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House Republicans, Do the Right Things

Vote for the best speaker, then sponsor repeals and summary impeachments.

James Anthony
December 30, 2022

On November 15, by secret ballot, Republicans in the current house voted 188 to 31 to nominate Kevin McCarthy as their candidate for speaker. On January 3, the entire house will vote on McCarthy. To be elected, he will need 218 votes.

The Wrong Thing

Marjorie Taylor Greene, Liberty Score 100% [1], and Jim Jordan, Liberty Score 94% [2], said they support McCarthy, Liberty Score 54% [3]. Greene, thinking strategically, said that if Republicans challenged McCarthy, Democrats and some Republicans might elect Liz Cheney [4].

But Greene and Jordan wouldn’t be responsible for that outcome, the Republican Progressives and the Democrats would be. And any failures to mitigate any resulting bad actions would be the responsibility of all the other people in government who have offsetting powers [5]: the people in state governments, the senators in simple majorities [6], presidents, and the judges in court majorities.

Greene and Jordan are responsible for their own votes. Politicians should always use their own votes to support what’s constitutionally best and let the chips fall as they may.

Here, if Liz Cheney was elected speaker, this Republican-majority house controlled by Republican Progressives plus Democrats would draw intense fire from Republican voters and from constitutionalist primary challengers. This intense pushback would bring faster, larger change for the better [7].

The Wrong Reasons

Greene also said that to be elected speaker, McCarthy would have to give her and others more power and leeway. For starters, Greene wanted an appointment to the judiciary committee or the oversight committee.

Here’s what constitutionally is a house legislator’s scope:

  • Bills about statutes.
    What’s needed most nowadays are repeals [8]. Most current statutes violate the Constitution’s enumerated powers [9], separation of powers [10], or nondelegation of legislative power [11]. Demolition can be extremely fast; private organizations will build any replacement capabilities we want.
  • Rules of engagement and war declarations.
    Rules-of-engagement [12] cards determine how safe and effective war can be, especially against enemies that include abusive citizens [13]. War declarations instate radically-different regimes for protecting life, liberty, and property. ROE cards and war declarations both have grave consequences in international relations, and constitutionally must be run through the gauntlets of representatives’ considerations.
  • Revenue sources and the total budget.
    Revenue sources and the total budget provide for constitutional execution of laws and opining on cases, but otherwise must limit the government’s takings of people’s property through taxes and inflation [13]. Legislators can’t constitutionally exercise the executive power to allocate budgets by line item, and can’t adequately be held accountable for the results. Progressive legislators have created, organized, funded, advised on [14], and supervised unconstitutional departments and agencies [15]. These departments and agencies have then gone on to capture most of the legislators who have followed. Current legislators must separate themselves from this Constitution-defying system.
  • Impeachment.
    Impeachment is a process for taking away the privileges of government people to use delegated powers to deprive persons of life, liberty, or property. The accused aren’t at risk, we the people are. We need legislators to limit our future losses by considering the best readily-available information about past Constitution defiance and summarily applying their best judgment [16].

The Constitution’s rules, if followed, and its sanctions by offsetting powers, if used, ensure that every generally-applicable choice is made deliberatively by elected representatives.

The core focus of legislators who support the Constitution is on creating constitutional laws, which consist only of rules and sanctions.

Once legislatures pass such bills and executives sign these into law, all that’s left is for executives to enforce these laws and for judges to opine on cases. Legislators constitutionally enable these executive and judicial actions by making regulations for war and declaring war whenever war will be fought, by setting revenue sources and the total budget, and by impeaching wherever this will be wise to protect us.

The only committee work [17] that might make sense for legislators to do is draft bills. But current committees will never draft constitutional bills. The Constitution is defied by Progressives, and current committees include majorities of Progressives—Democrats who all are Progressive, plus Republicans who mostly are damagingly Progressive [18]. Also, much drafting is done by staffers, lobbyists, and professional drafters [19], who are decidedly Progressive. Further, current committees are quite effective at preventing or burying roll-call votes that would out Progressives.

To get to constitutional government will require not compromising with Progressives. It will require that constitutionalists themselves sponsor, cosponsor, and vote for constitutional bills [20].

This will require solo or committee work by constitutionalists only, not collaborations with Progressives on committees. Also, houses don’t advise and consent on judicial nominees, senates do. And the only constitutional legislative oversight is impeachment, which should be done summarily.

So when Greene seeks appointments to the next judiciary committee or oversight committee, she deprioritizes sponsoring, cosponsoring, and voting for constitutional bills, and instead prioritizes supporting the legislatively-controlled unconstitutional administrative state.

We need our house legislators to not do the wrong things on speakers and committees. And we need our house legislators to do the right things on repeals and new bills, war, revenues and budgets, and impeachments.

