[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 3]
[House]
[Page 3177]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   THE ROLE OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, when we have the opportunity of 
bringing tourists to this great Hall, we show them the ceiling, the 
cameos of all the great lawgivers in the world, two of whom are 
actually Americans.
  On the Speaker's left up there is George Mason, one of three people 
who stayed through the entire Constitutional Convention and then at the 
end refused to sign the document because it did not include a Bill of 
Rights. It was important for him because he thought that was the 
purpose of actually preserving individual liberty for people.
  I sometimes find it unique that those great Founding Fathers, the 
people we venerate, Hamilton, Madison, Washington, Franklin, Dickinson, 
and others, refused to add a Bill of Rights. It was not because they 
were opposed to individual liberty. They found an alternative form of 
providing that particular liberty in the structure of government that 
we have.
  One of the unwritten foundations of our system of government and the 
Constitution is the concept of federalism. We eventually did add a Bill 
of Rights, which is misnamed. It actually should be called a ``bill of 
wrongs.'' It is a list of things that are wrong for the government to 
do no matter how many people want to do it.
  But in addition to that, the Founding Fathers instilled within them a 
system of structure to preserve those same individual liberties. They 
realized that increasing the number of competitors of power is more 
significant than increasing the number of prohibitions listed. And what 
Madison said in his Federalist Papers about ambition counteracting 
ambition, they recognized very clearly as they established a system of 
government that had a horizontal separation of powers between the three 
branches of government but equally important to them was a vertical 
separation of powers between the national government and States, and 
the sole purpose of that structure was to preserve individual liberty.
  The Federal Government has its role and function. There are certain 
things the Federal Government does. Well, what we bring to the table as 
the Federal Government is uniformity, which sometimes is a necessary 
need. If, indeed, uniformity is important, it is the Federal Government 
that can preempt States. But on the other hand, our States also bring 
something to the issue of governance. It is a State that can be 
innovative.
  In one of these dissenting opinions in the 1920s, Justice Brandeis, 
and I will paraphrase, simply called the States the great laboratory of 
America where experimentation could be made without actually harming 
the entire country, where, indeed, creativity takes place. It is the 
States where justice can be maintained because there are mitigating 
circumstances in the lives of the individuals who make up this great 
Nation; and when you have a system that is uniform of one-size-fits-
all, it cannot take account of all those mitigating circumstances. And, 
indeed, in having uniformity, we often harm people in the process of 
doing that.
  The Federal Government is not vicious. It does not intend to do harm. 
But its very design of one-size-fits-all means that individual needs 
cannot be met and only State and local government can do that.
  Our goal as the Congress should not be to create a more efficient 
government, a kinder and gentler way of controlling people. Our goal as 
the Federal Government should be to do less, to move the decisions of 
power from this city back to States and localities where creativity, 
where justice, where innovation can actually take place. If we do so, 
if we move those decision centers, we ennoble the spirit of this 
country. We empower people to solve their own problems in creative 
ways, and we may even learn something in the process.
  In so doing, I am very grateful that the gentleman from New Jersey, 
who will be speaking in a minute to you, Representative Garrett of New 
Jersey, has initiated a 10th Amendment Caucus aimed at trying to once 
again bring back those principles so we clearly understand this 
important lesson, the structural need that the Founding Fathers put 
into our system of government.
  The 10th amendment, the last of the Bill of Rights, is still there. 
It clearly states: ``The powers not delegated to the United States by 
the Constitution . . . are reserved to the States respectively, or to 
the people.''
  If we, indeed, learn that lesson, what I hope will be happening 
through this effort, spearheaded by Congressman Garrett, will be an 
effort to illustrate, as time goes on, how the overhelpful hand of the 
Federal Government can actually harm people, not intentionally, but 
unintentionally actually harm people. We hope, as time goes on, to 
bring specific initiatives which will help this country reach the goal 
the Founding Fathers had of providing personal liberty by a strong 
balance of power between the national and State levels. For if Congress 
is willing to lose that power, the people will gain personal liberties 
in the process.

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