One Simple Rule: Only Congress May Make Laws

Do you like simple rules? Simple rules tell you precisely what you must do in order to be in compliance with them. Wouldn't life be much less stressful if the tax code were simple? Wouldn't life be easier if you didn't have to spend days determining whether you are entitled to this exemption or that deduction? Wouldn't it be easier if you didn't have to choose to either pull your hair out and fill out the IRS forms, hoping that you don't make a costly mistake or instead pay hard earned money to pay a tax preparer when there are so many other uses to which you would rather put your money? The federal government has simple rules in the form of the Constitution. Yet somehow these geniuses cannot follow easy and unambiguous rules.

Take the Congress, for example. Article I, Section 1 of the United States Constitution states "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives." Pretty simple. A team of John Marshall, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Earl Warren, Louis Brandeis, William Brennan, and Charles Evan Hughes are certainly not required to parse out the meaning of this clause. We all learned it in our civics classes. The Congress makes the laws, the President enforces the laws, and the Supreme Court interprets the laws. Simple as pie. But not so fast! The Constitution says that all legislative powers, the power to make federal law, are vested in Congress. But does Congress really pass all laws? Does it even pass a fraction of the federal laws under which we live?

Consider 2009. In that year Congress passed a grand total of 216 laws. All in all, it is probably good that they only managed to pass that many given that it seems that with every new law, we say goodbye to more of our freedoms. After all, how could our legislators be expected to actually do their jobs when they are so busy preening for the camera on CSPAN, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC and raising money for their next misleading re-election campaign? But fear not, there were still countless new rules and regulations for us to follow passed in 2009. It is just that Congress did not have anything to do with them. In 2009, The Federal Register contained over 69,000 pages. The Federal Register is "the official daily publication for rules, proposed rules, and notices of Federal agencies and organizations, as well as executive orders and other presidential documents." Wait a second. Executive orders? Where in the Constitution does the President get legislative powers at all? The answer is nowhere. The presidents only powers are to be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy and of the state militias when they are called into actual service, to grant reprieves and pardons for federal offenses, to make treaties provided that two thirds of the Senate approves, and to nominate and appoint, with advice and consent of the Senate, "Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States." That is all. The President does not have the right in the Constitution to make any laws.

But it is far worse than that. The Federal Register also contains rules and regulations that are made by the faceless and unaccountable employees of over 319 federal agencies. A veritable alphabet soup of administrative agencies that includes bureaucratic bodies such as the Department of Education, the Department of Defense, the Department of Commerce, and the Department of Labor as well as dozens of smaller bureaucratic bodies underneath each major administrative agency. The truth is that these unelected bodies make the vast majority of what functions as federal law. Where in the Constitution are these administrative agencies named and explained? Again, nowhere.

Statist shills will certainly argue that in the complex modern world such agencies are required in order to govern. Fine. If so, then it is straight forward. Simply amend the Constitution to make legal room for these bureaucratic behemoths. Article V of the Constitution is completely devoted to those procedures. The Constitution has been amended seventeen times since the Bill of Rights were ratified in 1791. So, while it is not an easy thing to do, it is manageable.

If it is not bad enough that we are virtually enslaved by these unelected bureaucrats, it is downright appalling how much we pay for the privilege. The entire situation is like how during the Spanish Inquisition, the prisoners in the dungeons had to pay their jailers for the chains which bound them. The following are the costs in the 2009 federal budget for our administrative inquisitors.

