Now this is what I call federalism:
“Any provision of law or regulation of the United States may be repealed by the several states, and such repeal shall be effective when the legislatures of two-thirds of the several states approve resolutions for this purpose that particularly describe the same provision or provisions of law or regulation to be repealed.”
This would be the solution for legislative atrocities like ObamaCare.
Why 2/3rds? I say 1/3rd. Take that, tyranny of the majority!
Interesting concept. I wonder if the 17th Amendment were repealed if this amendment would be necessary. Repeal of the 17th would return the voice of the states back to DC, the function the Senate was originally intended to serve. Instead we have two populist houses of Congress necessitating this further check and balance layered on top. IMHO, I think repeal of the 17th would be a “cleaner” way to serve the same purpose. Just a thought.
Repeal of the 17th Amendment might cover this issue much more effectively.
From Wikipedia:
“The Seventeenth Amendment (Amendment XVII) to the United States Constitution established direct election of United States Senators by popular vote. The amendment supersedes Article I, § 3, Clauses 1 and 2 of the Constitution, under which Senators were elected by state legislatures. ”
With Federal State Senators directly selected and subject to recall by the states legislatures it will solve many of these problems. Unfunded Mandates and any other excesses of the Federal government will likely go away.
You beat me to it, Steve.
This would be a good amendment to have.
Repeal the 17th and revoke the filibuster rule in the Senate.
If 60 people elected to office by state-wide vote (AKA, “the Senate”) vote for something, what makes you think 33 state legislatures would vote against it?
RRRoake – if you revoke the filibuster in the Senate, you’d have gotten a public option on health care. That had over 50 votes.
I’d like an amendment requiring a bill focus on the single subject enumerated in the title.
It seems rather innocuous, but it means that all the crazy horsetrading has to meet the freaking focus of the bill. This means things like “Defense Appropriations 2010” won’t contain (ok, will be less likely to contain) funding for underwater basketweaving classes.
It also would open an awfully long list of misnamed bills to scrutiny as failing in the named task.
Chris, do you really believe that the recent passage of Obamacare represents the will of the majority of Americans?
Proabably not. Also, a post-17th Senate would be solidly divided at this time (51/49 for the D’s) and (possibly) be immune to the drama we’ve seen lately (Fraken, Brown) if that’s a value to you…
Jiminator – no. Even Rassmussen shows that a majority of Americans wanted a public option. This is consistent with other polls showing that 10-15% of Americans opposed to the current plan think it “doesn’t go far enough.”
In short, a majority of Americans may dislike what we ended up with, but there’s not a majority in favor of repeal.
When did 56% (last week) to 53% (this week) cease to constitute a majority?
Titus – 10% or so of that “dislike” wanted something more liberal. They may not like it, but they’re not going to repeal it. They’ll add to it.
So…they want to repeal their “will?” I’d be very circumspect about calling something “the will of the people” with regards to this where folks are so evenly and passionately divided, where the differences go right to the core principles upon which people base their lives. At most, we can say, “this is the will of roughly half the people.”
I am a ‘belt and suspenders’ kind of guy. Repeal the 17th ammendment (though I have mixed feelings whenever I read about the antics of just about any state legislature), adopt the ‘Repeal Ammendment’, and introduce STRICT term limits (say no more than 12 years of service – combined – in either/or the HOR or Senate). A single six year presidency might not be a bad idea as well.
Let throw in an automatic sunsetting provision, while we are at it, for any revenue bill or authorizing legislation for regulation.
Lastly, take the vote back from women…that was the source of the whole mess in the first place (grin)….
Patti Davis in her autobiographical book recounts a “date gone bad” and of a man who, to put it politely on this “family site”, forced himself on her, and how she just “shut down” and felt herself disassociating from her surroundings and everything that was happening to her, while all the while this man was telling her “I know how badly you want this.”
Yes, Patti Davis is probably not the paragon of personal morals, just as Paul Milenkovic is not the paragon of abstaining from government largess (just spent the last 10 years seeing to it that my parents got what they were entitled to out of Medicare), but right now I am shutting out of my mind what the gutting of Medicare will mean for me when I come down with the progressive neurological illness my parents each had, and I have Chris telling me how much I really want all of this.
