By
ROBERT HARKINS
The Welfare State is a beast the drafters of the Constitution intended to cage in a Constitution and Bill of Rights. They should also have thrown away the key. For the beast freed by the bipartisanship of avaricious Democrats and Republicans has become so feral and voracious it is now nearly beyond the control of either party. Indeed, under Presidents Bush and O’Bama the Welfare State is fast becoming the only relevant constituency. However, windy their bombast, or florid their speechifying cheeks, and however loudly they praise democracy and limited government Republicans and Democrats increasingly serve one master, a beast they have nurtured to virtual omnipotence: the Welfare State.
President O’Bama has broken nearly every promise made in his campaign to capture the presidency. However, his most damaging breach of faith lies in the overt misrepresentation of his character and intention. The President proclaimed himself a moderate, a post partisan candidate who detested deficits, and indeed, a new kind of politician who would quiet Americans’ discontent and anxiety over ever expanding deficits.
Like other Democrats, Sheumer, Reed, Feinstein, Dobbs and Clinton, President O’Bama, during the presidency of President Bush, branded with fiery rhetoric fascist Republican attempts to use the “Nuclear Option” to pass legislation. Together, Democrats, bemoaned in lurid, purple prose, the Republican’s imminent destruction of democracy and constitutional government. Vice President Biden, in caesarian posture, implied, in a voice heavy with gravitas, that Democrats once returned to power would not think to stoop so low as to use the nuclear option to destroy the legitimacy of American government.
Well, where are these Democrat guardians of liberty now? Where is their patriotic outrage at the demise of constitutional government? Whatever has happened to their abhorrence of the nuclear option? Where are the Democrats willing to condemn as they condemned President Bush, this time for the imposition of a health care bill upon a majority of Americans who protest its nuclear passage and who are dead set against it?
Quite suddenly, a procedure President O’Bama and all Democrats condemned as execrable during the Bush years, has become a legitimate means to avoid a majority vote. President O’bama, in a now too familiar rhetorical slight of hand, refers to the nuclear option as an “up or down vote.” Which, of course it is not. Perhaps, President O’Bama’s greatest failure as President, is to deepen the viral hypocrisy that characterizes the conduct of too many Democrats and Republicans alike—a hypocrisy so arrogant that Democrats now in power will blithely engage the nuclear option to pass a health care bill they know the majority of Americans abhor—a nuclear option, Democrats, including the President, previously condemned as the instrument of would be despots.
There is, however, great news. A Constitutional crisis is upon us, and none too soon. Thirty-five states, including Colorado, are in the process of passing legislation to defy the Democrats’ plan to force the health care bill upon a defiant American people. The statutes when passed will give the state citizen the right to refuse payment of government imposed mandates for failure to purchase insurance and to opt out of the Democrats’ health care plan. If the bills pass, the country will then face a constitutional crisis, a showdown between the power of the American people and their states and the expanding power of a voracious central government.
The States and the people have the better argument. The American people and not the Welfare State, are sovereign. The Constitution expressly limits the central government to certain “enumerated powers.” The drafters reserved all other powers to the States and the people.
Amendment IX.
The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others, retained by the people.
Amendment X.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
On the face of it, it would seem to make no sense that President O'Bama would defy the will of the people and force this health care bill into law against their will. After all, the November elections will soon be upon us, and those Blue Dogs, so called, who pretend the embracement of conservative principles, that is, those who have not resigned “to spend more time with their families” are now hiding under their desks. They know, as do most Americans, that Democrat assertions that the bill will lower the cost of health care as it reduces the deficit are outright and outrageous falsehoods. Democrats seeking to pass the bill know for a fact that the bill will vastly increase the deficit. In order to suppress that truth, the President and Congressional Democrats have engaged in gimmickry so dishonest, it has bred a well-justified contempt for the President and his Congress.
So why then this apparent act of political suicide? The conservative writer George Will, in a speech to CPAC, explained that presently, over 50% of the American population pay 0-3% of their income in taxes. This group is also the greatest consumer of welfare benefits: free medical care, food stamps, tax rebates, housing, and education all of which exponentially exceed the sum they pay in taxes. Should the proposed social welfare programs President O'bama has proposed, including health care, actually pass, the percentage of Americans paying three percent or less of gross income in taxes will increase to 60% of the American population. Consequently, a 60% voting majority will have a vested interest in the welfare state, its preservation and expansion. They will not vote for anyone who would try to cut back their benefits. They will be unmoved by the usual and long since worn out Republican eulogies to the ideal of “limited government.”
If the Democrats transform 60% of the electorate into a welfare class it will not matter that they lose an election cycle. The Republicans will be powerless to change the status quo. A 60% majority will not vote for a Republican who promises to reign in the welfare state or to lower taxes. Add to the 60%, an expanding federal bureaucracy predominantly Democrat, the vote of illegal aliens, and a permanent one-party welfare state becomes a virtual certainty.
The tragedy is that both parties, Republicans and Democrats, have let loose the beast that is the welfare state from the cage that is its Constitution. It will be the work of this and future generations to chain it, to force it back into the cage, to lock it up forever, and this time throw away the key.
Well, the parties have let loose the beast. But what of the American people and their States? They “Cry Havoc, let loose the dogs of war!” It’s enough to make you proud.
