Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Letter from Washington:

Claims on Constitution by no means definitive

Sharron Angle

Sharron Angle

Harry Reid

Harry Reid

Sun Coverage

The midterm elections are shaping up to be a referendum on the economy, health care, and, it appears, the Constitution.

Across the country, Tea Party boosters and the candidates they support have been basing part of their bid for change in Washington on an appeal to constitutional principles, and the charge that eroding respect for the Founders’ constitutional intent is at the root of what’s ailing the nation.

In Nevada, jabs have been flying back and forth about what is constitutional.

Sharron Angle has questioned the constitutionality of the stimulus and the health care bill. She has suggested that several arms of the federal government — including the Education and Energy departments, mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and organizations such as the National Endowment for the Arts and the Environmental Protection Agency — are unconstitutional because they don’t appear anywhere in the Constitution.

Harry Reid has remained comparatively silent on constitutional claims. But last week, he offered Angle a retort of sorts, telling supporters at a campaign event that it was his “constitutional duty” to spend government money in Washington.

Who’s right and who’s wrong? Well, it comes down to your interpretation of what is and what’s not constitutional, especially your reading of Article I, Section 8 — the part of the Constitution that enumerates the areas of Congress’ authority.

The disputable bit of that section is one phrase — the nonspecific grant of authority to Congress “to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay for the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.”

Reid and Angle — and their counterparts in races across the country — aren’t the first to get hung up on what counts as legitimate welfare and defense-providing activities.

That debate’s been raging since the days of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson.

It may seem a little academic to dredge up a classic history lesson in the midst of an of-the-moment election, but it doesn’t take much close listening to hear the echoes of the Founding Fathers in the fights taking place.

Then, as now, the dispute centered on one key disagreement — what the role of the federal government should be, and how far it ought to dip into states’ purviews and people’s lives.

Hamilton took what one could argue is the Reid-esque position — a champion of a strong, active federal government, he espoused the argument of “implied powers” — that just because something isn’t specifically listed in the Constitution, doesn’t mean that Congress doesn’t have the responsibility to create and provide it when necessary under its authority to maintain the defense and welfare of the country.

Meanwhile Jefferson, an advocate of a limited federal government and a strict, explicit-authority reading of the Constitution, took a position more akin to Angle’s — what you see in the Constitution is all you’re supposed to get.

But one can’t take a comparison too far.

Even as his ideas of constitutionally limited powers not only took hold but effectively ran the Hamilton camp out of influence, Jefferson and Jeffersonians would ratchet back their strict reading of congressional authority for several massive initiatives that were not easily interpreted as necessary acts for welfare and defense.

Among them: approving the Louisiana Purchase and advocating the nationwide abolishing of slavery.

When looking at today’s debate, one has to remember — when Tea Partyers talk about the Constitution, they aren’t just referring to Congress’ powers. Tea Party-backed candidates across the country have pledged to support constitutional amendments to ban excessive spending and end taxpayer-funded abortion — initiatives that would seem to be unnecessary under a strict reading of Congress’ enumerated powers.

Whatever constitutional revisions are raised after November, the debate has given Americans the chance and incentive to think like a Supreme Court justice. And in the end, that sort of revivalism may be healthy for a nation based on what’s supposed to be a living document.

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