[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 102 (Friday, June 22, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H7004-H7009]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      COMMENTS ON THE CONSTITUTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, it is this time as we end a week of 
discussion and debate and we all leave to reconnect with our 
constituents and find out from the real people of America what we have 
actually done here that we have a time to sit back and contemplate the 
significant questions that will be brought to us next week, probably 
the greatest of which is simply will the Republicans continue to win 
the congressional baseball game.
  But at this time in this weekend, I am joined tonight by Congressman 
Garrett of New Jersey, who is the Chairman of the Constitutional 
Caucus, who wisely thought that this would be a good time for us to 
take a

[[Page H7005]]

moment and discuss once again the significance and importance of the 
Constitution as we come to this end of this section of our legislative 
year.
  You know, Mr. Speaker, the Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once 
said he understood there were those people who believe that there 
should not be a strict adherence to the words or intent of the words of 
the Constitution. But, he wrote, you would have to be an idiot to 
believe that.
  The Constitution is not a living organism. It is a legal document. It 
says some things and doesn't say other things. The Constitution is a 
piece of paper that has words, but each of those words have a meaning.
  I was once watching an episode of Fawlty Towers, obviously a very old 
one, and it is one in which John Cleese is trying in vain to talk to 
his waiter Manuel from Barcelona, who doesn't speak English very well, 
and in contempt he finally walks away and says, ``Say Goodnight, 
Gracie.''
  Now, my students in school never understood what that line, ``Say 
Goodnight, Gracie,'' meant. As I was talking to them or other 
audiences, you would have to be around my age to remember the old 
George Burns and Gracie Allen routines in which every tagline of one of 
their routines was simply, ``Say Goodnight, Gracie,'' which had the 
effect of implying that Gracie Allen was probably the most ditziest, 
dumbest blonde ever produced.
  Now, oddly enough, my students understood the phrase ``dumb blond.'' 
They don't understand the phrase, ``Say Goodnight, Gracie.''
  We all have certain cue words which create larger meanings in the 
mind of the hearer. Those words have meaning based on the usage of 
time. The Founding Fathers who wrote the Constitution also had cue 
words that they used to expand the meaning of what they meant.
  One of the things I am happy about is the academic community seems of 
late to take a great deal more interest in the words of the 
Constitution and defining and understanding what they actually meant at 
the time.
  I had a college professor who used to say the Founding Fathers had 
baggage that they took with them, which meant there were common 
concepts they brought together and they understood.
  One of them, for example, is they all had read and understood 
Aristotle. Aristotle loved to divide everything up into categories. He 
divided up governments into a category of the government of one, a 
government of the few, a government of the many, and he said that each 
of those breakdowns could have a government that is good or bad, simply 
depending on the attitude of the ruling group. And he gave them all 
names. A government of one, for example, that he said was good, he 
defined as a monarchy. So in the 1780s, if you claimed someone was a 
monarch, that was a compliment.
  The government of one that was bad that had bad intentions, he gave 
the term of a tyrant or a tyranny. It is not a coincidence that a 
decade earlier when Thomas Jefferson is writing the Declaration of 
Independence, that of all the terms he can use to describe King George, 
he used the word ``tyrant.'' It had a cue meaning to it which ticked up 
a whole bunch of other ideas in the mind of the reader or the hearer.
  It is the same way when the Federalists decided to criticize 
Jefferson, they called him a Jacobite. You cannot understand the 
significance of that insult unless you have a deeper understanding of 
the meaning of what happened in the French Revolution. The words have 
specific meanings and specific attitudes.
  Akhil Amar wrote a wonderful book exploring the historical context of 
the words used in the Constitution. Much of what I am going to say is 
based on many of his works and his research. I would like to take just 
the preamble of the Constitution to try and illustrate what that is 
