About Nancy Salvato
Nancy Salvato is the President and Director of Education and the
Constitutional Literacy Program for
BasicsProject.org, a
non-profit, non-partisan 501(c)(3) research and educational
project whose mission is to re-introduce the American public to
the basic elements of our constitutional heritage while
providing non-partisan, fact-based information on relevant
socio-political issues important to our country, specifically
the threats of aggressive Islamofascism and the American Fifth
Column. She serves as a Senior Editor for The New Media Journal.
She received her BA in history from Loyola University and her
M.Ed. in Early Childhood Education from National-Louis
University. She is certified to teach in grades K-9 and 6-12
and as a teacher has worked with students in preschool, 1st,
5th, 6th, 7th, 8th,
9th, 11th, and 12th grades. She
has also worked as an adjunct instructor at the graduate school
level. She continues to augment her education and areas of
expertise by taking college courses and participating in a
variety of workshops.
A Constitutionally Illiterate Congressional
Leadership March 23, 2009
The definition
of a citizen is one who is ruled and can rule in turn. We must have the
capacity for both under the law. All citizens must be able to take the
following oath of office:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the
Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and
domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I
take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose
of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of
the office on which I am about to enter.”
Sadly, in today’s day and age, those elected to our legislature do
not have to understand the law to represent their electors.
Consequently, this Congress has proven to be the most constitutionally
illiterate group of people ever elected to office.
To begin, one of the most difficult things to do is to enact a bill into
law. The system of checks and balances was designed by the Founders and
Framers to slow things down. They wanted creating and debating
legislation to be a cumbersome process. Hamilton appealed to the people
of New York,
“The legislature will not be infallible; ...the love of power may
sometimes betray it into a disposition to encroach upon the rights of
other members of the government; that a spirit of faction may sometimes
pervert its deliberations; that impressions of the moment may sometimes
hurry it into measures which itself, on maturer reflexion, would
condemn. The primary inducement to conferring the [veto] power in
question upon the Executive is, to enable him to defend himself; the
secondary one is to increase the chances in favor of the community
against the passing of bad laws, through haste, inadvertence, or design.
The oftener the measure is brought under examination, the greater the
diversity in the situations of those who are to examine it, the less
must be the danger of those errors which flow from want of due
deliberation, or of those missteps which proceed from the contagion of
some common passion or interest. It is far less probable, that culpable
views of any kind should infect all the parts of the government at the
same moment and in relation to the same object, than that they should by
turns govern and mislead every one of them.
“It may perhaps be said that the power of preventing bad laws includes
that of preventing good ones; and may be used to the one purpose as well
as to the other. But this objection will have little weight with those
who can properly estimate the mischiefs of that inconstancy and
mutability in the laws, which form the greatest blemish in the character
and genius of our governments. They will consider every institution
calculated to restrain the excess of law-making, and to keep things in
the same state in which they happen to be at any given period, as much
more likely to do good than harm; because it is favorable to greater
stability in the system of legislation. The injury which may possibly be
done by defeating a few good laws, will be amply compensated by the
advantage of preventing a number of bad ones.” – Federalist Paper
#73
Yet, despite such an admonition -which holds as true today as it did
when the U.S. Constitution was written- President Obama advised our
country that if we do not act immediately to pass the stimulus bill,
“Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis, that, at some point, we may
not be able to reverse.” Rep Nancy Pelosi, a progressive leftist from
CA, is quoted on Jan 8, 2009 as saying, “We must have a bill signed into
law by the middle of February. Our economy requires it. The American
people need it desperately.”
The $787 billion Stimulus Bill, passed quickly, before members of
Congress had time to even read the entire text of the legislation,
allowed some of the beneficiaries to hand out bonuses to their top
executives. In reaction to the fury of the constituents, Congress set
about enacting more hastily drawn up legislation to punish the
beneficiaries of such bonuses.
“The Senate plans to vote next week on steep levies on employee
bonuses after the House overwhelmingly approved a 90 percent tax on
bonuses at American International Group Inc. and other companies
receiving bailout funds.” –
Bloomberg.com
Herein lays the problem.
Congress, in acting with haste, is passing poorly written law without
thinking through the consequences of their actions. In The Constitution
of Liberty, F. A. Hayek writes that if individuals know the law, they
can base their actions upon established rules and that true law provides
the general rules. Legislative enactments which do not satisfy these
criteria are objectionable. The law must be general, known and certain,
and apply equally to all. A necessary condition for the law to be known
and certain is a prohibition on ex post facto laws.
The Cato Journal The U.S. Constitution forbids Congress from passing
an ex post facto law, i.e. a law passed after the occurrence of an event
or action which retrospectively changes the legal consequences of the
event or action.
Worse, this particular law singles out a specific group of people. A
legislative act (Bill of Pains and Penalties) that singles out one or
more persons and imposes punishment on them without benefit of trial was
regarded as “odious” by the framers of the Constitution. It was the role
of a court, judging an individual case, to impose punishment.
Now, the House, the Senate and the Treasury Department are blaming each
other for allowing this loophole. As “We the People” witness the
unfolding saga of the bonuses, stimulus money is being put to use in
programs long championed by the liberal elements of Congress and which
have nothing to do with directly stimulating the economy. Congress is
confiscating and redistributing our hard earned money as we watch
stunned and amazed at what has transpired in President Obama’s first 59
days of office. It is our civic responsibility to put an end to this
nonsense. We have 592 days until the 2010 midterm elections.
When will you add your elected officials’ telephone numbers to your
speed dial list?
