{"id":1309862,"date":"2019-05-02T23:48:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-03T05:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/will-column-james-buckley-urges-congress-to-stay-out-of-state-affairs\/"},"modified":"2019-05-02T23:48:00","modified_gmt":"2019-05-03T05:48:00","slug":"will-column-james-buckley-urges-congress-to-stay-out-of-state-affairs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/will-column-james-buckley-urges-congress-to-stay-out-of-state-affairs\/","title":{"rendered":"Will column: James Buckley urges Congress to stay out of state affairs"},"content":{"rendered":"
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WASHINGTON \u2014 At 96, James Buckley still is, like good cheddar, sharp and savory. Buckley, whose life has been no less accomplished than his brother Bill\u2019s, recently said at a National Review gathering that his speech there would be his last public appearance. Let us hope not.<\/p>\n

He adorned all the government\u2019s branches \u2014 senator; undersecretary of state for international security affairs; judge on the nation\u2019s second-most important court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Shortly after his 1970 election to the Senate (as a member of New York\u2019s Conservative Party; the age of miracles had not yet passed) he was handed a recent study showing that \u201cthe work of the average congressional office had doubled every five years since 1936.\u201d He explains:<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven the fact that, in simpler times, Congress worked at a leisurely pace and was in session for only five or six months a year, its members could take the initial increases in stride simply by devoting more hours per day and more months per year to their work. Over time, however, the available hours and months had been exhausted, and the doubling could only be accommodated by squeezing deliberation out of the legislative process.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1934, after 145 years of congressional activity, the U.S. Code consisted of one volume of federal statutes. Buckley says when he came to Congress 36 years later, there were 11 volumes. Today, 49 more years on, there are 41 volumes \u2014 supplemented by 242 volumes of regulations having the force of law. This, says Buckley, is the result of a Congress \u201cthat largely substitutes political reflex for reflection,\u201d and that is so averse to \u201cmessy details\u201d that it delegates \u201cessentially legislative authority to executive agencies.\u201d All this stems, however, from \u201cabandonment of the Constitution\u2019s limits on federal authority.\u201d<\/p>\n

Buckley says that the mischief erupted after a 1937 Supreme Court ruling that Congress, in promoting the \u201cgeneral welfare,\u201d can supply states with money to implement programs that Congress has no enumerated power to write into law. When Buckley entered the Senate, such programs distributed $24 billion. Today, he says, the sum, properly computed, is in \u201cmid-$700 billions.\u201d The idea of enumerated powers having been erased, so has the 10th Amendment (\u201cThe powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.\u201d).<\/p>\n

Buckley has hitherto proposed converting all such programs into block grants to states. He now proposes a presidential tweet vowing to veto \u201cany bill that tells the states how to run their own affairs.\u201d He proposes, and believes \u201cthere is a chance,\u201d that the Supreme Court might reverse its 1937 ruling on the ground that federal grants to states \u201chave proven to be inherently coercive.\u201d These proposals are equally sensible, and \u2014 the age of miracles has now passed \u2014 equally unlikely.<\/p>\n

The problem, as Yuval Levin says, is Congress\u2019 \u201cwillful underactivity.\u201d But the growing problem that will continue to exacerbate this problem is this: Having marginalized itself, with judicial encouragement, Congress now attracts members who either disdain it or think members of the president\u2019s party exist to tug their forelock when the president issues orders.<\/p>\n

Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., who has been campaigning to escape from the Senate into the White House since arriving there 28 months ago, considers the legislative branch a constitutional superfluity: \u201cUpon being elected, I will give the United States Congress 100 days to get their [sic] act together and have the courage to pass reasonable gun-safety laws, and if they fail to do it, then I will take executive action.\u201d The 100 days are granted by the grace of Queen Kamala I. In January, Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., explained why Republicans would not consider a bill funding the government without money for a border wall: \u201cThe president won\u2019t sign it. Why would we work on it?\u201d Perhaps because there is value in Congress expressing its independent view of the public good?<\/p>\n

An omnipresent, micromanaging federal government will necessarily be presidential government, with the chief executive\u2019s discretion unbound, and unsupervised by a Congress that manages to be both harried and lethargic. Many progressives have long understood this \u2014 and have approved of it because they thought Woodrow Wilson and the two Roosevelts would be the sort of presidents who would benefit from it. But because of the 45th president, progressives are having second thoughts. They should consider Buckley\u2019s thoughts.<\/p>\n

George Will\u2019s email address is georgewill@washpost.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 At 96, James Buckley still is, like good cheddar, sharp and savory. Buckley, whose life has been no less accomplished than his brother Bill\u2019s, recently said at a National Review gathering that his speech there would be his last public appearance. Let us hope not. He adorned all the government\u2019s branches \u2014 senator; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1309862","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-17 11:27:27","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1309862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1309862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1309862\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1309862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1309862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1309862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}