talk about.
  You see, I thought Gouverneur Morris and the committee who wrote the 
Preamble to the Constitution at the very end of the Constitutional 
Convention were merely putting something in there to add some kind of 
literary flair to the document itself. And even though these words 
don't have the same status as statute, these majestic words give us a 
window to see into the minds of those who actually framed our 
republican form of government.
  It starts off with the phrase ``We the people of the United States.'' 
Now, whether intentional or not, it began with the concept of 
empowering people. And earlier drafts started off with ``We the people 
of,'' and then it listed each and every individual State. Politically, 
that would have been unwise if indeed one of those states had 
eventually not ratified the document, which they thought could easily 
happen, because, after all, Rhode Island wasn't even there.
  But by changing it to ``We the people of the United States,'' it is 
more than just a political maneuver, it is a fundamental mindset of the 
Convention delegates. This Constitution goes full circle. It starts off 
by talking about the people and ends with Article 7, which is a new way 
of ratifying the constitutional document, which is a relatively 
contemporary concept of having a ratifying convention elected by the 
people. A new concept of republican democracy.
  So this document starts and ends with the commitment to the faith in 
the people. The Constitution doesn't pander to governments, but rather 
is aimed at empowering the people of this United States who indeed 
empower this government at the same time.
  The Founding Fathers never intended to amend the Articles of 
Confederation. They realized to do so would take unanimous consent, and 
since Rhode Island wasn't there in fact it would never happen. In fact, 
2 years earlier New York had vetoed a new financial management 
amendment. That act in and of itself had done much to spur the call for 
a new Convention to try and solve the problem. Because the Articles of 
Convention truly was a treaty between sovereign states and the national 
government.
  This was something that was going to be different. It was going to be 
different to solve the problem by forming a more perfect union.
  Now, once again, I always thought that the phrase ``in order to form 
a more perfect union'' was simply in opposition to the less perfect 
union under the Articles of Confederation. But it meant something so 
much more than that. It implied that they were leaving the treaty to 
join the new supreme law of the land. And ratification specifically 
denoted leaving the commitment of a flawed treaty to a commitment of a 
new supreme law of the land.
  The anti-Federalists got that point. They debated it. They lost the 
argument. They lost the vote. Confederates did not get that in the 
Civil War time.
  Abraham Lincoln actually was wrong about it as well. When he gave the 
Gettysburg Address, he talked about an indivisible Nation that started 
four score and seven years ago. That was a reference back to 1776 and 
the Declaration of Independence. To be accurate, he should have said 
three score and 15 years ago was when we became an individual nation, 
because that was the ratification of the Constitution of the United 
States.
  There is more to that phrase that Gouverneur Morris meant than simply 
glossing over once again. This phrase, ``a more perfect union,'' is a 
specific reference to the 1707 Act of Unification between England and 
Scotland. The words say ``the union of two kingdoms more active and 
complete.'' In fact Queen Anne referred to it all the time as her 
``more perfect union.''
  You see, the attitude of the mindset at the time was they believed 
the progeny of landed borders was always armies. So they looked at the 
time when England, Scotland and even Wales were individual countries 
with land borders and each had an army to offset the other, which meant 
eventually they would use that army one against the other, and if they 
were not using it to disturb the peace of the island, than a tyrannical 
king was probably using it to destroy the liberties of his individual 
people.
  Once they formed the more perfect union of England, Scotland and 
Wales together, the relative quiet of the United Kingdom was in 
contrast as they looked across the English Channel to Europe, which 
still had individual borders and was still engaged in border wars and 
subjection of the individual liberties of their individual citizens.
  So what we consider to be incomprehensible, the idea that 
Massachusetts might raise an army for some of their indigenous people, 
and that New York

