Has Washington completely abandoned any effort to stay within the parameters established by the U.S. Constitution?
Last week we learned that then Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke gave Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis an ultimatum: Go forward with BoA’s proposed merger with faltering Merrill Lynch or the government would fire BoA’s executives.
Excuse me, but under which article of the Constitution did the American people give any administration that power?
Similarly, is there any constitutional authority for Washington bailing out Chrysler and GM, then taking them over when just a bailout didn’t work, firing the executives and implementing its own hand-picked board and executives?
Is there any constitutional authority for gathering email addresses on those who might disagree with the administration, otherwise known as “fishy emails,” and using them for who knows what?
Where does the Constitution give Congress the authority to require everyone to have health insurance or pay a fine, or go to jail, if someone chooses not to do so?
And now that the Executive Pay Czar has set the pay limits for bailed-out financial institutions — where’s the constitutional authority for that? — we’re told that the Fed intends to introduce pay guidelines, without the caps, for all of the banks it regulates. So regulation is the prerequisite for compensation controls. Where does that power come from?
And remember, some of those financial institutions that took federal money and are getting their executive pay capped never wanted the money in the first place. The CEOs were called into a meeting and told that they had to take the money, or else.
The only question where the Democratic leadership raised the issue of constitutionality was when some Democrats speculated that cutting off ACORN’s federal funding might be unconstitutional. Now, it apparently wasn’t unconstitutional to give ACORN millions of taxpayer dollars, just to stop handing them out.
The Constitution stands at the center of American government and society. It envisions a government of limited, enumerated powers. If Congress and the administration can ignore those constraints with impunity, we are on the verge of a European-style socialism.
Today’s TaxByte was written by IPI resident scholar, Dr. Merrill Matthews.