Friday, August 16, 2013

Not exactly from the shelves of the Paco library...

...but soon to be an acquisition: Mark Levin's Liberty Amendments. John Hayward has a comprehensive review over at Human Events, and does a fabulous job providing context. Just a taste:
A Constitutional reset is necessary because the progressive project is a cascade of lost freedoms, designed so that each step is irreversible, and every inch of ground taken by the State is claimed forever. The distribution of power to unelected bureaucrats is a key element of this process. One of the Liberty Amendments “sunsets” all federal departments and agencies, unless Congress reauthorizes them every three years by majority vote. Every big-ticket Executive Branch regulation would be subjected to review by a joint congressional committee. This amendment would pull the plug on the unstoppable federal bureaucracy, forcing every department to perpetually justify its existence, and terminating President Obama’s beloved practice of circumventing Congress to legislate by decree.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

It would be a good idea to have greater state control over senators. Perhaps, states should even be responsible for paying salaries and funding the activities of their own senators and congressmen. Congress should not have control over their own pay and expense accounts. Fewer fact finding missions to Aruba? What a shame.

RebeccaH said...

Congress is drowning in weak sisters who need to be sent packing anyway. Obama said "roll over" and they did.

Anonymous said...

Deborah .... We're ecstatic that we get to hear Mark and have him sign our books at the Reagan Library on September 7th. I was fortunate to get the tickets because I listen to a east coast radio station (WBOB). It sold out in a new record time, 16 minutes.

The book has already brought discussion, and not all of it supportive. Hugh Hewitt was discussing it with the President of Hillsdale College yesterday.

Michael Lonie said...

Not a bad idea, to sunset departments. There is precedent from British history. So worried were the English about tyrants using the army to enforce opression, after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 that thrrew out James II, that they planned to control the army through such a mechanism. The army was authorized to exist only for a single year at a time. Every year Parliament had to pass a bill called the "Mutiny Act" which authorized the army to legally exist.

Of course they always passed a new bill. But it kept the army under the control of the English "political nation" for a couple of hundred years. England hasn't had another Cromwell or James II since. England has had other problems with tyranny.

We could set up similar acts for each department, then fail to pass one for the department of Housing or Education or one of the other wasteful departments.

I think the Sir Humphrey Applebys would find ways around it though. I've thought for a long time that there ought to be a sunset provision for all regulations. After five years they expire, and to be renewed it's not enough to be reissued by an agency. Congress must explicitly vote on them. Each one. Separately. That would limit the regs to only a few. Admittedly, it's not likely that the really important or desirable regs would pass this procedure, but you can't have everything.

rinardman said...

Any way we could be rid of the liberal Democrats?