Scott that’s a lot more than belt and suspenders. Changes should be slow. I like the idea of this law. Democrats have been using their judges to nullify voters for too long. This could give the voters some of their voice back.
I also like that it fits my philosophy of less is more.
Getting rid of the 17th is a good idea.
Actually, keep the ninth and get rid of the rest. Give the ninth some teeth by debate and we wouldn’t need the others.
Have they forgot how to debate? Now they do it only with an eye for what the opposition will use in political commercials.
-Chris Gerrib is obviously worried the repreal idea would impede his gang of statist thieves and theocrats from further imposing their will on us.
We tried having senators selected by state legislatures for more than a century before the 17th amendment. The main difference between that and what we have now is that it was much easier to become a senator by bribery, and it was easier for a state to be unrepresented because of legislative deadlock.
Why should it work better the second time around?
This reminds me somewhat of the loonie constitution hinted at by Robert Heinlein in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress – where the body charged with enacting laws needed a two-thirds majority to make a law, and the body charged with striking down laws only needed a 1/3 minority to be rid of a law.
I don’t see the practical benefit of this idea. If you can’t get 60% of the Senate to filibuster, how likely are you to to get 66% of state legislatures?
And to the extent that it makes a difference, how much of the the impact is just giving states with low population density even more power over everybody else?
Of course if state legislators did select Senators it would basically prevent a populist movement like the Tea Party from electing them. Their mischief would be limited to the House, which is what the Founding Fathers really intended with state government selecting Senators.
The mobs of the French Revolution really scared a lot of the writers of the Constitution which is why they put is so many road blocks to populist rule. And limited votes to property owning males, since they would be more immune to the madness of crowds and fads. And gave the Supreme Court the power they have. And had the President elected by the Electoral College not popular vote.
Maybe they should take the right to vote away from bureaucrats and elected officials.
The states have Tea Party groups too.
I’m skeptical that repealing the 17th would have the cure-all effect that keeps getting touted in comment threads; such promises always overlook the fact that the other side is adaptable and has a very immediate vested self-interest in undermining anything done to curb them.
But we’re adaptable too. If the 17th were repealed the Tea Party groups in the states would focus on their legislatures as well as on Congress.
And that would be very much a good thing anyway.
If 60 people elected to office by state-wide vote (AKA, “the Senate”) vote for something, what makes you think 33 state legislatures would vote against it?
Chris hints at one of the differences between repealing the 17th amendment and this new approach. Namely, the Senate votes once while the state legislatures would have at least 33 votes. So voting out something like the health care abomination could be obstructed for years through bureaucratic maneuver and the like in the Senate. But it’s far harder to prevent 33 or more legislatures from voting against particular laws. It’s worth noting that removing bad law is often surprisingly hard to do. This provides another avenue for doing so.
Second, minority parties such as the libertarians or the greens are far more likely to have state level representation. This would be a weak means for them to have representation in federal law.
Thomas Matula – you are correct about the anti-democratic (note small “d”) tendencies of the Founding Fathers, but your timeline is off. The Constitution was written two years before the French Revolution started.
Bilwick – okay, which 33 current state legislatures would vote to repeal health care? List them out, please, because I’d like to know.
Karl Hallowell – what, the national parties can’t pick up a phone and coordinate obstructions in multiple legislatures?
Karl Hallowell – what, the national parties can’t pick up a phone and coordinate obstructions in multiple legislatures?
Sure, they can. It’s not going to work as well. Another aspect of this is that state legislatures are far more likely to represent the will of the state itself than an elected senator.
Bilwick – okay, which 33 current state legislatures would vote to repeal health care? List them out, please, because I’d like to know.
Perhaps we ought to check in a couple of years. After all, the repeal not only could happen now, but also could happen in a few years.
ak4mc
[[[The states have Tea Party groups too.]]]
Yes, but first they must win the state elections, and a majority among the state legislators before they would be able to appoint Tea Party Senators, something likely to take a couple of election cycles. And this was the intent, an understanding by the Founding Fathers that anger based movements are not able to sustain themselves long enough to have that type of influence.
okay, which 33 current state legislatures would vote to repeal health care? List them out, please, because I’d like to know.
