ANALYSIS/OPINION:
One of the many benefits of the tea party movement has been the increased focus on the United States Constitution. People are selling copies at tea party rallies, speakers are talking about it and audiences are eating it up. We would have a much brighter future if we enforce the Constitution we have and stop trying to change it by either judicial fiat or more constitutional amendments.
The debate in Washington over raising the debt ceiling has only heightened the message delivered in the 2010 elections. The people want to see an end to the extravagant spending and skyrocketing national debt that is threatening our economic vitality and the American Dream for our children and grandchildren.
Instead of talking about generic cuts to government, there is a far better course available to Republicans in Washington to pare back the federal government. How about recognizing the 10th Amendment limitations on federal power?
Despite how meritorious some spending may be (and not much of it is very meritorious), the federal government can no longer be all things to all people. Not only will eliminating unconstitutional government functions push back at intrusive government, but it will also do a better job of scaling back spending than any “cut, squeeze and trim” plan.
We can start by eliminating the political payoff delivered by President Carter when he created a federal Cabinet agency, the Department of Education, in gratitude to the teachers’ union that helped propel him into the White House. Education should never have been federalized. President George W. Bush was wrong to bulk up the Department of Education with his “No Child Left Behind” program. Instead, we should close it all down and keep education at the state and school-district level.
We can trace America’s fiscal woes today back to the federal policies that created a housing bubble stacked with unqualified borrowers. The Constitution does not say anything about the federal government having a housing policy. This is a perfect opportunity to eliminate the federal role in housing and leave it to the free market as the Constitution intended.
However, conservatives are also guilty of trying to impose their will on the American people with excessive government. It is a waste of money for the federal government to harass medical marijuana dispensaries. Controlling dangerous drugs like heroin, which is all imported from overseas, may make some sense, but there is no reason for the federal government to usurp the states from regulating or prosecuting people who smoke a relatively harmless weed. Let the states enforce marijuana laws if they want to.
A lot of our socially conservative friends see the Constitution as something that should be amended to carry out a pro-family agenda. Society should be supportive of building strong families, but that does not mean we should get the federal government involved in marriage. Up until just under 200 years ago, government did not license marriage at all. It was the province of the church, and we would have been better off to keep it there. The culture war in our society belongs in our society, not our Constitution.
The Supreme Court has caused some of this mayhem by continuing to expand the federal role in our affairs. Our forefathers are turning over in their graves about the injustices done to the original intent of our Constitution. Faulty decisions like Roe v. Wade ended up nationalizing an abortion debate that should have been left to the states. Expanding the federal role in our economy even has some legal scholars falsely believing President Obama’s individual insurance mandate is legal.
This gets me back to my central point: The Constitution has done a pretty good job in protecting our freedom. Let’s read it correctly and scale back the role of the federal government in our lives from economic to social policy. We would all be better off sticking with the Constitution we have.
• Sal Russo is a Sacramento-based conservative Republican consultant and founder of the Tea Party Express Political Action Committee. The views expressed are his own.
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