CONSTITUTIONAL MINUTE #42

You have been reading for awhile now. Let’s see how much has soaked in.

Below is wording on actual proposed amendments. Test yourself. Answers follow each “amendment,” but try before looking.

1. We are told the purpose of Section 1 of this amendment is to “limit the federal bureaucracy.”What’s wrong with it?

“All federal departments and agencies shall expire if said departments and agencies are not individually reauthorized in stand-alone reauthorization bills every three years by a majority vote of the House of Representatives and the Senate.”

Answer: As long as Congress periodically “reauthorizes” the unconstitutional  agencies – they remain, don’t they? How does that “limit the federal bureaucracy?”

2. George Washington’s cabinet had four members: Secretary of State, Secretary of War, Secretary of the Treasury, and Attorney General. Those functions are authorized by our Constitution. But today there are numerous agencies in the Executive Branch of the federal government.

Where is the constitutional authority? What Article, Section, and Clause authorizes the Departments of Agriculture, Education, Energy, Labor, Transportation, HHS, HUD, DHS, EPA, SBA, etc., etc., etc.? 

Answer: There is no constitutional authority! Accordingly, all these agencies are unconstitutional as outside the scope of the powers delegated in our Constitution.

Well then, a person who wanted to “limit the federal bureaucracy” would demand that these agencies be closed, and their functions returned to the States and The People, right? 

But the author (Levin) doesn’t do this. Section 1 of his amendment legalizes all these agencies.

Source of amendment: “The Liberty Amendments” by Mark Levin (Pg. 99,100).