You could start with the twenty states that joined in the suit against the mandate. Next year, it probably wouldn’t be hard to pick up another thirteen. Likely the only ones that don’t want to repeal are the big blue states, like New York and California.
anger based movements are not able to sustain themselves long enough to have that type of influence.
Tea Parties are not an “anger-based movement.” They are a principles-based movement. It’s the Constitution, stupid.
anger based movements are not able to sustain themselves long enough to have that type of influence.
It’s Obama that is running around making comments about how he is being treated like a dog. But I guess that proves your point. Obama ran against Bush in 2008, eventhough Bush was never on the ballot. However, there was more BDS anger out there than little d anger for McCain. So Obama won, and now has approval ratings that make Carter look good. Candidates won’t even be seen in the same town as Obama when he comes out to fundraise. Yep, not much influence there, but still lots of anger. Too bad Obama can’t walk around all day with his birth certificate plastered to his forehead.
Meanwhile, the third most listened to talk show hosts can garner nearly a half million people to come party on the DC mall. They have a good time, clean up after themselves, and head home knowing they are about to vote in a better Congress.
If the Tea Party were solely “anger-based” that would matter.
To the extent there is anger there, it’s been building up for dozens of election cycles. Don’t expect it to dissipate overnight.
Thomas has a wooby blanket that he won’t give up… they’re just an angry mob. The reality is just too scary for him so he’s blind to it.
The wishes of the majority are being trampled on (and have been for decades… ballot initiative, no problem they have judges in their pocket.) They lie and smear decent candidates and thought they could lie and smear normal Amercans as well with no consequences. They wonder as they see the water at their feet on the beach is disappearing and can almost, but not quite, see the wave that’s coming this November.
RINOs, having no principles, think it’s insane not to triangulate to keep power. The left, having the wrong principles, take advantage of every move to the left to define a new normal and any move to the right is extreme and crackpot. The idea that any growth of government, no matter how recent, is cast in iron. You can fight over the growth of their budget, but to eliminate them is just crazy talk (everybody they know agrees.)
Rand,
[[[Tea Parties are not an “anger-based movement.” They are a principles-based movement. It’s the Constitution, stupid.]]]
Sure they are… So was the Ross Perot in the 1990’s, and all it did was give us two terms of President Clinton.
It is historically ignorant to compare the followers of the incoherent Ross Perot cult to the Tea Parties.
Ken,
[[[The wishes of the majority are being trampled on (and have been for decades… ]]]
Funny, I don’t think anyone who would call 1 in 5 a majority, but I guess to the Tea Party spin machine it is…
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20016526-503544.html
September 15, 2010 1:00 PM
Tea Party Supported by One in Five in New CBS News/NYT Poll
Rand,
[[[It is historically ignorant to compare the followers of the incoherent Ross Perot cult to the Tea Parties.]]]
Why? Because he lost?
Rand,
From the old Ross Perot website.
[[[This book is dedicated to the millions of volunteers who accomplished the seemingly impossible task of getting the petitions signed. You did it brilliantly.
You changed American politics in just five months.
You made it clear that the people, not the special interests, own this country.
Everyone in Washington now understands that the American people own this country, have reasserted their roles as owners, and want the country’s problems addressed and solved.
The creativity, ingenuity, and focused dedication to this task are unique in American politics.
The founders of our government must be looking down from heaven, smiling on all of you. ]]]
and
[[[For years I watched with concern as the national debt mounted and our competitive position declined. ]]]
So please tell me what is the difference between Ross Perot’s agenda to return America to her Constitution roots and the Tea Party’s talking points, other the the name on the box top, i.e. Sarah Palin versus Ross Perot.
Inquiring minds want to know…
Oops, forgot the link to Ross Perot’s old “throw the bums out” group.
http://www.uwsa.com/books/uws_0_Introduction.html
Ross Perot’s agenda to return America to her Constitution roots
There is nothing about the Constitution in anything you quoted.
The biggest difference, of course, is that the Tea Parties have no leader, which makes it hard for their enemies (like, apparently, you) to Alinskyize them.
