Congress Behaving Constitutionally, Seriously!?

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – In this one rare instance here, we all remain republicans but we can maybe claim that we’re Republicans now.  A shocker of all shockers that Speaker John Boehner has not folded the tent, which I must say I am cheerfully impressed by.  I don’t hold out any hope that he’s actually going to hold the line, but he certainly is not giving into the demands, the illicit and I think ridiculous demands of, number one, the president, who doesn’t have any say-so in it.  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Two things.  First of all, I went to the U.S. Department of the Interior.  I was going to do a little due diligence on the Park Service and when it began its reign of tyranny.  I found this: “Because of the federal government shutdown, all national parks are closed and National Park Service webpages are not operating.  Then it forwards you to the Department of the Interior site, which has some kind of information on it.  I was only doing this because I was curious to see what I could find out.  I know the National Park Act of 1933 was when most of the damage was done for the establishment of these things called national parks.  I’m still trying to find a constitutional justification for that.

The national government can own land.  This is spelled out in the Constitution.  Let me give you an example: the Louisiana Territory.  The difference between then and now, though, is that in Jefferson’s view, after the Louisiana Purchase, they purchased it from the French to stop the English and Spanish from getting it.  Louisiana, which went all the way from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border, those people were free to govern themselves.  The Jefferson administration made no claim on the land.  As a matter of fact, when Louisiana came around to the idea of joining the union and forming a state, which I currently reside in today, the process was prescribed by the Constitution.

President Jefferson, and then President Madison who ultimately would have been president when Louisiana was admitted on 20 April 1812, when the constitution of this state was being drawn up, it was drawn up without any interference, without any edict being issued from the Feds.  No claim was made to any of the property.  As a matter of fact, the State of Louisiana, in its first constitution, which was approved by Congress and we were admitted in April of 1812, the first constitution specified that our territory extended three leagues out into the Gulf of Mexico, including all the islands.  That means about ten miles from the coastline at the time, which would have been, by the bye, about 30 miles south of where it is today.  Thanks to erosion, much of that has been reclaimed by the gulf.

The Feds made no claim, so how did this national park idea come around?  Under what authority did they, for example, confiscate the Mosquito Lagoon off the coast of central Florida?  On what authority did they confiscate Yosemite and Yellowstone?  They’re even telling people you can’t go see the Grand Canyon.  Arizonans are saying: We might not be able to go in your silly little park, but we can go see it.  No, they closed the highway down.  Most recently, tourists are being denied access to all these parks with yellow cones barring their entry into places like the Badlands.  Civil disobedience is happening out there.  Tourists are going through the cones.  I want to play you this clip.

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[start audio clip]

John Boehner: . . . this week and the American people expect their leaders to sit down and try to resolve their differences. I was at the White House the other night, and listened to the president some 20 times explain to me why he wasn’t going to negotiate. I sat there and listened to the majority leader in the United States Senate describe to me that he’s not going to talk until we surrender. Then this morning, I get the Wall Street Journal out and it says: We don’t care how long this lasts because we’re winning. This isn’t some damn game! The American people don’t want their government shut down and neither do I. All we’re asking for is to sit down and have a discussion and bring fairness, reopen the government and bring fairness to the American people under Obamacare. It’s as simple as that. We all have to begin with a simple discussion.

[end audio clip]

Mike:  And then Boehner just walks off!  He says that and he just walks off.  I’ve got to tell you, and I said this in the first hour, this is one rare instance here — Newsweek Magazine can proclaim that we’re all socialists now.  In this one rare instance here, we all remain republicans but we can maybe claim that we’re Republicans now.  A shocker of all shockers that Speaker John Boehner has not folded the tent, which I must say I am cheerfully impressed by.  I don’t hold out any hope that he’s actually going to hold the line, but he certainly is not giving into the demands, the illicit and I think ridiculous demands of, number one, the president, who doesn’t have any say-so in it.  Why is the president even involved in this?  He is not a legislator.  The majority leader of the Senate can be involved in this, but the president doesn’t have anything to do with this.  He can’t appropriate his own funds.  He does but he’s not supposed to be able to.  That’s point number one.  Point number two, they go to the White House and they have this meeting.  Of course, Nancy Pelosi trots out there, [mocking] “We’re not going to have a discussion with a gun held to our heads.  Leader Boehner is being ridiculous.”  No, he’s not!

