Topic: General

The “I-Word” Isn’t a Curse

By
Gene Healy

I’m not convinced that any of the recent scandals roiling the Obama administration constitutes an “impeachable moment,” but, as I argue today in the Washington Examiner, there’s something wrong with a (post-?) constitutional culture where opinion leaders treat the very invocation of the “I-word” as akin to screaming obscenities in a church.

Impeachment talk is “industrial strength insane” says the Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky; “serial madness,” per Richard Brodsky at the Huffington Post; Rachel Maddow compares it to incontinence; and for the Atlantic’s Philip Bump, it’s like the inevitable idiot in the comments thread invoking Hitler. True, Salon’s recent listicle of 14 “crazy times” right-wingers have called for Obama’s impeachment consists mostly of frivolous, even loopy proposals; but it also includes Bruce Fein’s 2011 call to impeach Obama “over the military intervention in Libya, alleging that it violated the Constitution’s mandate that only Congress can declare war.” Crazy talk!

Also in the Atlantic, “communitarian” godfather Amitai Etzioni moans “I see no way to protect the president and all of us from the second term curse” in a piece titled, “Why It Should Be Harder to Impeach a President.“ 

“Harder”? A “reality-based” communitarian Etzioni ain’t. In our 224-year constitutional history, we’ve only managed the feat twice—three times if you count Nixon, who resigned before the full House got to vote. How much harder can it get?

And when did calling for—even musing about—a president’s impeachment become a form of secular blasphemy—the American version of Lèse-majesté? 

Given what the mid-’70s Church Committee hearings revealed about presidential abuses of power, at a minimum, all three presidents of the ’60s deserved to be impeached and removed from office. Of the seven presidents since Nixon, I can make a case for impeaching at least four.

As Ben Franklin put it at the Philadelphia Convention, the impeachment power is “the best way… to provide in the Constitution for the regular punishment of the Executive when his misconduct should deserve it, and for his honorable acquittal when he should be unjustly accused.”

Our problem isn’t too many impeachments, but too few.   

Topics: 
General, Government and Politics

Never Mind the IRS, You’d Better Be Nice to Kathleen Sebelius

By
Michael F. Cannon

ObamaCare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board is everything its critics say and worse. It is a democracy-skirting, Congress-blocking, powers-unseparating, law-entrenching, tax-hiking, fund-appropriating, price-controlling, health-care-rationing, death-paneling, technocrat-thrilling, authoritarian, anti-constitutional super-legislature. Its very existence is testament to government incompetence. It stands as a milestone on the road to serfdom.

The Congressional Research Service has now confirmed what HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius pretends not to know but what Diane Cohen and I explained here: 

[I]f President Obama fails to appoint any IPAB members, all these powers fall to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.

That’s an awful lot of power to give any one person, particularly someone who has shown as much willingness to abuse her power as Sebelius has. 

I would also like the Congressional Research Service to address a feature of IPAB that Cohen and I first exposed. According to the statute, we write: 

Congress may only stop IPAB from issuing self-executing legislative proposals if three-fifths of all sworn members of Congress pass a joint resolution to dissolve IPAB during a short window in 2017. Even then, IPAB’s enabling statute dictates the terms of its own repeal, and it continues to grant IPAB the power to legislate for six months after Congress repeals it. If Congress fails to repeal IPAB through this process, then Congress can never again alter or reject IPAB’s proposals.

You read that right. For more, read our paper, especially Box 3 on page 9.

CRS, I’m interested to know what you think. Take a close look at the law and get back to me.

Topics: 
General, Government and Politics, Health Care

Government… IS… PEOPLE!

By
Andrew J. Coulson

The Christian Science Monitor suggests this lesson be drawn from the Obama administration’s recent scandalpalooza:

Congress should use this IRS scandal to beef up civics education for federal workers as well as for public school students. Lesson No. 1: Government cannot restrict or discriminate against political causes that it disagrees with.

I think the scandals teach a different lesson: Government will misbehave because it, like Soylent Green, is made from people. Fallible, foible-ridden people. Therefore, government’s unique powers must be strictly limited to avoid miscarriages of justice.

One of these days, someone should build a nation on that lesson….

Topics: 
Education and Child Policy, General, Government and Politics

Is Kathleen Sebelius Barack Obama’s Oliver North?

By
Michael F. Cannon

I blogged earlier about how HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is unethically, and possibly illegally, shaking down industries she regulates to get them to fund ObamaCare’s implementation.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), the ranking member of the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, says this is “arguably an even bigger issue [than] Iran-Contra,” and ably defends his position against the Washington Post’s Sarah Kliff.

