GARLINGTON: Another Bloated Omnibus Bill Shows Need to Restructure FedGov

The rushed passage of cringe-inducing federal omnibus spending bills just before Christmas is fast becoming the third certainty in US life, along with death and taxes.  The 2024 version has arrived with plenty of things to make folks irate, like its 1,500 pages bursting with billions in ‘emergency spending’ and its pay raises for Congress critters, which would make their salary about $180,000 per year (Lisa Mascaro and Kevin Freking, ‘Government funding plan collapses as Trump makes new demands days before shutdown’, apnews.com).

Such things were predicted by the Anti-Federalists during the ratification debates in the States from 1787-8.  Patrick Henry of Virginia put his finger precisely on the pay raise issue:

‘ . . . at the Virginia ratifying convention in June 1788, Patrick Henry, an Anti-Federalist and staunch opponent of ratifying the Constitution, objected to allowing Members of Congress to determine their compensation by themselves, without limitation or restraint.3 He stated that Members may therefore indulge themselves in the fullest extent by making their compensation as high as they please.4 Henry argued that having the state legislatures fix Members’ compensation would impose some measure of restraint on the national legislature5’ (‘Amdt27.2.3 Congressional Compensation and Debates over Ratification of the Constitution’, constitution.congress.gov).

Mr Henry’s solution – giving the State governments more power over the federal government – is one we need to seriously consider in our time of irresponsible behavior by the federal congress, which, as most folks know by now, has racked up an astronomical debt of $35 trillion, with no signs of slowing down.  We will touch briefly on two simple ways this could be done, (1) by making the State governments responsible for setting the salaries for federal congressmen and senators and for paying those salaries, and (2) by allowing the federal government the power to raise only part of the revenue needed for the federal budget, with the other part being provided voluntarily by the State governments.

It doesn’t take an overly active imagination to see how these proposals would bring beneficial changes to the current chaotic situation.  The States’ ability to check detrimental federal actions via written constitutional provisions is currently non-existent.  There is the unwritten provision of State nullification (grounded in the 10th Amendment of the federal charter), but that is most effective against federal laws and regulations and rulings that violate specific long-standing customs, rights, etc.  It can do little to affect the federal budget.

But give State legislatures the recommended powers, and things could change dramatically.  They would have the ability to affect the budget process in DC very directly.  If federal legislators continued to raise the debt/spending level in spite of warnings not to, the State governments could simply withhold the pay of the federal congressmen until the fever of the latter for deficit spending subsided.  Likewise, if the federal government had to ask the State legislatures to provide funding for its budget, the States could refuse to comply until any troublesome items in the budget were addressed.

The Federalists who supported the ratification of the current federal constitution were concerned that the States would have too much influence upon the federal government, preventing it from operating with the robustness they thought necessary.  They were wrong; the opposite has happened.  It is actually the Anti-Federalists whose fears have come to pass:  that the federal government would become an overbearing menace to the States, trampling on the individual sovereignty and uniqueness of each one and consolidating them into one dull, uniform despotism ruled from DC.

Cato (George Mason) offered some representative warnings:

‘In effect, he was categorizing the system as a national government, as he hinted at in his first essay.

‘This argument against consolidation was taken up by virtually every other prominent anti-federalist.

‘Cato went on to explain that a consolidated government for the United States would fail simply due to the size and diversity of the country.

‘“Whoever seriously considers the immense extent of territory comprehended within the limits of the United States, together with the variety of its climates, productions, and commerce, the difference of extent, and number of inhabitants in all; the dissimilitude of interest, morals, and politics, in almost every one, will receive it as an intuitive truth, that a consolidated republican form of government therein, can never form a perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to you and your posterity. [Emphasis original]’ (Mike Maharrey, ‘A Republic at Risk: Cato’s Anti-Federalist Warnings’, tenthamendmentcenter.com)

The Pennsylvania Anti-Federalists saw the terminus at which the Philadelphia charter would end:

‘The primary concern was that “consolidation pervades the whole constitution.”

‘And they warned that this “must necessarily annihilate and absorb the legislative, executive, and judicial powers of the several states, and produce from their ruins one consolidated government.”

‘They further asserted that this consolidated system would result in “an iron-handed despotism,” because, “nothing short of the supremacy of despotic sway could connect and govern these United States under one government.

‘The dissenters insisted that “there is no line of distinction drawn between the general, and state governments”’ (Mike Maharrey, ‘Anti-Federalist Objections: Pennsylvania Dissent Explained’, tenthamendmentcenter.com).

The two proposals recommended above are primarily about clearly re-establishing the ‘line of distinction’ between the federal government – which is the creation and creature of the States – and the States themselves.  We have unfortunately been led to believe that, contrary to even the centralizing Federalists themselves, that the current federal constitution is the ‘end of history’ (Francis Fukuyama), that no improvements could be made to it, that any change would be detrimental.  It is an injustice to make such claims, and they are refuted, as we said, by proponents of a strong federal government such as Washington and Hamilton, who advocated amending the federal charter as conditions warranted.

And there certainly are deficiencies in the federal constitution that need correcting, such as the lack of substantial checks on the federal judiciary and the need to strengthen the political power of rural areas vis-à-vis that of urban areas; some changes that have been made need to be repealed (direct election of US senators, the 17th Amendment, and the income tax, the 16th Amendment); and other provisions need to be added, like the two recommendations that have been made in this essay.

The fate of the December 2024 federal omnibus bill is in doubt, now that Trump, Vance, Musk, and others have announced their opposition to it.  The peoples of the States need to take appropriate action to ensure that such bills will be forever in doubt in the future, and that will require doing more than sending new faces to DC (which hasn’t been a winning strategy, as Michael Boldin and others at the Tenth Amendment Center have pointed out many times):  It will require the restraining of FedGov’s powers by the States themselves.

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