With pressure mounting on President Obama and his allies in Congress to reduce the profane spending of the federal government, the budget of the Department of Defense is once again the target of another inept democrat administration. Like President Jimmy Carter before him, Mr Obama views the Defense budget with envious eyes. Unlike Carter before him, however, Mr Obama presides over a military fully engaged in two live wars and several percolating hot spots.
Mr Carter did not have to deal with active wars (only the Cold War with the Soviet Union) during his administration’s efforts to gut the Pentagon, resulting in the “hollow force” of the late 1970’s, but Mr Obama does. He has troops engaged in combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as smaller scale efforts such as the NATO effort to oust Libyan strongman Muammar Khadafi, and ongoing effort to destroy Al Qaida in Yemen. Still, Mr Obama feels he can find nearly $400 billion is savings from the Department of Defense, nearly half of the total bill for the military in 2011 of $861 billion.
It is curious that Mr Obama and his congressional toadies seek to cut the budget for national defense nearly in half, while any suggestion that the government limit spending on many of the less significant areas of federal spending is met with hysterical wailing about republican cruelty to children and the elderly. Oversight of the national defense effort is one of the tasks and powers specifically granted to the Congress and the President by the U.S. Constitution.
Article I, Section 8 of the document empowers the Congress to “declare war” and to “provide for the common defense.” Congress also has the power to punish piracies on the high seas; raise and support armies; and to provide and maintain a navy. Article II, Section 2 identifies the president as the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, and the Militia of the several states when called into actual service.” These are all legitimate activities for which the Congress can appropriate funds, and on which the President can spend those funds.
But the U.S. Constitution does not say one word about the power of the government to spend a dime on health care. The document does not confer any power on the government to mandate mileage standards for automobiles, nor does it empower the federal government to bail out failing businesses, no matter what their size may be. The Constitution does not enumerate any power of the government to participate, let alone control education, or labor, or the production of energy. And yet, cabinet level departments exist for each activity.
To be sure, the Department of Defense could probably do well to reduce some of the waste in its huge budget. But before Mr Obama and his allies in the democrat congress and the derelict media repeat the folly of the Carter years, perhaps they should cast their eyes in the direction of government activities that the government has no authority to conduct in the first place.
How can we possibly identify activities that are not authorized by the Constitution? Simple, read the 10th Amendment to the document. It says, “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.” While that simple text should require no definition, it clearly means that if the activity cannot be found enumerated in the Constitution of any of its 27 ratified amendments, the federal government has no authority to be conducting that activity.
After we eliminate all the money the federal government wastes on unauthorized activities, we will have solved the government’s spending problem and we can get on with defending the nation. But we will also have removed the last viable method for democrat politicians to buy votes with the tax revenues of their fellow citizens. And that is why it will never happen.
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