[[Page H7006]]

would respond by raising an Army just in case Massachusetts doesn't 
stay with their own indigenous people, and Virginia might raise an army 
then because all three of them claim the same lands in the West. What 
we thought of as incomprehensible was an actual fear at the time.
  And they had an option, they will had an option of either eliminating 
that, or becoming like Europe. They could either be like Europe, with 
multiple boundaries and all the problems associated with it, or become 
like the United Kingdom in a more perfect union, eliminating that 
threat for evermore. And, more significantly, not just bringing peace 
to the continent, but also providing the protection and preservation of 
the individual liberties.
  It is significant the Founding Fathers had a fear of armies. They 
limited the army to two years. It had to be dissolved. They didn't do 
the same thing to navies, because a navy boat could not chase you down 
the street and beat you up--Armies could. The idea of a citizen army is 
something that comes about in the French Revolution. That hasn't 
happened for a decade yet.
  So armies at this time were mercenaries who were not necessarily 
sympathetic to the people they were supposed to be defending. In fact, 
the British army that came over here to defeat us and defend the 
British was actually hired Germans.
  So the idea in here was an Army was not necessarily nice to people. 
The militia were the citizens, and those were the ones who were going 
to be important. Armies were foreigners. Militias were your neighbors. 
Giving primarily defense of the country to a militia made sense. 
Allowing a militia, in reality the people, to be armed made sense. An 
armed citizenry as a check to a potential political abuse made sense. 
Thinking of the modern National Guard as the same as a 1788 militia 
when we talk about the Second Amendment makes no sense because we don't 
understand the meaning of the words.
  Lincoln also understood this concept of more perfect union when he 
talked about the Civil War. If the South was successful, even though 
this was a horrible war, at a high cost and greatly criticized by the 
intelligentsia at the time, he predicted that if the Civil War was 
successful for the South, it would not be the Civil War that created 
the South, but the beginning in a series of wars between the North and 
the South over regional boundaries and regional issues.
  This Constitution also establishes justice. The Founding Fathers 
considered justice lacking on both the national and the State level, 
and they invented the checks and balances system of Federalism to 
counteract that.
  If we truly understand what it means to establish justice, we have to 
understand the Framers hope to curb the excesses of the State 
governments, just the way patriots today have to curb the excesses of 
our national government. So Federalism means we forget the concept of 
establishing justice.
  ``To ensure domestic tranquility'' was not only a reference to Shay's 
Rebellion, but was also the concept that Revolutionary War veterans 
marched on Philadelphia to get their money from the Articles of 
Confederation Congress and both Philadelphia and Pennsylvania refused 
to provide protection, one is of the reasons they insisted on having 
this place, a Federal District, so they could ensure the domestic 
tranquility.
  And the next phrase is ``to promote the general welfare.'' Mr. 
Speaker, at this time we sometimes have a combination, I think, or 
conception, conception today, that promoting the general welfare is a 
door to open up to national involvement in all sorts of areas.
  I think if you look at the actual words, it was quite the opposite. 
``General welfare'' was a term of limiting qualifications, not 
expanding them.
  With that in mind at this stage of the preamble, I would like to 
yield to the Chairman of the Constitutional Caucus, the good gentleman 
from New Jersey, Mr. Garrett, to talk about the concept of promoting 
general welfare.
  Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from 
Utah.
  Of course, it is humbling to follow after such a gentleman who is 
learned in these things and also previous to coming to Congress a 
teacher of such topics of our history and of our Constitution. So I 
will try, while I will never live up to his standards, but try to 
emulate him as best I can. When I conclude, I guess I should end by say 
saying ``Goodnight, Rob.''
  When we looked at those expressions, we remember the words of talk 
radio host Rush Limbaugh, who often does say the expression ``words 
mean something.'' He is usually expressing it about one of his callers 
who has just called in and talked about a particular topic or what have 
you, and he will take a little slight angle on it and say, well, those 
words mean something that are being said there.
  So too it is with our Constitution, the fundamental document, the 
Founding Father document of this Nation. It is unique in a sense and it 
was recognized at that time. Back in 1803, Thomas Jefferson stated, 
``Our peculiar security in this Nation is in the possession of a 
written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by 
construction.''
  How prescient Jefferson was to see how future generations of this 
country possibly would and have and courts have as well taken that 
document; taken its plain meaning, and manipulated it to whatever the 
understanding of those words currently mean, as opposed to getting an 
understanding of what the founding document writers intended at the 
time.
  James Wilson, writing in the Study of Law in 1790, said, ``The first 
and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute,'' or in this 
case the Constitution, ``is discover those meanings of those words by 
those who made it.''
  So when we come to the floor today, or any day, to take a look at our 
Constitution, we must have an understanding of those terms as those 
meanings of the words had when the Founders first wrote them.
  The gentleman from Utah just went to the point as far as the fact the 
Preamble goes to the issue of a limiting basis. I would just suggest, 
and I believe he made one reference to this, that despite the fact that 
today certain people look to the actual words of the preamble as giving 
us certain rights or powers now, Gouverneur Morris, the delegate from 
Pennsylvania at the time, added the preamble, I won't use the word as 
an afterthought, but certainly after the rest of the Constitution was 
written down. And specifically preambles at that time in any legal 
document that were written, were understood to say that they did not 
have a substantive legal basis or meaning to them.

