[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 13]
[House]
[Pages 18539-18540]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       WHAT THE CONSTITUTION SAYS

  Mr. BARTLETT of Maryland. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to 
speak out of order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Without objection, the gentleman from 
Maryland is recognized for 5 minutes.

[[Page 18540]]

  There was no objection.
  Mr. BARTLETT of Maryland. Mr. Speaker, a few days ago we paused to 
recognize Constitution Day. I thought it would be appropriate this 
evening if we spent a few moments looking at the Constitution.
  But in order to really understand the milieu in which the 
Constitution was created, I think we need to go back 11 years before 
the Constitution was ratified to the Declaration of Independence. In 
there we read these words: We hold these truths to be self-evident that 
all men are created equal.
  Mr. Speaker, we mouth those words today, and then we move on to the 
next clause, and they mean so little to us compared to what they meant 
to our Founding Fathers. You see, most of our Founding Fathers came 
from countries in the British Isles and in Europe that were ruled by a 
king or an emperor who claimed, and incredibly was granted, divine 
rights. What that says is that the rights came from God to the king or 
the emperor, and he would give what rights he wished to the people.
  And we made a stark departure from that. Fourscore and 7 years later, 
Abraham Lincoln was to note that this new experiment might not work. He 
said in his Gettysburg Address that: We are now engaged in a great war 
testing whether this Nation or any Nation so conceived and so dedicated 
can long endure.
  We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created 
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable 
rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of 
happiness.
  It took 11 years for the promise of the Declaration of Independence 
to be fulfilled in the Constitution that was ratified in 1787. The ink 
was hardly dry on the Constitution before our Founding Fathers wondered 
if it really was clear that they meant to have a very limited Federal 
Government with essentially all of the rights belonging to the people.
  And so they wrote 12 amendments; 10 of them made it through that 
process of two-thirds of the House, two-thirds of the Senate, and 
three-fourths of the State legislatures, and we know them as the Bill 
of Rights. I think we all too seldom review these Bill of Rights.
  The first eight deal with pretty specific rights that the people 
have, like the right to worship as they please, and to speak freely, in 
the first amendment; the right to keep and bear arms, much 
misunderstood in the second amendment. And then third, fourth, fifth, 
sixth, seventh and eight all deal with specific rights of the people. 
And then the ninth amendment, seldom referred to, but they wanted to 
make sure that having enumerated certain rights as belonging to the 
people, that the reader of the Constitution and these amendments 
understood that essentially all of the rights belonged to the people.
  Notice what they said in the ninth amendment. The enumeration in the 
Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or 
disparage others retained by the people. In other words, just because 
we did not mention a right in the Constitution or these amendments as 
belonging to the people, that is where essentially all of the rights 
belong. So do not disparage these rights to people. They do belong to 
the people.
  And then the most violated amendment in the Constitution, the 10th 
amendment. The powers not delegated to the United States by the 
Constitution nor prohibited to the States are reserved to the States 
respectively or to the people.
  What this really says in plain everyday English, without the old 
English and the legalese, is if you cannot find it Article I, section 
8, you cannot do it.
  Now, we are doing a great many things in this Congress that neither I 
nor anyone else can find a sound basis for in the Constitution, and 
this is pretty widely recognized. As evidence of that, I have, and I 
think this was a joke from Jay Leno, that is one of the places that it 
was heard. ``They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq. 
Why don't we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really 
smart guys, it has worked for over 200 years, and we are not using it 
any more.''
  Mr. Speaker, this general recognition on the part of the citizenry 
that we are now largely ignoring the Constitution ought to cause us to 
rethink what we are doing.
  I am not saying that the things that we are doing are not things that 
we ought to be doing. What I am saying is we ought not be ignoring the 
Constitution. This, I believe, starts us down a very slippery slope. If 
I can argue it is okay to do these things, like philanthropy, and, by 
the way, do a Google search for Davy Crockett and farmer, and you will 
get a great discussion of philanthropy, health care and education, I am 
not arguing that these are not things that the Federal Government might 
ought to be doing. I am simply arguing that if we are going to do them, 
we need to have amended the Constitution, because I am very concerned 
that if we can ignore the Constitution now, that we can ignore it in 
the future for some very important civil liberty that we have.
  Mr. Speaker, I am very concerned that the general malaise on our part 
in referring to the specifics of the Constitution will serve us no good 
purpose in the future, and I think that we need to look at every law 
that we pass to make sure there is a firm basis in the Constitution.
  This is a wonderful document. We have one person in 22. We have a 
fourth of all the good things in the world. I think it is because of 
the milieu that was established by this Constitution, the civil rights. 
No other constitution, no other bill of rights provides such civil 
liberties. To remain who we are, I think that we need to stick by our 
Constitution.

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