Returning to our Constitutional limits

Cutting corruption by cutting government

By Rohit Joy
From the March 2006 Print Edition

When Congress reconvened for the New Year, its first order of business was to pass House Resolution 648, a resolution prohibiting former congressmen who have become lobbyists from using the House gym. Representative David Dreier, R-Calif., the resolution’s sponsor and chairman of the House Rules committee, lauded it as “the beginning of comprehensive lobbying reform in the House of Representatives.”

Dreier’s overzealous enthusiasm for this purely symbolic measure reveals how far Congress is from offering meaningful solutions to the problem of misconduct by its members. Both Republicans and Democrats have introduced bills much like the one above that tinker with congressional ethics rules and place new restrictions on lobbying, but so far, none of these proposals address the root cause of lobbying scandals — the ever-increasing size and scope of the federal government.

Making cosmetic modifications to ethics rules and lobbying regulations will do nothing to bring back congressional integrity. Representative Ron Paul, R-Texas, points out that Congress already has “laws against bribery, theft, and fraud … ethics rules … [and] campaign finance reform,” and “[requires] campaigns and lobbyists to register with the federal government and disclose expenditures.” Having these laws in place did not avert scandals like the recent Jack Abramoff fiasco, and passing more laws will not prevent future scandals, because members of Congress will find ways around them as they have done when new laws were enacted in the past.

Paul also notes that lobbying itself is protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution, which states that “Congress shall make no law … abridging … the right of the people … to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” More regulation of lobbying would infringe on this constitutional right. It is not an option.

The final reason why the above changes will not be effective is that ethics rules only work for ethical people. Unethical congressmen who have been flouting existing rules for years will not suddenly start behaving ethically when new rules are put in place. The primary reason for the unethical behavior of government officials is that all people, when granted power over others, have a natural tendency to use it to further their own self-interest.

Many people do go to Washington genuinely committed to doing good, but after serving for a sufficient length of time become jaded with the vast amount of power with which they are endowed and focus on serving themselves instead of their constituents. This unfortunate truth about human nature leaves just one way to truly tackle corruption in Congress: make the federal government smaller and less powerful.

For the federal government to shrink in size, the first step it must take is to observe the limits the Constitution places on it. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution grants the federal government eighteen specific powers, and the 10th Amendment states that, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively or to the people.” This implies that Congress may not appropriate money for any purpose not explicitly stated in Article I, Section 8.

Since the 1930s, the Constitution’s checks on federal power have all but been ignored. In the wake of the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, as part of his New Deal plan, called for the creation of numerous government entitlement programs, such as the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Works Progress Administration, and the National Labor Relations Board.

Economists and policy experts of that time debated the merits of the New Deal, and whether or not it would help lift America out of the Depression, but the one factor that was greatly overlooked was the constitutionality of such reforms. The Supreme Court initially ruled several of his programs unconstitutional, but Roosevelt threatened to pack the court with his Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937, and although he was unsuccessful, the Court, likely viewing the “court-packing” bill as a threat, abruptly changed its position and began upholding New Deal legislation.

By reversing its earlier stance against the New Deal, the Supreme Court set the stage for even further expansions of federal power. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society programs created additional federal entitlements, including Medicare and Medicaid, without any consideration for whether they were constitutionally permitted. In later decades, pork-barrel spending became prevalent, rising from $3.1 billion in 1991 to a whopping $27.3 billion in 2005, according to the watchdog organization Citizens Against Government Waste. Pork projects, like the federal programs authorized by Roosevelt and Johnson, are nearly always unconstitutional.

The willingness of the American people to let Congress brazenly exceed its constitutional powers for almost 75 years has bred today’s culture of corruption in Congress. Vast amounts of taxpayer money have been made available to be spent unconstitutionally, giving lobbyists an enormous incentive to unscrupulously seek federal funds for their pet causes.

To reverse this disturbing trend, we must heed Lord Acton’s warning that “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” By forcing Congress to limit its powers to what the Constitution allows, we will ensure that dishonest individuals have far less to gain from improperly influencing politicians and we will successfully reduce corruption in our government.

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