Constitution: Article I, Section 9 can DEFUND Obama

The GOP Leaders Don’t Know The Constitution

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – That’s because, Ms. Hing, you don’t know what you’re talking about.  You and your bosses, again, have not read Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution.  That’s not how the game is played, madam.  Sometimes I wonder why I even bother to go into this stuff, but it’s because I love you people and I want you to have the right information that we shall delve into the legalities of this and straighten this mess out once and for all.  Check out today’s transcript for the rest….

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Here’s what the House Appropriations Committee spokesman told The Hill newspaper earlier yesterday.  Are you ready?  I’m reading from The Hill.  There are quotes in it.  Some of this is cut and pasted together, so I’ll just use it as one big quote from The Hill.

[reading]

It would be “impossible to defund President Obama’s executive order through a government spending bill, House Appropriations Committee spokeswoman Jennifer Hing said Thursday.

Congress doesn’t provide funding to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS), the agency responsible for issuing work permits and green cards. Instead, the agency is funded through fees.

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“We cannot, literally cannot, defund that agency in an appropriations bill because we don’t appropriate that agency. That agency is entirely-fee funded,” Hing told reporters.

“As of right now, our understanding is the primary agency responsible for implementing any type of executive order is CIS and we don’t fund CIS. There are no appropriated dollars,” she added.

[end reading]

Mike:  That’s because, Ms. Hing, you don’t know what you’re talking about.  You and your bosses, again, have not read Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution.  That’s not how the game is played, madam.  Sometimes I wonder why I even bother to go into this stuff, but it’s because I love you people and I want you to have the right information that we shall delve into the legalities of this and straighten this mess out once and for all.

I’m looking for Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution.  Those of you that are not driving — we give a pocket Constitution out with every order in the Founders Tradin’ Post.  Did you know that?  You order anything in the Founders Tradin’ Post, no matter what it is, and if we mail it or ship it to you, you’re going to get a free pocket Constitution.  You can buy extra ones.  We sell extra ones, and we sell them in bulk, but you’re going to get a free — I want everyone to have one to carry around with them.  Many of you do.  I meet people at events — on the rare occasions where I’m invited to speak somewhere, many of you carry your pocket Constitutions.

Let’s all turn to Article I, Section 9 and we’re going to go to clause seven.  If you’re driving, don’t worry.  I’m going to read it to you verbatim.  “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.”  Ms. Hing, perhaps you — if anyone knows Jennifer Hing, this woman that’s the spokesperson for the House Appropriations Committee, please send me her address so I can mail her a copy of the pocket Constitution so she won’t make a fool of herself in front of international cameras and reporters ever again, and so her boss won’t be a walking, talking, breathing constitutional imbecile in front of international reporters, cameras, and recording devices.

Let’s review, shall we?  Article I, Section 9, clause seven: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.”  Now, it doesn’t say no money except in certain instances.  It doesn’t say, [mocking] “We’re going to have separate funds here.  Bugsy’s gonna manage this treasury fund over here and Carl is gonna do this.  We’re gonna give Sam that one.  Yeah, we’re gonna have different funds.”  No, it says “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury.”

Let’s delve a little further into Ms. Hing’s deception or delusion.  What she’s referring to is a bill that was proffered in 1882.  This covers the “USCIS, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, is funded primarily by mandatory, rather than discretionary spending” — this is what they’re saying.  They have no way to control it and there are no annual appropriations, etc., etc., etc.

This is posted in today’s Pile of Prep.  You can see this and read it for yourself.  If we go to the actual story where we find — this is from The Federalist.  The segment that I just read to you from the Appropriations Committee spokesperson, that they don’t have any control of this and they don’t appropriate the money.  I’m going to read to you from the 1882 statute.  I’m going to read to you what the 1882 statute actually says.  Once we read the statute, all will become clear.  It doesn’t matter what agency that we’re talking about.  If they are receiving or if they are spending federal dollars, then Congress has to appropriate it.  As Article I, Section 9 plainly states, there’s no option here for this.  This is not optional.  This is not a gray area.

