July 23, 2013
Mr. Speaker,
This
has been a summer of alarming revelations that suggest our government
is drifting far from the principles of individual liberty and
constitutionally limited government that defined the American Founding
and that produced the most free and prosperous Republic in the history
of mankind.
These developments include:
The
use of the IRS and other government agencies to single out ordinary
Americans because of their political beliefs with the apparent intention
to discourage and intimidate them out of participating in the public
policy debate;
The use of the Department of
Justice to target reporters who are asking embarrassing questions of the
administration – in one case with the threat of prosecution under the
Espionage act;
The seizure of the private records of millions of Americans without warrant by the National Security Agency;
The increasingly menacing militarization of domestic police agencies;
The shakedown of health care providers to fund advocacy and promotion of Obamacare;
Frequent
assertions by the President of authority to nullify laws that he deems
objectionable or inconvenient despite his clear constitutional mandate
to see that the laws are faithfully executed;
The
executive’s usurpation of the legislative powers of Congress by using
the regulatory bureaucracies to impose laws that the elected Congress
has specifically refused to enact;
Continued
suggestions that the executive may order military operations against
other governments without provocation and without Congressional
authorization;
And this week, we are beginning
to learn details of the so-called Federal Data Hub, including an
excellent article by John Fund of the National Review. According to
Fund, “The Department of Health and Human Services is about to hire an
army of “patient navigators” to inform Americans about the subsidized
insurance promised by Obamacare and assist them in enrolling. These
organizers will be guided by the new Federal Data Hub, which will give
them access to reams of personal information compiled by federal
agencies ranging from the IRS to the Department of Defense and the
Veterans Administration.”
Mr. Speaker, the
American people are slowly beginning to realize the threat to individual
freedom, personal privacy, and fundamental constitutional principles
that these developments pose. Some very bright Constitutional lines
have been crossed, and my constituents keep asking: what is Congress
going to do?
The House has taken the first steps
to restore our Constitutional checks and balances by focusing its
investigatory attention on the unfolding IRS scandal. It is of critical
importance that the facts of the case are fully laid out, those
responsible identified and removed from positions of trust or authority,
and safeguards enacted to assure that this sort of abuse never happens
again.
And the House Rules Committee took an
important step yesterday by allowing amendments to the Defense
Appropriations Act to stop the warrantless seizure of Americans’ phone
and internet records by the NSA and to re-assert the essential principle
with respect to Syria that Congress alone has the prerogative to
declare war.
The House is in a position to
resist many of these abuses and usurpations through its power to
appropriate – but has often been reluctant to fully assert that
authority. The conventional wisdom is that the appropriations process
will shortly stall and a continuing resolution will be agreed to. This
would be a tragic mistake if it leads to the continued funding of these
increasingly unconstitutional and authoritarian measures.
All
appropriations must start in the House, which means that a simple
majority of this body -- by itself -- could arrest many of these
disturbing developments simply by marshalling the courage and
determination to just say no by pulling the purse strings shut.
If
we fail to do so, I believe we are allowing our nation to drift
dangerously toward a Constitutional crisis with grave implications to
the rule of law and the survival of American liberty.