Budgets and Constitutionally Social Issues

    Monday I wrote that the fight about the budget ought to be about ending Federal programs that are not within the limitations of the Constitution, not about 'over spending'.
    This week, with the Congress racing to find a compromise to keep from shutting down the government, calls are being made to defund things like Planned Parenthood.
    This is partisanship at its worst. Certainly Planned Parenthood ought not be Constitutional, and if an Originalist could prove it is, then some law or another ought to be changed or written so that positive rights are wrong.
    Michael Reagan, on Fox News on Tuesday of this week, said that it was always politic in the past to keep social issues out of the fiscal conversation that takes place in public. Fiscal discussions and social-issue discussions should be separated.
    Fine, keep them separated. But don't be partisan about the social-issue discussions. Not all Tea Party thinkers, not all Republicans, not all conservatives, not all independents think Planned Parenthood should be defunded.
    But it is like the woman I wrote about Monday who seemed to be saying the government should act un-Constitutionally by allowing the EPA to regulate, where some members of Congress are of the belief that the actions of the EPA usurp those of the legislative branch.
    Does the existence of Planned Parenthood as a government subsidized entity defeat the originalism the Founders would have expected of the limited powers they wrote into the Constitution?
    Congressman Paul Ryan, R.-Wisconsin, announced this week a budget that will cut spending by $4 trillion over the next decade.On "Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace", Ryan said, "We need to engage with the American people on a fact-based budget, on stopping politicians from making empty promises to people and talk to the country about what is necessary to fix these problems." He continued, "But if we keep kicking the can down the road and keep making more empty promises to people, then we'll have the European kind of pain and austerity."
    Perhaps Ryan is simply trying to keep social issues out of the fiscal conversation. But he is obliged to bring in those social issues, which is he is doing to some extent. In his own words, he told Wallace this: "If you're 55 or older, you won't see changes. You won't have to reorient your lives around these things."
    Why is that, Congressman? Are you going to address the Constitutional issues that allowed these social issues to become funded in the first place? Or will a more leftist Congress at some future time be able to re-fund them? 

    Ending Federal programs that are not within the limitations of the Constitution is the first priority not only in preventing a future Congress to re-fund them, but to stop a future Congress from inventing new ones. If we address the Constitutional issues, the budget problems will go away on their own.

    I understand it is much easier to fix a budget in the short term, because fixing the Constitutional issues will require many long and ugly arguments, and make us face ourselves as people living under a normative set of laws that have been abnormally ignored and mis-interpreted, both legally and socially.

    It must be done. If it is not, this will be a never-ending story. But the story must end if you wish to see your budget cutting efforts succeed in the long run. Social issues are Constitutional in nature, when they are allowed to determine anti-Constitutional legislation.
 

© Curtis Edward Clark 2011

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