                              {time}  1430

  That is to say a Preamble did not grant nor did it limit powers.
  So today, when people come and look at the Constitution and say there 
is the general welfare clause in the Preamble, they should have an 
understanding that that was not an intention of the drafters of the 
document, to expand the powers of the Federal Government.
  This can be understood if you look to how those who wrote it and 
lived at that time understood the document. Anybody who has an 
understanding of the life and times of Alexander Hamilton understood 
that there was a brilliant mind, a confidant of George Washington. At 
the beginning of the revolution, he became an aide in battle, and later 
when George Washington became our first President, Hamilton was there 
as the Treasury Secretary and one of the most powerful men in 
government at the time second to the President himself, more powerful 
than the Vice President and the Cabinet members at the time, someone 
who had an array of employees under his control inasmuch as the 
Treasury was dealing with the collection of excise taxes and the like. 
He had people under his control throughout the entire country.
  He understood in order for this country to be great, and he wanted 
this country to be great, just as the mighty powers of Europe had been 
at that time, he had envisions that this country could expand and grow 
through different aspects of building bridges and roads and building 
canals. But even Hamilton understood that if he was to try to go down 
this road, that the powers that were granted to the Federal Government 
at the time were limiting on him. Even Hamilton suggested that a 
constitutional amendment would have been necessary for them to do

[[Page H7007]]

some of the things that Hamilton thought necessary at the time.
  So in 1790, Alexander Hamilton said an amendment to the Constitution 
is necessary in order to make the improvements to the country that are 
needed for a flourishing democracy. Of course, that amendment never 
occurred, and therefore the country and following Presidents never had 
the authority to do many of the things.
  Mr. Bishop will probably cite some of examples of some of the 
constructions that they were intending to do, and Presidents such as 
Madison and others vetoed those initiatives.
  How all of this is relevant to us today, as someone who may be 
listening to our debate or discussion right now, this past week the 
House of Representatives began the debate and now passage of several 
appropriations bills. We will be coming back in the weeks to come on 
the consideration and eventual passage of other appropriation bills. 
Likewise this past week, or the week before last, I should say, this 
House had a considerable debate on the issue of earmarks.
  Just an aside on the whole issue of earmarks. The debate on that 
topic goes to whether or not the Congress has the authority, and no one 
really questions this, but the authority to make, the issues of 
spending money on particular projects, and I don't think anybody 
debates that too much. The debate we have had on that topic is the 
transparency issue and whether or not Members of Congress and the 
American public are able to see exactly what individual Members are 
requesting that the American tax dollars go to. That is an appropriate 
debate and one which I supported, and I supported openness and 
transparency and to shine the light of day on what we do here.
  But that really begs the question as to where American tax dollars go 
at the end of the day. Earmarks are just a very small fraction of the 
overall government spending. Sometimes we hear of egregious examples, 
the proverbial ``bridge to nowhere'' and the Cowgirl Hall of Fame and 
the like. These things are targeted in an appropriation bill, either on 
the House floor or in the Senate or in conference. People are outraged 
both here in the House and at home as well when these things are added 
to the budget.
  But we must understand that such spending does not occur simply 
through earmarks, it occurs in the underlying bills as well. And it 
occurs also by the executive office and the administration as well.
  So the fundamental question that we must be asking is whether it is a 
particular earmark, whether it is for a bridge to nowhere or a Cowgirl 
Hall of Fame or a museum someplace that we tag onto a bill here in the 
House or the Senate; or whether it can be exactly the same type of 
project that the administration puts into the spending pattern through 
their agencies and departments, or whether it is the same type of 
spending in the underlying bill. The larger question is, and this is a 
question that every Member of Congress should always consider every 
time they reach into their wallet or their pocket, wherever they keep 
it, and they pull out their voting card and they put it into the little 
device to vote ``yes'' or ``no,'' does Congress, does the Federal 
Government have the authority to spend those dollars on those purposes?
  The argument is, and this is where the gentleman from Utah was 
leading to in the Preamble, which is also referenced in article I, 