I’m going to go over this again, just in the chance that there are new listeners who have not heard what I believe to be the constant and consistent and historical and constitutional view of this “crisis.”  Number one, on defaulting on the debt, if the U.S. government is taking in enough money in revenue — if you go to USDebtClock.org, you will see that we are indeed — then there is ample fund available to pay the interest on the debt.  In other words, there is not going to be a default.  A default would be if there were not sufficient funds to cover the debt.  That is not the case.  We’re not going to default.  That’s number one.

Mike Church Show Transcript – Dr. Stephen Klugewicz And The Real History Quiz

Number two, the House of Representatives is where the people are supposed to be politically represented.  I want you to go back, and if need be I will post this letter from the erudite and revolutionary mind of one James Madison.  It is 18 October 1787.  Madison has left Philadelphia and the Federal Convention.  He has gone to New York where the Congress is currently meeting.  He is enlisted shortly thereafter by Alexander Hamilton to help write this series of newspaper editorials that you know today as the Federalist Papers, in order to try to get the Constitution ratified in New York.  New York is violently against, Governor Clinton and the Republicans of the day in New York do not want to ratify the Constitution.  it is one of the great tragedies in American history that the anti-federalists were not able to organize.  Again, folks, if you are of the conservative ilk, we are seemingly always fighting a rear guard action, meaning we’re always defending something.  We’re hardly ever on the offense.  Such was the case for the “anti-federalists.”

In any event, Madison writes a letter.  You have to remember, James Madison is depressed.  Were there psychiatrists and Dr. Spock types and Dr. Phil types around back in 1787, they would have been prescribing Zoloft for Madison he was so despondent.  He believed he failed in the Federal Convention.  He did not get his way, in other words.  The Constitution that came out was not what he preferred or advocated or what his Virginia Plan said young Jimmy Madison thought we needed.  So he writes this letter to Thomas Jefferson. In that letter, he describes to Jefferson what has just happened in Philadelphia and what the new constitution does.  In that letter, and this is repeated in one of the Federalist Papers, I think No. 10, Madison tells Jefferson, “the House of Representatives will represent the people of the several states in their political capacity, and the United States Senate will represent the state legislatures in theirs.”

What is the House supposed to do if the public, for three and a half years running, remains and is vigilantly and very excitedly against this monstrosity called the Affordable Care Act?  They should then elect enough members of that House to do something about it.  They did.  So what then should the Boehner Congress do?  They should discharge the will of the people, which is what?  Do away with the Affordable Care Act and, at the very least, delay it, especially seeing as how major corporations are unfairly gaining an advantage and are being granted waivers and what have you.  Remember, the taxes are supposed to be assigned proportionately and distributed evenly and fairly, according to the Constitution.  If John Roberts is right and Obamacare is a tax, why does someone that’s at a big corporation get a break that some little guy who’s not doesn’t get?

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No matter how you slice this, the Boehner Congress, if they’re going to hold the line on defunding or defanging the deleterious parts of the Affordable Care Act, they are doing what it is they are constitutionally charged with doing, end of story, end of discussion.  Anyone that thinks anything other than that, then they don’t know jack about the federal constitution and how it’s supposed to work and what the House of Representin’ is supposed to do.  In other words, what Boehner and company are doing is laudable.  It is supportable.  It is honorable.  They should continue doing it.  There is no reason for them to capitulate.  They have also done what is necessary to keep the rest of the government operating and open.  They keep passing appropriations that the Senate keeps saying are dead on arrival.  So then who is it that is responsible for the interruption of unnecessary and unneeded government services?  You can say it’s the president, but he really doesn’t have a vote in this.  So it’s the Senate, the Democrat members of the Senate.  In this one instance here, you actually do have a partisan standoff.  From where I sit, I think the Republicans actually hold the cards here.  Their position is strong and defensible and correct.  On the other hand, you have the Senate whose position is not defensible and is incorrect.

I’m not going to sit here and tell you that the appropriations that are being offered up by the rest of the Boehner caucus are constitutional and that I approve of them.  That’s not the point.  The defanging or defunding or the alteration of the Affordable Care Act is exactly what the House of Representin’ is supposed to do.  That is what its charter says it is to do.  That’s why you have elections every two years in that body, so that if there are mistakes made, if policies are enacted, if wars are begun, or if something silly like an Affordable Care Act is foisted upon the people’s heads, they have an immediate or near-immediate redress to try and undo the damage.  That’s what they’re trying to do.  I really can’t find anything that’s indefensible about what Boehner and company are doing.

End Mike Church Show Transcript

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