It Could Be Worse

To say that the recently drafted "emergency supplemental appropriations bill" was an abomination would just barely give it the credit that it deserves. Still, it could have been worse. Democrats only added $24B to the price tag to cover their favorite socialist projects. I guess this is the new definition of “fiscal restraint” as promised by Princess Pelosi.

At a tree-killing 170+ pages, with nearly 100 of that dedicated to pork, you really have to wonder how the Democrats can be considered the environmental party. How difficult would it have been to authorize the additional funds for the specific purposes for which the President asked? It is ludicrous to argue that anything beyond page 69 has anything to do with fighting the terrorists. Pages 70-79 are full of unnecessary restrictions on the use of the funds appropriated that have the sole effect of preventing the US military from doing the job it exists to do. The remaining pages add nothing but waste.

For the moment, let us set aside the provisions directly related to fighting the bad guys and let us focus on all of the extraneous items Princess Pelosi has designated as “emergencies” some of which are just plain nonsense.

Take Section 6003, which changes the wording in a Federal law from "aid or assistance is made available under part B of title IV to children in foster care" to "child welfare services are made available under part B of title IV on the basis of being a child in foster care." That's a huge improvement. What possible argument can be advanced to include a minor, semantic change to a Federal law in an appropriations bill? What possible purpose can such a semantic change serve? To any rational human, there is absolutely no difference in meaning in either phrase. Yet this was so important, that it had to make it into the “emergency” category. Somehow, I think there are more pressing issues with which Congress ought to be dealing.

Then there is Title II, Chapter 6 which is a direct violation of the 9th and 10th Amendments to the Constitution. Congress has no business dictating local education requirements or administrative structure to a State. In the first place, there is no place in the Constitution where there exists either a right to public education, nor a power for Congress to regulate either the non-existent right or the educational system itself. Thus, we are squarely within the realm of the 9th and 10th Amendments.

All public education in the US is based on a law passed way back in the 1640s in the (then) colony of Massachusetts. That law mandated that every town above 50 families hire a schoolmaster, and every town above 100 families allocate some amount of public land to build an elementary school. Although required to include a basic curriculum of reading and the catechism, towns were free to include any other course of instruction that the local officials felt beneficial to society, and were also free to judge of the qualifications of the teacher(s) hired.

Nowhere in this law did the local authorities give up the right to exercise absolute, sovereign control over the local school. Since every public school law in American owes its existence to this first law, and further since the Constitution is silent on the issue of public education in America, Congress cannot dictate any restrictions or regulations on the organization of the administrative elements of a school.

Irrespective of this, again we must ask ourselves what possible “emergency,” let alone one related to fighting terrorists, could be used to justify the inclusion of purely administrative regulations on the public school system of the Pacific Northwest in this supplemental.

And then we come to the increase in minimum wage, or as Princess Pelosi styles it “The Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007.” What better way to slow an expanding economy and reverse a declining unemployment rate. Of course, this may be exactly what the Democrats are after. Since the current President unfairly gets credit or blame for the state of the economy, why not hurt it just in time for the primaries.

Congressional action in this area is just misguided. It is easy to mandate wages, but Congress cannot regulate production. Mandating a minimum wage increase will not, indeed cannot, motivate a worker to produce more. Anyone who is still earning minimum wage after 6 months on the job is not worth the salary he is being paid to begin with, but now Congress wants to tell him “here's a raise just for breathing. You don't need to do any additional work. Just show up and we will force your boss to pay you more every 6 months for the next 2 years.” How is that boss going to offset his increased labor cost? The answer is either by raising prices or firing workers. That is an inescapable reality of a mandated minimum wage.

The free market is a remarkable thing. It lets people decide if they are willing to work for a certain remuneration. If there are not enough workers at a given wage, then rates rise. If there are too many workers, rates fall. The fact that unemployment has been declining since 2004 despite there having been no increase in the minimum wage certainly belies the belief that Congress needs to step in.

As for all of the farm subsidies, I'm only going to say that people need to take responsibility for their own lives. Congress already pays too many farmers too much money not to grow certain crops. These subsidies artificially keep the prices of certain goods high. If you are going to build your dairy farm in a flood plain, don't come crying to the taxpayer when your cows drown. If you want sympathy from me, give back your subsidy and produce as much milk as you can.

We now turn our attention to the purpose for which the bill was enacted, namely, to provide “emergency” funding for the military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. More specifically, I want to address two instances where Congress is overstepping their powers, which are contained in Sections 1904 and 1905.

Section 1904 provides a laundry list of conditions that must be met in order to expend the monies allocated in the previous sections. At its most basic, Section 1904 provides three artificial deadlines for an unconditional withdrawal of American forces.

If 1400 years of violence cannot be resolved by 1 July 2007, the US must pull out of Iraq by 31 Dec 2007. If, by some miracle, 1400 years of violence is brought to a close by 1 Oct 2007, we must pull out by 1 Oct 2008. If you are a terrorist, you really don't need to do anything in order to ensure the US gets out of your way. Congress has taken away the Constitutional prerogative of the President to wage war as he sees fit.

What a great plan Princess Pelosi has concocted. If the restrictive conditions cannot be met (and as drafted, it does not appear that they can be), Pelosi can claim that we can never achieve success and that Bush is needlessly killing Americans. In this case, not much will change from her current stump speech. It will, however, embolden the enemy. If, despite her best efforts to humiliate America, we succeed, she can claim that her "support" was instrumental in resolving 1400 years of violence, just in time for the 2008 Presidential election. In either case, she has decided to trade partisan politics for national security, all in the hopes of improving her party's chances come next year. This is disgraceful.

To me, however, an even worse affront is Section 1905 which creates a Cabinet level official called the Coordinator for Iraq Assistance. Princess Pelosi believes that Congress has the power to dictate the makeup of the Executive Branch. In addition to usurping the role of Commander-in-Chief, Pelosi has decided that the former “co-equal” Legislative branch of the Federal Government is now superior to the Executive. This is worse than disgraceful. This is nothing more than a petulant child having a temper tantrum.

It's not rocket science. There are no degrees of support for the troops. You either give the US military unconditional material and moral support, or you give the enemy hope. There is no middle ground when the survival of the democratic way of life is the prize. And bills to enable that survival should not be burdened with socialist programs. Note to Princess Pelosi: when your enemy says “I hate you and I am going to kill you,” believe him.