section 8 of the Constitution, is the general spending clause.
  So all the adherents of those who support the earmarks and support 
the spending on these particular topics will either look to the 
Preamble or article I, section 8, the general spending clause of the 
Constitution, which says for the general welfare of this country.
  Well, as the learned gentleman from Utah would say, we have to have 
an understanding what the ``general welfare'' of this country was 
intended by the Framers when they penned that document.
  Today we would take that to mean anything that the House of 
Representatives can think of that would be an improvement for this 
Nation. That broad and general, expansive meaning, interpretation of 
the language is not what the Framers intended. What they intended was 
the opposite. They intended it as a limitating factor on spending.
  The Founders intended the general welfare clause and the spending 
clause in the Constitution was limiting to the extent that Washington 
could not spend the American taxpayers' dollars on just a parochial 
interest for this one particular Member's district or for this one 
particular Member's town or for this county or what have you. Instead, 
it had to be generally good for the entire Nation.
  There is a story that came out of a book that was written in 1884 
which I would like to share about a former Member of Congress, the name 
of which most Americans know, used to be on Disney TV, but he was a 
real Member of Congress back in 1827-1831, and that was a Member of 
Congress by the name of David Crockett, more familiarly known as Davy 
Crockett. He was, I guess you would call him back then, a conservative 
Member of Congress.
  He actually addressed in his writings after he served in Congress 
this issue of whether or not under the general welfare clause he, as a 
Member of Congress, had the authority to actually spend money on these 
parochial interests. Let me share that with you.
  He stated: ``If Congress is not given such extensive powers, then who 
is?'' The answer lies in the 10th amendment. Of course, I am not the 
first person to suggest this; others have as well.
  He writes about how one day in the House of Representatives, that 
would have been in 1827-1831, a bill was taken up appropriating money 
for the benefit of a widow of a distinguished naval officer. Several 
beautiful speeches were made in its support. The Speaker was just about 
to put the question to the floor of the House when Congressman Crockett 
rose.
  ``Mr. Speaker,'' he said, ``I have as much respect for the memory of 
the deceased, and as much sympathy for the suffering of the living, if 
suffering there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit 
our respect for the dead or sympathy for a part of the living to lead 
us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go 
into an argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate 
money as an act of charity. Every Member on this floor knows it. We 
have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money 
as we please in charity. But as a Member of Congress, we have no such 
right to appropriate a dollar of the public money. Some eloquent 
appeals have been made to us upon the ground that it is a debt due to 
the deceased. But, Mr. Speaker, the deceased lived long after the close 
of the war. He was in office to the day of his death, and I have never 
heard that government was in arrears to him.
  ``Every man in this House knows it is not a debt. We cannot, without 
the grossest of corruption, appropriate this money as payment of a 
debt. We have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as a 
charity either. So, Mr. Speaker, I have said we have the right to give 
as much money of our own as we please. But I am the poorest man on this 
floor, and yet I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give 1 week's 
pay to the object. And if every Member of the Congress will do the 
same, it will amount to more money than this bill.''
  At that point he took his seat, and no one replied. The bill was put 
upon for passage, and instead of passing unanimously, as no doubt it 
would but for his speech, it received only a few votes, and of course 
it failed.
  Later, when asked by a friend why he had opposed the appropriation, 
he explained. Here is the crux of the story.
  He told how several years earlier one evening he was standing on the 
steps of the Capitol with some other Members of Congress when their 
attention was attracted by a great light over the city of Georgetown. 
It was evidently a large fire. They jumped into a hack and drove over. 
The houses were burned, and many families were made homeless, and some 
of them lost all the clothes they had. The weather was cold, and he 
said that I felt that something ought to be done. And so the next 
morning a bill was introduced appropriating $20,000 for the relief. All 
business was put aside, and the bill was rushed through as soon as it 
could be done.
  Davy Crockett stated, The next summer, when it came time to think 
about the election, I concluded I would take a scout around the 
district. When riding in a part of my district, I saw a man in