To the Tories of the 18th Century–such as Lord Thomas Frank, Sir David Frum, and T. Coddington Van Vooheers I– the resistance to King George III was probably “anger-based.” And to a certain extent it was: at his most vitriolic, Tom Paine could make Glenn Beck look liked Ned Flanders, and the English Radical Whig authors of the Cato Letters (which helped fan the flames in the American colonies) would probably qualfiy by today’s “liberal” standards as “hate speech.” What the old Tories of yesteryear and today’s New Tories prefer to ignore are the principles behind the anger.
Rand,
[[[Ross Perot’s agenda to return America to her Constitution roots
There is nothing about the Constitution in anything you quoted.]]]
There is here, it was a key element of his movement…
http://www.uwsa.com/books/uws_2_Politics.html
[[[The first words of the Constitution are “We, the people.” We created the Constitution. We created Congress. It exists for us, not the other way around. We hire and pay for the bureaucracy. They all work for us.
Before we can hope to face up to our problems, we have to restore the intent and meaning of the Constitution we created. We cannot repair our economic engine, retool our economy to be competitive in a new age, and put ourselves on a solid footing for the future unless we take back control of our government that has been taken from us. ]]]
Sounds like the Tea Party line to me, something Sarah Palin would agree to. But then who would be against the Constitution? Its like being against Apple Pie and Motherhood. The thing is to move beyond the slogans to substance and that is where the Tea Party fails. All anger based rhetoric with no substance.
[[[The biggest difference, of course, is that the Tea Parties have no leader,]]]
So how do expect to solve the county’s problems when you “throw the bums out”? Leaderless mob don’t build things up, they just destroy them. There is a word for that – anarchy.
And Ayn Rand was right to link anarchy to Libertarians, who she hated more then Marxists. And if she was here today its easy to see what she would think of the leaderless Libertarian based Tea Party movement. From her article “The Moratorium on Brains,” 1971.
http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=education_campus_libertarians
[[[AR: All kinds of people today call themselves “libertarians,” especially something calling itself the New Right, which consists of hippies, except that they’re anarchists instead of collectivists. But of course, anarchists are collectivists. Capitalism is the one system that requires absolute objective law, yet they want to combine capitalism and anarchism. That is worse than anything the New Left has proposed. It’s a mockery of philosophy and ideology. They sling slogans and try to ride on two bandwagons. They want to be hippies, but don’t want to preach collectivism, because those jobs are already taken. But anarchism is a logical outgrowth of the anti-intellectual side of collectivism. I could deal with a Marxist with a greater chance of reaching some kind of understanding, and with much greater respect. The anarchist is the scum of the intellectual world of the left, which has given them up. So the right picks up another leftist discard. That’s the Libertarian movement.]]]
So I guess I am in good company in disapproving of the Tea Party. And yes, I do disapprove how its empty headed slogans will enable the Democrats to stay in power by destroying the Republican Party….
Yep, the only ones who love the Tea Party more then themselves is President Obama and friends since you just ensure they will be running things for a long while.
Perot may have talked about the Constitution, but never in any intelligent or intelligible way. The Tea Partiers are serious about limited government. Perot and his followers were never serious about anything, and he was more interested in running the government than how big it was or what its powers were.
…which makes it hard for their enemies (like, apparently, you) to Alinskyize them.
It doesn’t stop them from trying though. [ha!] But the tea party is on to them. …and it will be a long, long time before they ever begin to understand the tea party.
me: the majority are being trampled on
you: …Tea Party spin…
You are the only one spinning here. I implied that voters that win (by definition the majority) are being reversed by judges. We’ll both find out who has the majority this round in November.
I believe their is some commonality between Perot and the tea party, but as already pointed out, Perot was attempting to work from the top and the tea party is a ground game, much more powerful and difficult to stop. This ground game is mostly invisible which is what will make November such a shock to many. It’s not about a single election event.
