One-party rule calls for a ‘Contract with the Constitution’
by Bob Hoig, Publisher
Midlands Business Journal
This writer detects a mood coalescing over the country for a sharp and fast turn back to constitutional principles, of which honest dealing with citizens by the president and Congress and transparency of legislation are high on the list.
So a reasonable guess would be that a number of Americans might join a third party were one to appear before the presidential election in 2012.
No matter the name for now, a “Constitution Party” or something like it has appeal to currently disillusioned voters no matter their politics — conservative Democrats, Republicans, Independents, the Tea Partiers and others.
It’s fair to say that honesty, fair dealing, and the absence of intentional trickiness have been the rule from George Washington forward.
Starting a new party, however, might not be necessary. We recommend a new version of the Republican Party’s “Contract with America” of 1994, which reined in the excesses of 40 years of Democrat control of Congress.
Call the new document a “Contract with the Constitution.”
Its purpose would be to rein in another Congress, equally drunk on one-party, Democrat Party, power.
The new contract should reaffirm America’s historic reverence for constitutional principles and the rule of law as set down by the Founding Fathers. It would, among other things, postulate straightforward dealings in the legislative process. In short, this has been exactly what has been missing in the new Obama Administration.
No bypassing of committee hearings on important bills. No promising ample time for the public to understand legislation and then disavowing the promise — with health care, restricting energy usage, expansion of union power by dumping the secret ballot in union elections, on increased taxation and regulation and on climate change, whether manmade or not.
Any belief in constitutional government would outlaw the practices of the current Democrat-dominated Congress and the Obama White House to hustle along 1,000 page or more bills written in language that legislators neither understand or even bother to read before signing.
Leaving key measures to paid House and Senate staffers is not what Thomas Jefferson and James Madison had in mind, of that we’re sure.
But Americans need only heed the public comments of a Michigan representative in the U.S. House and a reliable Obama vote. Rep. John Conyers admitted on television he had not read and had no intention of reading the major Obama proposals, including Cap and Trade and Health Care Bills.
And why? Because they are too long, not understandable even to experts and are crammed full of legalese, Conyers said on Fox News Channel.
It is astounding that Congress habitually flays corporations when they doubletalk with customers and stockholders in non-understandable language while airily passing bills such as health care legislation affecting one sixth of the economy, many sections of which are pure jargon and/or arcane legalese.
President John F. Kennedy, according to one anecdote, was said to have returned a wordy agricultural report from a junior bureaucrat. It was accompanied by JFK’s note saying he had just read a one-page summary on nuclear war — the thought being that if nuclear issues can be summarized in a page, why not agriculture issues.
The Founders knew the value of freedom and personal initiative. All were firsthand witnesses to the destructive power of unchecked governments headed by tyrants.
Obama aside, with his public dismissal of the Constitution as merely a document of “negative rights,” the Founders indeed were focused on what government could do to you.
They had to look no further than England, ruled by a mentally-tipped King George III and a tax-happy parliament.
The rallying cry in the American Colonies was “No taxation without representation.”
For 2010, we need to remember: “Any government big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take all you’ve got.”
A contract with the Constitution would be a timely reminder in the new year.
January 1, 2010