$515.4 billion -- United States Department of Defense $70.4 billion -- United States Department of Health and Human Services $68.2 billion -- United States Department of Transportation

$45.4 billion -- United States Department of Education

$44.8 billion -- United States Department of Veteran Affairs

$38.5 billion -- United States Department of Housing and Urban Development

$37.6 billion -- United States Department of Homeland Security

$20.5 billion -- United States Department of Energy

$20.8 billion -- United States Department of Agriculture

$20.3 billion -- United States Department of Justice

$17.6 billion -- National Aeronautics and Space Administration

$12.5 billion -- United States Department of the Treasury

$10.6 billion -- United States Department of the Interior

$10.5 billion -- United States Department of Labor

$8.4 billion -- Social Security Administration

$7.1 billion -- United States Environmental Protection Agency

$6.9 billion -- National Science Foundation

$4.7 billion -- United States Army Corps of Engineers

$0.7 billion -- Small Business Administration

$7.2 billion -- Other agencies

For 2009, these budgets totaled a whopping $968.1 billion. For a nation that is over $13 trillion in debt and pays over $250 billion a year just on interest on this debt, that seems a hefty price to pay for something that is patently unconstitutional. Our genius leaders' inability to read and follow such a simple rule will ultimately be a major cause when the United States goes the way of Greece or more likely the way of the Weimar Republic or even the Roman Empire.

Again, the statist shill will whine about how complex our modern civilization is compared with the agrarian society of the time of the Founders. But remember that the Congressmen at the time of the Founders did their legislating part time in between their actual jobs. They did not have jet airplanes to travel to D.C. They did not have telephones and smartphones and the internet. The statist shill will again whine that the heads of these agencies are experts in these complex fields and that members of Congress cannot be expected to know all of this. Guess again! The heads of these agencies are typically just more lawyers and BFF's of presidents who could not find work in the private sector or who are looking to eventually parlay their unconstitutional positions into six or seven figure jobs in the private sector as lobbyists. And again, if this unconstitutional bureaucratic alphabet soup is so essential, then amend the Constitution! However, it seems that simply enlarging state and federal courts would accomplish nearly every important thing that these nameless and faceless bureaucrats do, and the private sector would accomplish the rest. The vast majority of these administrative rules and regulations punish all people or all businesses willy nilly rather than punishing those who commit torts as dealing with it in the courts would do. These administrative agencies are basically bought and paid for by large corporate interests and make expensive rules which these corporations can afford, but which stifle competition from smaller businesses, keeping innovation and entrepreneurship out of the market.

How did things spiral so out of control? How did not being able to read and understand a simple rule lead to inquisitional chains for which Americans must pay nearly $1 trillion each year with no end in sight? The answer is the concept of Congressional "intelligible principle" by which the Supreme Court has allowed it to delegate its legislative powers in violation of Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution. In 1928 in JW Hampton Jr. Co. v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that a delegation of Congressional authority to the president of the power to raise or lower duties imposed by the Tariff Act of 1922 was constitutional. The Court stated that such delegations of power by the Congress were permissible as long as Congress "shall lay down by legislative act an intelligible principle to which the person or body authorized ... is directed to conform." As with all unconstitutional seeds, this one grew into an immense and twisted tree. Once an unconstitutional Pandora's Box is opened, our genius leaders soon wreak more and more havoc on our rights and our pocketbooks. The question of what exactly constitutes "an intelligible principle" is the sort of question that can kill forests of trees and fill countless law review journals. How vague is too vague? But the bottom line is that Congress simply cannot delegate its authority. The job of the Congress is to make laws and not make legislators. What part of "all legislative Powers" do the Congress and Supreme Court not understand? Do we need to simplify it even more for them? Do we need crayon drawings or something?

The statist shill will again whine (I almost miss old school statists like Hitler and Stalin -- at least those bastards roared instead of whining) that by analogy it is akin to delegating duties under contract law. However, delegation of the duties of a contract is not permitted under contract law where the party to the contract who has the duty to perform has a special skill or reputation. I would say that actually having been elected by voters in the given states or districts is having a special reputation. And our legislators seem to think that they are especially skilled, so once for the sake of argument, let us agree with them.

Congressional delegation of legislative authority is patently unconstitutional. The Congress should spend less time raising money for re-election and less time accepting bribes (er, I mean corporate campaign contributions) and more time doing their jobs instead of passing the buck. The moral cover that it gives them when some alphabet soup agency passes a rule instead of them biting the bullet and doing it is unacceptable. At most, administrative agencies should become lean, mean, and cheap advisory boards for the Congress. But really, they ought to go the way of the dodo bird.