Rand,
[[[Perot and his followers were never serious about anything,]]]
And yet they got his name on ballots in all 50 states and he received 19% of the popular vote. Gee, imagine what the Perot followers might have done if they were serious:-)
[[[he was more interested in running the government than how big it was]]]
Gee, your memory is short, or were you even interested in politics in the 1990’s? The entire reason for his running was the $4 trillion dollar national debt. Again from the Ross Perot play book on fixing the government shows his plan for his FIRST presidential budget.
http://www.uwsa.com/books/uws_3_Way.html
[[[Require the federal departments to submit budgets that cut 15 percent from their discretionary budgets in two steps. First, cut specific programs that are unnecessary or outdated to save 5 percent. Then, make an across-the-board cut of all remaining departments and programs of another 10 percent.]]]
So you think a 15% budget cut as a starting point is being in favor of big government?
And yes, it was all about fiscal responsibility, in case you have also forgotten that as well… Again from the Ross Perot play book.
[[[As a nation, we have to make some hard choices that involve setting our priorities. Elected officials back away from this like a dog backs away from an angry cat. They’re worried about getting scratched in the face by some angry special interest. Yet, every American has to make hard choices every day. Do I need a new car? Not really. Can I afford a week at the beach? No. Do the children need new clothes? Yes. Should I pay down my Visa account? I’d better. Can we afford a house? Let’s check the interest rates.
These are everyday questions, not life-shattering philosophical decisions. They shouldn’t be too hard. Yet, ask an elected official if he wants more money for either Head Start or public television. He’ll quickly calculate who gives him what and how it will look on the evening news, then he will answer he wants both. That’s an answer we can’t afford to receive anymore.
We need to lay out the choices and then give the officials no place to hide. The choices may be painful, but they must be plain and clear. Government is not a candy store in which every group can pick from any jar it wants. This is not free money. It’s your money, and more importantly, it’s your children’s money. Under our present system, our elected representatives can retire to Hawaii when the bad news comes. But where will your children be? What kind of education will your grandchildren receive? Where will their jobs come from?
It is unconscionable not to act now. My own experience with General Motors is a case in point. In the mid-eighties it had plenty of money and time to recreate itself as a company dedicated to excellence. The corporate bureaucracy, however, wouldn’t budge. Neither top management nor the board of directors would deal with the real problems. During the past year, GM lost almost $400 million a month. It is now in the process of firing employees, closing plants, permanently downsizing. It wouldn’t have happened if its owners, the shareholders, had demanded that the Board look into the future and make the difficult decisions early on. ]]]
Again it sounds like the Tea Party line to me.
Really, the only difference between the Tea Party and Ross Perot is Ross Perot actually had a plan while the leaderless Tea Party only has slogans and faith in the talking heads on Fox News…
But then many things have gone downhead since the 1990’s including the quality of political discourse.
Ken,
[[[the majority are being trampled on]]]
So 20% is a majority? Yea, right. In Nevada the Sharron Angle didn’t even get a majority of the Republicans voting in the primary. She got only 40%. She won because two other candidates split the vote.
In Delaware, only 30% of Republicans voted in the primary and she only got a bit over half of those.
http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/steve_chapman/2010/09/tea-party-tidal-wave.html
September 17, 2010
Tea party tidal wave?
[[[Out of 620,000 voters, only 30 percent are Republicans, the turnout was only 30 percent, and she got just over half of those — about 30,000 people, in a state with a population of over 850,000. It’s not so much a tidal wave as a tempest in a tea pot.]]]
So now 5% of the voters in the state are a majority? You really need to check you math.
Really, you do need to start watching something other then Fox News.
And yet they got his name on ballots in all 50 states and he received 19% of the popular vote.
I meant serious about policy, not about getting their cult leader elected.
So you think a 15% budget cut as a starting point is being in favor of big government?
It’s not about the dollars — it’s about the role of government. It’s about eliminating departments, not putting them on a diet.
Rand,
[[[So you think a 15% budget cut as a starting point is being in favor of big government?
It’s not about the dollars — it’s about the role of government. It’s about eliminating departments, not putting them on a diet.]]]
Yes, its about destruction, not construction, but then that is what angry mobs do.
No, it’s about eliminating destructive federal agencies, and restoring Constitutional government.
Addendum to my post above: I forgot to mention, among prominent 18th Century Tories, Sir Thomas Matula, who, in response to Thomas Paine and the Radical Whigs, penned the Royalist broadside, “It Will Hurt A Lot Less if You Peasants Stop Resisting Us.”