[[Page H7008]]

a field plowing and corning towards the road. I spoke to him. He 
replied politely, but I thought rather coldly.
  I began, Well, friend, I am one of those unfortunate beings called 
candidates. The stranger said, Yes, I know, you are Colonel Crockett, 
but you should not waste your time. I have seen you before, and I voted 
for you once, but I shall not vote for you again.
  Davy Crockett was shocked by this, but the man stated, You gave a 
vote last winter which shows that either you have not capacity to 
understand the Constitution, or you are wanting in the honesty and 
firmness to be guided by it. In either case, you are not the man to 
represent me. Your understanding of the Constitution is different than 
mine, and I cannot overlook, because the Constitution, to be worth 
anything, must be held sacred and rigidly observed in all its 
provisions.
  To which the Congressman replied, I admit the truth of what you say, 
but I do not remember that I gave any vote last winter upon any 
unconstitutional ground. But the man responded that he knew about it, 
having read about it in the papers, and how last winter you voted to 
appropriate $20,000 to some sufferers in Georgetown. Crockett admitted 
that was true.
  The gentleman pointed out it was not the amount of money that 
Congress appropriates that he complains of, it is the principle. In the 
first place, Congress should not have excess funding. And secondly, it 
is the principle whether or not the Congress is abiding by the 
Constitution when it appropriates its money.
  He said, so you see, while you are contributing to relieve one 
person, in that case the people in Georgetown, you are drawing it from 
thousands who are even worse off than he. If you have the right to give 
anything, the amount is a matter of discretion. You gave $20,000; you 
could have given $20 million. If you have the right to give to one, you 
have the right to give to all. And since the Constitution neither 
defines charities nor stipulates the amount, you are at liberty to give 
to anything and everything you believe in as charity, and for any 
amount you believe. You will easily perceive what a wide door this will 
open for fraud and corruption and favoritism on the one hand, and for 
robbing from the people on the other.
  The man continued, Colonel, Congress has no right to give to charity. 
Individual Members may give as much of their own money as they please, 
but they have no right to touch a dollar of the public money for that 
purpose. You see, you have violated the Constitution in what I consider 
a vital point.
  In the end what the poor farmer was saying was this: That he had a 
better understanding of what the Constitution meant and what the 
Founders had intended when they crafted it less than 100 years earlier 
at that time; that the Constitution set out limiting powers on the 
spending of money, both on the Preamble which sets out no powers 
whatsoever, as previously stated, and under the general spending clause 
of article I, section 8 of the Constitution.
  And this is not just my interpretation or the farmer's reading. The 
Supreme Court has commented on this in several instances of note.

                              {time}  1445

  In 1905, the Supreme Court made that comment that the general welfare 
of laws under the preamble is not a grant of power but a limiting of 
power.
  This tendency of the understanding of the Constitution was the case 
from the time of the Founders basically up until around 1930s. Starting 
in the 1930s in the New Deal, this Nation changed substantially.
  It was at that time that this Nation began to have an interpretation 
of the Constitution that the Congress would be the arbiter of what the 
general welfare clause meant, and that the general welfare clause 
basically means that Congress can decide to spend money on any process 
or program that they desire. Then furthermore, subsequent U.S. Supreme 
Court decisions have held that the U.S. Supreme Court would not 
interfere with the determinations of Congress that these are basically 
political decisions.
  To conclude, what this all means, that when the House of 
Representatives comes back together next week in the weeks that follow 
on the appropriation bills, when we hear discussions on earmarks and 
the likes, and when we hear from the other side of the aisle that we 
will be spending ever more money on the appropriation process than we 
ever had in U.S. history, the question we should always be asking, is 
it within the limits of the general welfare clause.
  A strict interpretation of that clause would say no, but the Founders 
have said in order for it to be a general clause it must be for 
individuals all across this country and nor for a particular town, city 
or area of a State. It must benefit everyone.
  But you will see in each and every one of those appropriations bills, 
in just about every one of those earmarks that those dollars are going 
in contravention of the Constitution and in contravention of what the 
Founding Fathers intended.
  For that reason, we come here on a regular basis to try to raise up 
these issues to have a better understanding of what our Founders 
intended for the Constitution.
  With that, I will say good night, or at least, good evening, Gracie.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I appreciate being able to put the phrase, 
``promoting the general welfare,'' into a constitutional perspective, 
as well as a historical perspective. It is true that Madison and 
Monroe, both as Presidents, vetoed road construction projects because 
they only benefited the vicinity of the road, not the general welfare.
  It's true that the City of Savannah suffered a horrendous fire; and 
even though people wanted to give money for it, the rebuilding of 
Savannah, Congress refused because it wasn't the general welfare.
  Obviously, as Mr. Garrett has said, starting with the New Deal era, 
we changed our view of what these words mean, so that most times, most 
politicians today just assume Federal involvement is exactly what was 
intended.
  It also says that when these guys wrote the elastic clause of article 
I, section 8, they must have had a vastly different and a much more 
limited view on what was the power entailed than modern policymakers or 
scholars do.
  The last phrase of the preamble is that we do ordain and establish. 
It's an appropriate benediction to the preamble. It's a phrase that 
brought to the 1780 mind the creation found in the Book of Genesis, for 
religious vocabulary at the time spoke of God ordaining and creating 
the Earth, as comparison to the Founding Fathers who ordained and 
established this new government. These men in a very real and reverent 
sense created a new country.
  We pass laws almost every week that we either make incorrect 
assumptions about the meaning of the Founders' words, or we simply 
ignore them as no longer relevant to our time.
  Justice Scalia also once again said about the Constitution: ``What it 
meant when it was adopted it means today, and its meaning doesn't 
change just because we think that meaning is no longer adequate to our 
times.''
  My students not understanding ``Say goodnight, Gracie'' was simply an 
annoyance, excusable because they're young, and their view is a tennis 
player trying to decide whether to date a 20-year-old or a 40-year-old 
is great television. But for Congress not to understand the meaning of 
the words of the Constitution is irresponsible, it's inexcusable, and 
it's dangerous.
  Let me yield to one last comment to the chairman of the Constitution 
Caucus.
  Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. I will conclude with the quotes of Thomas 
Jefferson, who addressed this overall issue, in 1791, when opining on 
the constitutionality of a national bank, so, in essence, what he was 
doing is what we were doing, we do every week. The thought was at that 
time in 1791, of course, Alexander Hamilton at the time was pushing for 
such, and whether there was a constitutionality to do so.
  He said: ``I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on 
this ground that `all powers not delegated to the United States, by the 
Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the 
States or to the people,' '' obviously our 10th amendment. ``To take a 
single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the 
powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, 
not longer susceptible of any definition.''

