Editor’s note: Chuck Norris’ weekly political column debuts each Monday in WND and is then syndicated by Creators News Service for publication elsewhere. His column in WND often runs hundreds of words longer than the subsequent release to other media.
With the 114th U.S. Congress having launched on Jan. 3, 2014, it’s time We the People step up and hold their political feet to the fire to see real demonstrable change that will heal and improve our country, especially during these last two critical years of President Obama’s presidency.
Here are my top 10 resolutions for the new Congress:
10) Reel in executive power and presidential orders.
I know every president since the dawn of our republic has used executive orders, or EO. Theodore Roosevelt was the first to rack up more than 1,000 during his nearly eight years in office. The problem isn’t just the sheer number of them but what they are used to do.
When the Oval Office refuses to work with Capitol Hill, isolation, power inequity and temptation are easily used to justify EO abuse. The way I do the math: An abuse of power plus an abuse of EOs equals just another name for dictatorship. The new Congress should use mandated meetings, public pressure and legislative means to diffuse, minimize and counteract the abuse of executive power and EOs.
It’s time to return our country to a true balance of powers that existed when our founders carved our country. All but one president (John Adams) among the first five presidents (Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe) were in office for eight years, and the largest number of executive orders used by any of them was eight. Washington used eight, Jefferson used four, and the other three presidents used one each.
9) Defund and repeal Obamacare.
The verdict is in. Obamacare doesn’t save America money, red tape or heartache, and the worst is yet to come.
The Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics reported several ways that Obamacare “‘will drastically limit access to life-saving medical treatment under the law’ … These four areas include: the ‘[40%] excess benefit’ tax coming into effect in 2018, the current exclusion of adequate health insurance plans from the exchanges, present limits on senior citizens’ ability to use their own money for health insurance, and federal limits on the care doctors give their patients to be implemented as soon as 2016.”
Line by line, Congress needs to defund and repeal Obamacare. Then, instead of replacing it with another inept federal alternative, Congress needs to repeal any and all federal restrictions to a free market in health care.
8) Restore the 10th Amendment and a real balance of power between the federal and state relations.
This will solve a host of federal overreaches.
While they’re minimizing the roles of executive orders and Obamacare, Congress should restore the original intent of the 10th Amendment and the balance of power to our states.
Our country would be light years ahead if before every thought of legislation, Washington paused to answer, “Did our founders intend for us to deal with this or does it belong in the hands of another?”
If you wonder where the balance is, then listen to the wisdom of a nearly 80-year-old Thomas Jefferson in 1823:
“The States supposed that by their 10th Amendment, they had secured themselves against constructive powers. They [have not learned from the past], nor [are] aware of the slipperiness of the eels of the law. I ask for no straining of words against the General Government, nor yet against the States. I believe the States can best govern our home concerns, and the General Government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore, to see maintained that wholesome distribution of powers established by the Constitution for the limitation of both; and never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold as at market.”
7) Restore federal fiscal sanity and finally lower our national debt.
Back in 2010, I wrote in my expanded paperback version of my New York Times bestseller, “Black Belt Patriotism”: “Official government estimates forecast that the national debt will double over the next decade. The White House has projected a cumulative $9 trillion deficit between 2010 and 2019, while the Congressional Budget Office estimates a more optimistic deficit at $7.1 trillion based upon higher revenues as Bush tax cuts expire. Washington’s out-of-control spending could turn the nation’s already-staggering $11 trillion debt into an astronomical $20 trillion.”
We didn’t even have to wait 10 years! Our worst financial nightmares have come true, as the national debt has nearly doubled under Obama to a staggering $18,000,000,000 ($18 trillion).
How do we reduce the national debt? A start is to do what we should do in our personal lives when our finances are out of control: cap and cut our spending, reduce our budgets, allow the supply-and-demand levels to drop slightly lower to points commensurate with our incomes (not credit lines), learn to downsize and live within our means, limiting high-cost fun and frolic, and using what extra we have to pay down our debt.
6) Our country needs a Fair Tax.
A recent widely circulated email cites some faulty higher taxes allegedly coming in 2015, but not all the stats are incorrect.
PolitiFact recently reported the accurate increases in various taxes under Obama:
- In 2013, top Medicare tax went from 1.45 percent to 2.35 percent because of Obamacare;
- Dividends tax went from 15 percent to 23.8 percent due to the high-income added Medicare tax under Obamacare.
- From 2011-2013, estate tax went from 0 percent to 40 percent.
- The top income tax bracket went from 35 percent to 39.6 percent.
When combined income and payroll taxes are combined, Politifact explained, “On Jan. 1, 2013, the top combined rate for the income and payroll tax went from 37.9 percent to 42.5 percent, or 43.4 percent due to the additional Medicare tax in the health care law. … On Jan. 1, 2013, the highest capital gains tax rate rose from 15 percent to 20 percent. The Affordable Care Act’s additional 3.8 percent Medicare tax for high-income earners can be added to make it 23.8 percent.”
Anyway you boil it, whether you’re directly hit by these taxes or indirectly through fiscal cuts, cost increases, or a host of trickle-down economics, we’re all paying higher taxes because of Obama’s presidency.
That is why I’m espousing that we advance on our new representatives to address the one issue that can stabilize and rebuild our economy: tax reform (or even better, replacement). The Heritage Foundation calculated five years that President Obama’s 2011 budget calls for $2 trillion in higher taxes over 10 years – and that was after accounting for his $154 billion additional tax revenue from allowing Bush tax cuts to expire for families making over $250,000 a year. Any way you boil it, each year our president has not only compounded our debt but our taxes.
The present tax code penalizes productivity and cripples entrepreneurs and our capitalistic economy. As the Heritage Foundation reports, the top 10 percent of income earners pay 70 percent of all income taxes, while more than a third of all U.S. households pay no income taxes at all – and 47 percent pay no federal taxes.
What we need now more than ever is a flat or Fair Tax. In short, the Fair Tax does away with all taxes and puts in their place a single consumptive (fair) tax, which is the closest, practical, modern proposal to the taxation system favored by America’s founders. They did not penalize productivity through taxes the way we do today. They had no Internal Revenue Service. But they did tax imports. The founders believed in free trade within our own borders and a system of tariffs on imported goods.
(Next week in Part 2, I will give the remaining five of my top 10 resolutions for the new Congress.)
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