Excerpts from Alexander’s comments:

[I]n Iran-Contra, you had $30 million that was spent by Oliver North through private organizations for a purpose congress refused to authorize, in support of the rebels. Here, you’re wanting to spend millions more in support of private organizations to do something that Congress has refused…

The cause in the first case was the cause of rebels in Nicaragua.  And the cause here is to implement Obamacare. Congress has refused to appropriate more for that cause. The administration seems to be making a decision that’s called augmenting an appropriation. Its a constitutional offense that’s the issue…

If you read the report of the Iran-Contra select committee, it said that the executive cannot make an end run around Congress by raising money privately and spending it. That seems to be happening here. That was essentially the problem. There the money came from a different place, but if you look at my statement [the Iran-Contra report said] “a president whose appropriation requests were rejected by Congress could raise money from private sources or third countries for armies, military actions, arms systems, and even domestic programs.” [Emphasis added.] It’s the same kind of offense to the Constitution. It’s the same kind of thumbing your nose at Article 1…

If that’s what they’re saying…that Congress has refused to appropriate the money, then you can’t do it. That’s a curb on the executive.

Alexander has sent a letter to Sebelius requesting information about her extracurricular fundraising activities.

Topics: 
General, Government and Politics, Health Care, Law and Civil Liberties, Political Philosophy, Tax and Budget Policy

Jon Stewart on the IRS Targeting the Tea Party

By
Michael F. Cannon

Last night, the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart said of reports the IRS singled out tea-party groups for extra scrutiny, “This seems like a genuine scandal.” Then he turned on the funny: “In their defense, there is a good reason why people using the IRS to crack down on political enemies would not want Americans educated about the Constitution.” Best line: “Wait a minute. I didn’t realize apologies were sufficient in IRS-related issues.” Video below. (Beware: some racy language.)

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Barack Trek: Into Darkness
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Indecision Political Humor The Daily Show on Facebook

In the very next segment, Stewart portrays HHS’s release of (wildly divergent) hospital chargemaster prices as an example of government doing things right, gives kudos to HHS, and laments that government doesn’t do more of that sort of thing. There’s only one problem. Outrageously high and divergent hospital prices are due to government policies that encourage patients to pay for more items through health insurance and that thereby destroy the cash market and any hope of competitive and transparent prices. So that episode is also an example of government failure. 

The show’s Moment of Zen was this priceless clip of former IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman denying that his agency was on a tea-party witch hunt:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Moment of Zen - The Nonpartisan IRS
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Indecision Political Humor The Daily Show on Facebook
Topics: 
General, Government and Politics, Health Care

Targeting the Tea Party Isn’t the IRS’s Most Egregious Abuse of Power

By
Michael F. Cannon

Not by a longshot. 

As Jonathan Adler and I explain in this law journal article, and as I explain somewhat more accessibly in this Cato paper, the IRS is trying to tax, borrow, and spend $800 billion in clear violation of federal law and congressional intent.

Yes, you read that right: $800 billion.

Topics: 
General, Government and Politics, Health Care

Benghazi? Let’s Talk ObamaCare!

By
Michael F. Cannon

Things must be going poorly for President Obama if he wants to change the subject to ObamaCare.

Today, most of Washington is questioning whether the U.S. government was derelict in its handling of the September 11, 2012 assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in which heavily armed assailants injured 10 Americans and murdered four, including the U.S. ambassador. However, over at the White House, President Obama is launching a PR defensive of ObamaCare, at which he will basically ask mothers to nag their kids to waste their money on ObamaCare’s over-priced health insurance. 

The contrast brought to mind this passage from University of Chicago law professor M. Todd Henderson’s article in the latest issue of Cato’s Regulation magazine:

When the president sought to make birth control a mandatory part of all insurance plans, this was a political decision regarding health care. This is not to disparage political decisions in general, but merely to point out this feature of them, that they bind those who disagree…

A relatively simple, low cost, and widely accepted practice like birth control became a firestorm when individual choice and local variation were overridden on the grounds of improving social welfare. The airwaves and print media were filled with analysis, name-calling, and hyperbole. Kitchen tables, like my own, were filled with debate about how we should vote about the financing of other peoples’ use of birth control… Just imagine what the debates will look like when the stakes become—as they inevitably will—whether expensive cancer therapies, surgeries, or other procedures will be paid for, or whether more controversial matters like abortion, gender reassignment, and the like will be paid for…

When … matters are decided by experts or politicians, mistakes can be made and made in ways that necessarily are coercive. This coercion does not admit easy exit, as one can exit an insurance policy, especially if done at the federal level. The central lesson is that centralized power over complex matters risks making larger mistakes than decentralized power, admits less innovation, provides for less tailored satisfaction of preferences, and generates greater political conflict. Ironically, those risks may undermine the important work that government must do to improve the world we live in.

Every minute the government spends trying (and failing) to improve people’s health is a minute it cannot spend making them safer.

Read the rest of Henderson’s article, “Voice and Exit in Health Care Policy.”

Topics: 
General, Government and Politics, Health Care

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