are getting even louder as oral argument in the case approaches.

The usual suspects, Fox News and rightwing radio host Rush Limbaugh have been the ringleaders of sloppy reasoning and fear mongering, as Media Matters’ David Lyle notes in cogent fashion.

Lyle’s piece documents the shrill arguments – you’ve heard them – if Congress can force us to purchase a minimum amount of health care coverage, then surely it'll pass laws soon to force us to purchase gym memberships, organic foods, and American automobiles.

But Lyle notes this “slippery slope argument turns out, however, to be too slippery by half, and it gets both the Constitution and the facts of the health care marketplace wrong.”

On a Feb. broadcast, Limbaugh suggested once people are required to purchase a minimum amount of health care coverage, then what can stop the government from “making us buy a stupid electric car.” Lyle cites a slew of other examples peddling the slippery slope scare tactic.

But Lyle notes, what others have before “legal and health policy experts have explained, contrary to the right-wing’s ‘broccoli mandate’ talking point, the Affordable Care Act appropriately addresses failures in the health insurance market using the broad powers the Constitution gives Congress to regulate the national economy, and does not lead to the absurd results opponents have imagined.”