After reading Ezra Klein’s latest op-ed piece in the Washington Post last week, I couldn’t stop my burning desire to pen a rebuttal of the skewed viewpoint he brings in this column.
In Part one of the column, Klein opens by discussing the new House rule on the wording of legislation. The new rule Klein is referring to is the House’s attempt at something similar to the Enumerated Powers Act. For those of you not familiar, The Enumerated Powers Act is legislation that would require by law all Acts of Congress to specifically state which “Enumerated Powers” from Article I Section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress the authority to enact that particular piece of legislation. This Act has been proposed many times over the past 30 years or so, but until now it hasn’t gotten much attention.
In typical elitist behavior, Klein begins by mocking Republicans and “tea partyers” for their insistence on a rule that would require Congress to justify their actions. To make his point that such a rule is pointless, he offers the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) as an example. He mentions that the Obamacare Act states that it has the authority to require every citizen to buy health insurance because “insurance is interstate commerce.” Klein questions: So why are conservatives against Obamacare?
Klein is missing the point. Levying this requirement on Congress protects the People by strengthen the Judicial Branch. With these new rules, Congress must make its case for a particular piece of legislation at the time it writes the law. That ensures that Congress cannot use one argument to pass legislation and then another argument to defend it before a Judge. Now the lawmakers’ true intent can be recorded and taken into account when the constitutionality of legislation is brought into question. To build on Klein’s example in Obamacare: There can be no weaseling by Government lawyers later when a law is brought before the Supreme Court. The writers of Obamacare clearly make their case that it should be legal because the individual mandate extends from Congress’ power “To regulate Commerce […] among the several States.” Based on that, the Court can clearly examine the claim, and so can we.
More and more often, the Court is reviewing laws that leave the intent of Congress ambiguous. I have read several decisions from the bench which note that the intention of Congress is unclear. A rule similar to the Enumerated Powers Act will go a long way in cleaning up what has become a behemoth of over-legislation.
Klein continues in part two of his column by generally attacking the relevance Constitution itself. He pines that the document is not “clear” and deals with “very different problems” than what we face today. He points to the only-recently-questionable language of the Second Amendment: “A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Klein shamelessly recycles the now-refuted myth that these words only apply to a modern “well regulated militia” and not to the entire body of citizens, as the words “the right of the people” clearly state.
Klein is right in one sense; the Framers of the Constitution likely never imagined that future Americans would blatantly disregard the intent, meaning and spirit of the document to argue its relevance.
Klein’s viewpoint represents what has brought this country to the state it is in. Advocating a departure from the concept of a limited Federal Republic, this modern liberal ideology wishes to replace the rights of individuals to shape their own destiny with an Orwellian authoritative system of bureaucracy that stifles any possibility of personal advancement for the expense of a few social services.