Congress is key to ending corruption

Throughout the tenure of the Clinton administration — arguably the
“most corrupt” in history — bleated calls for reform and
justice have echoed continually, like a single voice shouted into
the bowels of the Grand Canyon.

This president, say most polls, cannot be trusted — despite his
“personal approval rating” — and has, as

Paul Sperry, WND Washington
Bureau chief pointed out on Wednesday, perhaps irreparably damaged the credibility of the office of the president and the U.S. Constitution.

There can be no reasonable doubt that what Sperry — and others, including myself — have characterized as Clinton’s propensity to bend and break his oath of office is true. Again, the key word here is “reasonable.”

But to be honest, Clinton has surpassed his predecessors in the arena of political corruption at the highest levels of the U.S. government for one lone reason: congressional duplicity. Lawmakers — for a variety of reasons — have “allowed” this corruption to blossom and grow into the single largest scandal known to the U.S. presidency.

Besides the “Monica thing,” which — comparably — was minor, the Clinton administration has permitted the easy theft of our nation’s nuclear weapons secrets, has stolen 900 times as many FBI files as the late President Richard Nixon, has exploited its power and position for personal financial gain, and has virtually destroyed the Reagan-Bush legacy of a strong military with endless (and meaningless) overseas deployments.

Congress has allowed this to happen — either by acts of omission or commission.

As WND editor-in-chief Joseph Farah

said in his Wednesday column,
the U.S. Constitution, in Article I, states: “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” Presidents can either sign these bills or veto them; Congress can override a veto.

That — really — is all there is supposed to be to the creation of laws. They are not supposed to come from federal judges, federal agencies, or presidents via executive order. When you factor in these mechanisms of creating law, Congress clearly has no exclusivity mandate, even though the Constitution gave Congress the exclusivity clause in the “law of the land.”

Consequently, if minor political parties in this country are serious about their calls for “reform” and a reduction in the size and cost of the federal government, then they should stop — immediately — trying to win the White House. In fact, those parties that advocate smaller government — the Libertarians, the Southern Party, the Constitution Party — are being hypocritical (and unrealistic) if all they are interested in is the Oval Office.

That is not how to reduce the size of government; remember, that kind of power is not supposed to rest with presidents in the first place.

Minor parties — many of which have similar “small government” platforms — could better expend funds by working to elect small government legislators to Congress. Then, there would be a much stronger system of “checks and balances” in place when the next Clinton comes along — and there will be another one.

Consider:

• Small government advocates from various parties, working in concert with the existing small government major party candidates, could wrest control of the budget process.
• Federal agencies thrive because no one has the gumption to cut their budgets or limit their rulemaking powers; small government advocates can cut them by using their collective voting power in a “reformed” Congress by either voting to eliminate or reduce agency budgets or by eliminating agencies themselves.
• Small government congressmen could provide a bulwark against unconstitutional government; bills that improperly or illegally empower the federal government could be voted down before they ever made it out of committee.
• Small government advocates in Congress could reassert authority over a miscreant president for declaring bogus “national emergencies,” which make executive orders possible. Such a Congress could also vote to rid us of the existing bogus “national emergencies.”

The possibilities are endless.

Having offered this suggestion, though, it would be wise to introduce minor party congressional candidates to the reality that, more than likely, both major parties will savage you in the press, in public, and in any forum they can be heard.

They’ll use — ironically and hypocritically — statistics, figures, and alleged facts from all of the government agencies they have helped to create and maintain to “show the people” how “wrong you are” in your views.

They’ll defend big government to the end; then they’ll defend it some more. Big government empowers them, not the people.

But, based on the premise that “all politics is local,” this is doable. “Local” is what politics may be, but federal lawmakers love to make laws that span the country. So it would be easy to show how Washington’s “mandates” affect John and Jane Doe in Utah as much as they do Jack and Jill Smith on Long Island.

This process won’t be accomplished in 2000 or 2004. In fact, it will probably take years to get Congress cleaned out.

To answer that, here’s another popular euphemism: “You’ve got to learn how to walk before you can run.”

Winning Congress is the key, you minor party players. I don’t know how much more plain the answer can be.