As a matter of fact, I can tell you, in the Virginia Ratifying Debate, Patrick Henry and George Mason both asked this same question.  They both said the same thing: Wait, you guys have this clause in here about no money being drawn from the Treasury.  How do we know that there won’t be instances where you’ll try to sneak money out and you don’t want it on the books, etc., etc.  Of course, little Jimmy Madison and company said: That can never happen.  We want an accounting of all the government’s spending.  The people need to have an accounting.  So we know what the federalists said when they sold the Constitution and what the intent of the clause is.

Basically just think of it as a sunshine law.  That’s to ensure that you’re not going to have corruption, that you’re not going to have more than one till, as it used to be called, that there’s going to be one till, one central depository for all the money.  The only way to get any money out, one solitary penny, is for Congress to appropriate it and vote on it.  That’s the only way there is — I want to make sure that you’re clear on this.  There is no other way for any federal employee, any federal agency that’s making money — when you get your income tax refund, for example, who printed the check?  Who is the guarantor of the check when your income tax refund check comes in every year?  You might notice it says United States Treasury on it.  Congress has authorized the Internal Revenue Service to remit overpayments.  They’ve appropriated.  They don’t know the number every year.  They have to get an accounting from the IRS.  They’ve appropriated, they have to appropriate the refunds, thus you get a check from the Treasury.  You don’t get it from Lois Lerner’s account.  You don’t get it from the IRS office in Austin or in Colorado.  You get it from the Treasury Department.  That’s the way it’s supposed to work.

So what does the 1882 law that Ms. Hing is citing, what does it actually say?  I’ll read it to you, “An Act to Regulate Immigration”:

[reading]

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That there shall be levied, collected, and paid a duty of fifty cents for each and every passenger not a citizen of the United States who shall come by steam or sail vessel from a foreign port to any port within the United States. The said duty shall be paid to the collector of customs of the port to which such passenger shall come, or if there be no collector at such port, then to the collector of customs nearest thereto, by the master, owner, agent, or consignee of every such vessel, within twenty-four hours after the entry thereof into such port. The money thus collected shall be paid into the United States Treasury, and shall constitute a fund to be called the immigrant fund, and shall be used, under the direction of the secretary of the Treasury, to defray the expense of regulating immigration under this act, and for the care of immigrants arriving in the United States, for the relief of such as are in distress, and for the general purposes and expenses of carrying this act into effect.

[end reading]

Mike:  What did this just say?  It just said we’re going to collect a fee of 50 cents per immigrant.  We’re going to pay it into the Treasury, into a fund, a subpart of the Treasury that is then going to dispense the money.  So you still have a federal agency that has employees that are paid by that agency.  That money has to be appropriated.  Congress still, under Article I, Section 9, still has to appropriate that money from that fund.  Once it goes into the Treasury, they have to appropriate it out.  It doesn’t matter what the statute says.  The statute just says: Hey, this is a wash.  In other words, we’re not dipping into the American sheeple’s funds and other taxes that are paid across the land of the free and the mobile home of the brave to fund these services for these immigrants.  They’re paying their own way.

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This is just another way of saying that this is revenue neutral, that these people coming, in, that whatever it is that we have to or we must do for them is not costing the American sheeple any money.  That’s all it says.  So Article I, Section 9 still applies.

Say there are some of you naysayers out there, [mocking] “Well, you could read it the other way, too.”  Okay, fine.  Let’s just say I agree with you for a moment, and I don’t.  This is an act of Congress from 1882.  No Congress can bind another.  If you want to change this, have a simple yes or no vote, up or down, and change the statute.

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It’s not that hard.  You have a simple resolution that says Congress is amending statute from 1882, give the chapter and verse of the act.  We’re amending paragraph 4, subsection 3, sentence 2.  It says this and we are amending it to say this.  It’s as simple as that.  Vote on it, up or down, bam, whammo, kablowee.  They don’t have to do that.  These Republicans out there saying “we have to abide,” isn’t that funny?  They want to abide a law in 1882 but they don’t want to abide a law of 1789.

End Mike Church Show Transcript