References

  1. “Rep. Marjorie Greene.” Conservative Review, libertyscore.conservativereview.com/marjorie-greene. Accessed 30 Dec. 2022.
  2. “Rep. Jim Jordan.” Conservative Review, libertyscore.conservativereview.com/jim-jordan. Accessed 30 Dec. 2022.
  3. “Rep. Kevin McCarthy.” Conservative Review, libertyscore.conservativereview.com/kevin-mccarthy. Accessed 30 Dec. 2022.
  4. Nava, Victor. “Marjorie Taylor Greene Warns House GOP off McCarthy Challenge: ‘Bad Strategy.’” New York Post, 14 Nov. 2022, nypost.com/2022/11/14/marjorie-taylor-greene-warns-house-gop-off-mccarthy-challenge-bad-strategy/. Accessed 30 Dec. 2022.
  5. Anthony, James. “Offsetting Powers.” rConstitution.us, rconstitution.us/boundaries/#off-bound. Accessed 30 Dec. 2022.
  6. Anthony, James. “Who Will Benefit Long-Term from Ending the Filibuster.” American Greatness, 26 June 2021, amgreatness.com/2021/06/26/who-will-benefit-long-term-from-ending-the-filibuster/. Accessed 30 Dec. 2022.
  7. Anthony, James. “Changing Government by Stepping, Phasing, or Doing.” rConstitution.us, 23 Apr. 2021, rconstitution.us/changing-government-by-stepping-phasing-or-doing/. Accessed 30 Dec. 2022.
  8. Anthony, James. “Triage and Repeal.” rConstitution.us, 8 Apr. 2022, rconstitution.us/triage-and-repeal/. Accessed 30 Dec. 2022.
  9. Diamond, Martin. “The Forgotten Doctrine of Enumerated Powers.” Publius, vol. 6, no. 4, Autumn 1976, pp. 187-93.
  10. Kesler, Charles. “What Separation of Powers Means for Constitutional Government.” The Heritage Foundation First Principles Series, no. 17, 17 Dec. 2007.
  11. Lawson, Gary. “Delegation and Original Meaning.” Virginia Law Review, vol. 88, no. 2, Apr. 2002, pp. 327-404.
  12. Etzioni, Amitai. “Rules of Engagement and Abusive Citizens.” PRISM, vol. 4, no. 4, Apr. 2014, pp. 86-103.
  13. Anthony, James. “Inflation’s Root Cause, Reagan’s Compromise, and Constitutionalists’ Solution.” rConstitution.us, 4 Feb. 2022, rconstitution.us/inflations-root-cause-reagans-compromise-and-constitutionalists-solution/. Accessed 30 Dec. 2022.
  14. Hollibaugh, Gary, and Lawrence S. Rothenberg. “Appointments and Attrition: Time and Executive Disadvantage in the Appointments Process.” Journal of Public Policy, vol. 40, no. 3, Sep. 2020, pp. 473-91.
  15. Anthony, James. “On the Reading of Old Constitutions.” rConstitution.us, 9 Oct. 2021, rconstitution.us/on-the-reading-of-old-constitutions/. Accessed 30 Dec. 2022.
  16. Anthony, James. “Constitutional Impeachment Is Loss Prevention.” rConstitution.us, 5 Feb. 2021, rconstitution.us/constitutional-impeachment-is-loss-prevention/. Accessed 30 Dec. 2022.
  17. Welsh, Michael. “An Overview of the Development of U.S. Congressional Committees.” Law Librarians’ Society of Washington, DC, July 2008, llsdc.memberclicks.net/assets/sourcebook/cong-cmte-overview.pdf. Accessed 30 Dec. 2022.
  18. Anthony, James. “Voters’ Dilemma.” rConstitution.us, 17 June 2022, rconstitution.us/voters-dilemma/. Accessed 30 Dec. 2022.
  19. Nourse, Victoria F., and Jane S. Schacter. “The Politics of Legislative Drafting: A Congressional Case Study.” New York University Law Review, vol. 77, no. 3, June 2002, pp. 575-624.
  20. Anthony, James. “Do You Support the Constitution? Take This Quiz and See.” rConstitution.us, 10 Dec. 2021, rconstitution.us/do-you-support-the-constitution-take-this-quiz-and-see/. Accessed 30 Dec. 2022.

James Anthony is the author of The Constitution Needs a Good Party and rConstitution Papers, publishes rConstitution.us, and has written in Daily Caller, The Federalist, American Thinker, American Greatness, Mises Institute, and Foundation for Economic Education. Mr. Anthony is an experienced chemical engineer with a master’s in mechanical engineering.

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