Constitutional tyranny?

November 4, 4:11 PMNY Conservative ExaminerTodd Keister

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Majority Leader Hoyer and Speaker Pelosi - 'we can do whatever we want'

AP

Last week, the number two Democrat in the House of Representatives, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland), made a shocking pronouncement regarding his alleged constitutional powers to force American citizens to do whatever the congress decrees.

Representative Hoyer announced that the provision in the proposed healthcare bill that would require Americans to purchase health insurance was “like paying taxes.” When a noncompliant reporter dared to ask Mr. Hoyer what constitutional authority congress had to require such a thing, Hoyer replied, “Well, in promoting the general welfare the constitution obviously gives broad authority to congress to effect that end… The end that we’re trying to effect is to make health care affordable, so I think clearly this is within our constitutional responsibility.” Really?

Hoyer’s assertion is so stunningly ignorant and arrogant that one scarcely knows where to begin in refuting it. First, the General Welfare Clause of which he speaks is found in Article 1, Section 8 of the constitution which specifically lays out the powers of the US congress. In eighteen very short paragraphs, the founders enumerated precisely what congress could do. The first paragraph gives congress the power “To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States…”

It is this General Welfare Clause that has been used by would-be tyrants like Hoyer, Pelosi, FDR, and others stretching back to the early days of our republic. Hoyer and his breed believe that this one sentence grants constitutional power to the congress to do absolutely anything it wishes as long as they have good intentions.

If the constitution’s framers had intended that sentence to grant unspecified “broad powers”, as Hoyer claims, there would have been no need to write the following seventeen paragraphs listing the powers of congress in great specificity. After all, aren’t coining money, regulating interstate commerce and maintaining a Navy all for the “general welfare” of the country?

No less an authority than James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, put this matter to rest more than 200 years ago. Many critics of the constitution argued against its ratification because they claimed that the General Welfare Clause was just such a grant of broad authority as claimed by Mr. Hoyer today. In answer, Madison wrote in Federalist No. 41,

“No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction. Had no other enumeration or definition of the powers of the Congress been found in the Constitution, than the general [welfare] expressions just cited, the authors of the objection might have had some color for it… But what color can the objection have, when a specification of the objects alluded to by these general terms immediately follows, and is not even separated by a longer pause than a semicolon?”

Mr. Hoyer’s twisted interpretation of the constitution then became even more ominous. When asked if the constitution placed any limits on what it could force Americans to buy, he responded,

“I’m sure the [Supreme] Court will find a limit. For instance, if we mandated that you buy General Motors Automobiles, I believe that would be far beyond our constitutional responsibility and would indeed violate the due process clause as well – in terms of equal treatment to automobile manufacturers.”

So, according to Mr. Hoyer, forcing American citizens to purchase a particular brand of automobile would be unconstitutional because it would be unfair to other auto companies, and not because it flagrantly violates the constitution and our fundamental freedom as Americans. Moreover, Mr. Hoyer incongruously finds this auto maker protection in the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment, which says that no person shall be deprived of “…life, liberty, or property without due process of law...”

Two days later, Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was asked which constitutional provision granted congress the power to establish a legal requirement for health insurance. Speaker Pelosi would not even deign to answer such an impudent question, saying only, “Are you serious?” before calling on another reporter. Ms. Pelosi’s spokesman later stated that the query was “not a serious question” and pointed to a September 16 press release from Pelosi’s office which claimed that congress could dictate health care policy to Americans based upon their constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce; “[Congress has] broad power to regulate activities that have an effect on interstate commerce. Congress has used this authority to regulate many aspects of American life, from labor relations to education, to health care to agricultural production.”

The message from the House Democratic leadership is clear; congress has the authority to do whatever it wants based upon the General Welfare Clause, or maybe the Interstate Commerce Clause, or whatever – and because we have gotten away with it for so long, in so many areas, any inquiry from the peasantry regarding congress’s constitutional authority are “not serious questions.”

Steny Hoyer has good reason to be cavalier about the constitutional justification for congressional actions - In our 77-year decent into collectivist autocracy, the Supreme Court has found precious few limits on what the federal government can do to us. The arrogance of absolute power was on full display during the Hoyer and Pelosi briefings, and offers a chilling glimpse into the minds of aspiring tyrants.