The major parties have not talked about restoring the Bill of Rights and returning to the Constitution. With suspension of habeas corpus, surveillance of the public, secret prisons, and secret laws, exceeding the limits imposed upon the government by the Constitution is becoming a daily occurrence.
Just this week, the Senate used a parliamentary trick to introduce a financial bill that should have been introduced by the House of Representatives. The Constitution is clear on that point:
Article 1 Section 7: All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.
The Bail Out Bill was defeated in the House on the first time around so the Senate added it to an existing bill in order to circumvent the Constitution. Was this necesssary?
This week, we heard vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin say that she would seek to expand the power of the Vice President to include some oversight of the Legislative and Judicial branches of government. The Constitution is very clear that the VP cannot do this. The Constitution gives but one responsiblity to the VP: a vote to break ties in the Senate. That is it. There is no “flexibility” as Gov. Palin describes it.
Neither major party candidate wants to give power to the people, they seek more for themselves.
We must make an effort to elect people who will reject powers already usurped and we must prevent more powers from accreting to politicians.
Vote Responsibly and Save America. Your children’s freedom depends upon it.
2 responses so far ↓
Cari // October 4, 2008 at 11:13 pm
Does that make this bill unconstitutional???
ReasonableCitizen // October 5, 2008 at 4:41 am
Technically, no. By adding the Bailout to an existing energy tax incentive bill passed by the House, the Senate sidestepped the Constitution. But the definition of ’shall originate’ could be argued that it is unconstitutional to conflate the energy tax incentive bill with an entirely different measure. Given the need for action though, no one will challenge this.
Not to have passed this bill would have resulted in credit chaos. Not just more expensive credit, but hard to find credit.
Our society, at every level, has debt. When banks have debt and cannot borrow more, that is a problem.