John Stossel has added to his collection of great videos. His latest releases asks whether the Constitution should be amended.
If you watch carefully, you’ll see that I made an appearance toward the end.
My clip lasts only about five seconds, but I used that short segment to say that the main goal should be enforcing the Constitution as currently written.
Note that I didn’t say as currently enforced.
That’s because the Supreme Court, starting in the 1930s and culminating with the horrid Wickard v. Filburn case in 1942, largely abandoned its responsibility to limit the powers of Washington.
Time to rectify that mistake.
To be more specific, I want the Supreme Court to limit the powers of Congress to the “enumerated powers” listed in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution.
That one step would dramatically shrink the federal government. No Department of Education., No welfare state. No Department of Agriculture. No redistribution. No Department of Housing and Urban Development.
I won’t be holding my breath waiting for this to happen, but Mr. Stossel was asking what we wanted, not what we expected.
Heck, I should have called for repeal of the 16th Amendment, so we also could enjoy the experience of living in a nation without an income tax.
Before concluding, I should take this opportunity to give some commentary regarding some of the ideas other people suggested in the video.
- Balanced budget amendment – It would be much better to have a Colorado-style spending cap. There is a lot of evidence that spending caps work. That is not the case, however, with rules that seek to limit deficits.
- Term limits – I don’t like career politicians, so kicking them out of office after a dozen years is a good idea. Though maybe this satirical idea for just two terms would be even better.
- Gift clause – I’m not familiar with the “gift clause” provision in some state constitutions, which was mentioned by Christina Sandefur. But it would be great if politicians no longer could provide special subsidies to their cronies.
P.S. I mentioned the horrid Wickard V. Filburn case. The Obamacare decision may be even worse.
P.P.S. As Walter Williams noted, maybe we need another president like Grover Cleveland.
