Hoover Institution - Policy Review - The Unconstitutional Congress

Hoover Institution - Policy Review - The Unconstitutional Congress: "States government were tightly packed into 12 boxes, and then transported the 150 miles to Washington on a horse and buggy. That was truly an era of lean and efficient government.

In the early years of the Republic, government bore no resemblance to the colossal empire it has evolved into today. In 1800, the federal government employed 3,000 people and had a budget of less than $1 million ($100 million in today's dollars). That's a far cry from today's federal budget of $1.6 trillion and workforce of 3 million.

Since its frugal beginnings, the U.S. federal government has come to subsidize everything from research into Belgian endives to maple-syrup production to the advertising of McDonald's french fries in Europe and Japan. In a recent moment of high drama before the Supreme Court, during oral arguments involving the application of the interstate-commerce clause of the Constitution, a bewildered Justice Antonin Scalia pressed the solicitor general to name a single activity or program that our modern-day Congress might undertake that would fall outside of the bounds of the Constitution. The stunned Clinton appointee could not think of one.

To win the epic battle over the budget that is now looming on Capitol Hill, this is precisely the type of question that fiscal conservatives need to start asking. It is instructive that during the entire debate over the controversial 1994 Crime Bill, not a single Republican rose up on the House or Senate floor and attacked the $10 billion in social spending on the grounds, not that it was wasteful, but that most, if not all, of it is simply not the proper responsibility of the federal government. Conservatives should have been asking the question: Where is the authority under the Constitution for Congress to spend money on midnight basketball, modern-dance classes, self-esteem training, and the construction of swimming pools?

In other words, fiscal conservatives need to go beyond making the case that government wastes money--which it surely does--and start making the case that most federal spending today is illegitimate because it lies outside Congress's spending powers under the Constitution.

The idea is not radical, nor is the strategy futile. For the first 150 years of this nation's history, proponents of limited government in Congress and the White House routinely argued--with great success--a philosophical case against the creation and expansion of federal social-welfare programs.

There are critical lessons here for Newt Gingrich and his allies in their crusade to radically downsize government and topple the 'old world order' in Washington."