[[Page H7009]]

  Jefferson was very clear that once we overstep the authority that is 
granted to us by the Constitution, there is no limiting factor on us 
any more in Congress and the Senate can spend whatever they want on any 
purpose that they want. The Supreme Court has already opined that they 
are not going to be the element to rein us in.
  So we, therefore, must, fortunately or unfortunately, if not going to 
rein in ourselves, look to the American public to be the political 
process to rein the Congress back in the manner that the Constitution 
and the Founders intended.
  Mr. MACK. Mr. Speaker, I want to rise to thank the gentleman from 
Utah, Mr. Bishop, for reserving time today so that we can discuss the 
Constitution, the cornerstone of our Republic and freedoms we cherish.
  Mr. Speaker, as Members of this body, all of us are sworn to uphold 
and protect the principles outlined in the Constitution. Yet, all too 
often, we routinely find ourselves coming to this floor to vote for 
measures that directly assault the freedoms outlined in it. We too 
often consider legislation that contradicts the Constitution's core 
principles of individual freedom together with limited government.
  However, make no mistake: Congress isn't the only culprit. It is much 
more widespread than that. The Constitution is a document of limited, 
delegated powers for all branches of government. However, we have an 
executive branch, whether a Republican or Democratic administration, 
that often looks for ways to grow beyond its constitutionally defined 
boundaries. Moreover, Mr. Speaker, my constituents are regularly 
impacted by Federal agencies with legions of bureaucrats who implement 
regulation upon regulation, each dealing a blow to their pocketbook and 
very often their liberty.
  Again and again, we see the Federal Government taking more power away 
from the States, effectively leading them to become gigantic, castrated 
counties solely accountable to Washington, DC. This is wrong and we 
must take steps to begin rolling back the tide.
  Finally, we have the judiciary which, under the principle of checks 
and balances, is supposed to be the final safeguard of our 
constitutional liberties. But just last summer, across the street, five 
people in black robes overturned established constitutional principles 
by reinterpreting the fifth amendment and the essence of private 
property rights. No, Mr. Speaker, these examples show that this isn't 
simply a congressional problem, this is a national problem.
  With that, I urge my colleagues to take a moment to remind themselves 
just why it is they are here. We must remember that we are a body of 
limited, enumerated powers. We are the first line of defense for our 
Constitution. As James Madison said, we are the ``guardians of . . . 
(the) rights and liberties'' of our citizens. In doing so, we must be 
willing to question the merits of every bill.
  We must be willing to conduct effective and rigorous oversight of the 
administration's activities. We must be sure to question any initiative 
that would seek to limit and constrain the rights of the individual and 
the States. The Constitution is the guide for doing just that. By 
checking our actions against what is outlined in the Constitution, 
we'll know when our deeds overstep their limits.
  In closing, Mr. Speaker, I came to Washington on a platform of 
freedom--the freedom that is promised to every citizen of the United 
States in our Constitution. The freedom that makes our Nation a beacon 
of liberty for the rest of the world.
  Through the work of the Constitution Caucus and others in this 
Chamber, I believe that we can get there--to the Founders' intent: a 
federal government of limited powers which respects and protects the 
individuals' various freedoms. We should all heed the words of our 
Nation's first President, who said, ``(t)he Constitution is the guide 
which I will never abandon.''

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