Obama Care Vs The Constitution (2)
The larger lesson in the Health Care Debate is that The Constitution no longer protects us from oppressive government intervention in our lives because the President, the Congress and the Supreme Court simply disregard the Constitution. Today, the only effective barriers that may block the ObamaCare juggernaut are lobbyists, representing those reviled “special interests.”
Politicians bash lobbyists who “buy access” for their clients. What those politicians don’t reveal is that they have enticed companies, unions and thousands of other organizations to hire lobbyists by growing government’s power and wealth far beyond what is permitted by the Constitution. For those with the bucks to invest in lobbyists, enormous profits are there for the taking by harnessing the continuous expansion of federal power.
The Constitution limits the power and authority of the federal government to a few authorized functions, called enumerated powers, found in Article I, Section 8. If the government still obeyed Article I, Section 8 there would be few lobbyists.
Unfortunately the government has assumed myriad powers not included on the enumerated list. Mostly in violation of the Constitution, Congress has enacted thousands of laws to regulate state and local government functions and the private sector. Scores of regulatory agencies write and enforce millions of regulations based on those laws.
The Constitution does not authorize these vast powers and therefore provides no means for Congress to understand the activities it seeks to regulate or to predict the undesirable side-effects of proposed laws and regulations. Lobbyists have thus become the extra-Constitutional source of information enabling Congress to presume to oversee the rest of us.
Lobbyists represent the stakeholder groups that will be impacted by federal intervention. Almost all of us are represented by lobbyists, even if we don’t know it. They represent the industry groups we work for, the unions and associations we belong to, and our political and social views.
President Obama has set in motion an unpredictable, chaotic process in Congress that may result in sweeping new federal intervention in health care. Hordes of lobbyists representing all the varied stakeholder groups have invaded the Capitol to try and shape that legislation in a way most profitable for their clients. No matter how it turns out, even if Congress changes nothing, some lobbyists and stakeholders will have won and others will have lost. As always, the losers will allege “corruption” by lobbyists.
The only way to prevent lobbyists from “buying access” is to stop Congress from violating the Constitution by expanding government power over the states and the private sector. Until that happens, Lobbyists are, unfortunately, our last line of defense against ruinous political interference in our businesses and personal lives.
