Any American familiar with the writings of the founders knows that the commerce clause was never meant to lend Congress carte blanche to make up any government program it desired and fund it with your money. Nor is Congress given the right to set up cartels that use government authority to meddle in the affairs of the free market, all the while turning a nice profit, a la the Federal Reserve. Article I Section 8 of the U.S. constitution mentions nothing like the Federal Reserve. Here, as a reminder, I have Article 1, Section 8:
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;
To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;
To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States;
To establish post offices and post roads;
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;
To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;
To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;
To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;
To provide and maintain a navy;
To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;
To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings;–And
To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.
Do you see anything in there about a mandate for full employment, or even a Federal Reserve? What gives Congress the right to create such an organization. The Fed is lending to the U.S. government. Congress, under the second clause, only has the right to borrow and therefore shouldn’t be able to authorize the creation of an organization that lends to the U.S. government. The fifth and sixth clauses require Congress to protect the American peoples’ money. The full employment mandate given to the Federal Reserve is at direct odds with those clauses, because the method being used to attempt to generate employment (unsuccessfully I might add) is a devaluation of the currency.
Congress, as Ron Paul points out in his book End the Fed, isn’t doing its job. It isn’t protecting the people by enforcing a strong-dollar policy, instead it is protecting vested corporate interests with loads of funny money.
Speaking of vested corporate interests and a lack of constitutional authority, authority for the school lunch program being pushed by Michelle Obama is nowhere in Article I, Section 8, as you can see above. Sarah Palin has mentioned that a “politician’s wife” has set a national priority, and that national priority is the use of unconstitutional power to intrude on the eating habits of America. As you know if you’ve read any of my extensive writings on healthy eating, I encourage everyone to eat a healthy diet free of the terrible foods sold in the big box grocery stores of America. But, the federal government has no authority to impose its will on the diets of Americans. This is just one more case of abuse and neglect by Congress, and in this case the president’s wife.
But the same can be said for Obamacare, which also has no place in Article I, Section 8. Everything the federal government should be doing is already enumerated in the constitution. Leave the food, healthcare, education, and other unconstitutional programs to the states.
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