The 110th Congress should
- encourage constitutional debate in the nation by engaging in
constitutional debate in Congress, as was urged by the House
Constitutional Caucus during the
104th Congress;
- enact nothing without first consulting the Constitution for proper
authority and then debating that question on the floors of the House
and the Senate;
- move toward restoring constitutional government by carefully
returning power wrongly taken over the years from the states and the
people; and
- reject the nomination of judicial candidates who do not appreciate
that the Constitution is a document of delegated, enumerated, and thus
limited powers.
The New American Magazine
notes the power of Congress over the other two branches of government:
The very first sentence of the first Article of the Constitution
states, “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a
Congress of the United States” — making that body the most
powerful of the three branches of government. Neither the Presidency
nor the Judiciary can make laws — except by usurpations tolerated by
Congress. Congress could, for example, prohibit the federal judiciary
from issuing usurping rulings in such cases as the infamous Roe v.
Wade (abortion) decision simply by exercising its enumerated
power to limit the jurisdiction of the federal courts (see Article
III, Section 2). Also, Congress could employ its impeachment power in
order to tame a corrupt and imperial President.
Congress,
the Courts, and the Constitution Cato
Remembering the
Constitution
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