In a January 30 appearance with Elizabeth MacDonald on Fox Business’s The Evening Edit, American Majority CEO Ned Ryun, author of the best-selling American Leviathan: The Birth of the Administrative State and Progressive Authoritarianism, advanced a singular proposition for President Trump to utilize an often neglected tool in the executive branch’s workshop for dismantling the “Deep State”: presidential commissions.
Succinctly, the chief executive establishes presidential commissions to address an issue and report directly back to them for prospective further action. The president determines the commission’s scope; appoints its leadership and membership; establishes its charge, functions, and powers; its funding and other administrative support from the executive branch; and sets a deadline for its termination. (See Mr. Biden’s presidential commission on expanding—i.e. packing—the Supreme Court.)
Per Mr. Ryun, there needs to be a presidential commission composed wholly of members of the public to investigate abuses of power and all instances of the weaponization of government by those who were—and perhaps still are—entrusted with the police and surveillance powers of the state.
“I think it is time for President Trump to appoint a special presidential commission, in which he appoints all the members of that commission; gives them full investigative and subpoena powers; and has that commission report directly to him. And then when Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, Tulsi Gabbards, and John Ratcliffe are confirmed, have all of them come before the commission; [and] have those hearings be public.”
Mr. Ryun then went further, explaining what should be done with the presidential commission’s findings:
“[The presidential commission] should do a final report with recommendations, including stripping even more people of security clearances, prosecutions, [proposing] legislative reforms from Congress. It’s time to pull back and have radical transparency and accountability for these institutions that have been massively abused over the last nine years.”
Some may argue that the presidential commission is merely repeating much of the oversight work performed by Congress over the last few years. This overlooks two important factors.
First, the Biden administration was, shall we say, less than cooperative and forthcoming in responding to Congressional oversight requests, especially from the Republican-led House. There is likely a lot left on and, more importantly, under the table for a public commission to unearth and investigate. Given the diminished, though still extant, bipartisan opposition to reforming the administrative state, President Trump is best served by establishing his commission rather than wholly relying upon Congress to do it.
Secondly, as Mr. Ryun stresses, these abuses of power were falsely deemed justified as being done in the defense of the very public whose trust they violated:
“If President Trump were to do this, he should announce: ‘I’m doing this for the American people. This abuse has been done in the name of the American people, they have funded it; and the American people deserve to know the whole truth about what’s happened the last nine years with the FBI, the DOJ, and our intel community.’”
I could not agree more. As I responded to Mr. Ryun at the time: “Great idea, @nedryun, for a presidential commission composed of the public for the public to protect the public from government abusing its powers.”
Mr. Ryun is correct, and this renders it critically important that his proposal not be incorrectly perceived.
This or any other prospective presidential commission would be designed by Mr. Trump to facilitate reforming and deciding the future and fate of the components of the executive branch. Thus, such a presidential commission could operate contemporaneously to provide suggestions for current and future reforms to President Trump or could serve as a post-mortem inquest providing to him ameliorative measures for the damage the rogue agency and individuals caused and the prophylactic policies to ensure such abuses of power never again occur.
Above all, as his final term progresses, by keeping the administrative state’s abuses front and center in the citizenry’s mind, any of Mr. Trump’s prospective presidential commissions will maximize the first and best guard against the resurrection of the rogue administrative state: public awareness and transparency.
The deep state thrives in darkness; the deep state dies in daylight. Consequently, if President Trump implements Mr. Ryun’s sound proposal, I would humbly offer a further suggestion: next up, a publicly comprised, likely post-mortem, presidential commission on the waste, fraud, abuse, and weaponization of USAID. Talk about lit…
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An American Greatness contributor, the Hon. Thaddeus G. McCotter (M.C., Ret.) served Michigan’s 11th Congressional District from 2003-2012 and served as Chair of the Republican House Policy Committee. Not a lobbyist, he is a frequent public speaker and moderator for public policy seminars; and a Monday co-host of the “John Batchelor Radio Show,” among sundry media appearances.
Yes, this is what the President must do but that does not prevent a recurrence of similar rogue taxing and spending by future Administrations. What prevents future politicians from ignoring clear and unambiguous Constitutional language and directives which allows them to become radicalized and unmoored to, again, tax and spend without restrictions?
Article I, Section VIII, directs Congressional legislators to restrain from legislation outside of specific categories. Furthermore Section IX prohibits taxing and spending without a public accounting for it. I see nothing which suggests that legislators can create anything like the USAID without an Amendment. The preamble regarding the general welfare is not only insufficient to do what is being done but has been directly addressed by the Founders themselves as to why they wrote only 17 specific and restrictive legislative responsibilities and no others.
America’s legislators and judges are constitutionally illiterate. The creation of an operational USAID is what happens when legislators violate their oaths and when appointed judges act as legislators and executives instead of staying with the narrow parameters of their own branch. They don’t recognize that America’s republican government is based on a Separation of Powers among each of the three branches of government. America is no longer the Constitutional Republic it was designed to be and out of all the Amendments I see none which gives any Administration the authority to create a USAID bureaucracy to do what Administrations have been doing with it. What needs to be addressed is the low Constitutional IQ of America’s elected and appointed. Until there is a realignment with Original Intent any fix is subject to future failure. And for most in the Democratic Party that is their very intention.
Task, I’m not following your argument that the creation of USAID isn’t Constitutional. When I compare its creation to that of other federal agencies, I see many parallels-----so many parallels that I don’t see any distinctive differences. The largest parallel I see is that with the creation of the CIA.
In both cases, the agencies were established by an Act of Congress. In the particular case of USAID, the congressional authority was in the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. Subsequent to the Foreign Assistance Act, JFK established USAID by Executive Order. In a similar vein, the CIA was established through Congressional authority under the National Security Act of 1947 and further codified under the Central Intelligence Act of 1949. Following the Central Intelligence Act, Truman established the Central Intelligence Group (CIG) under the direction of the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) also by Executive Order.
If I’m following your reasoning (and I’m totally unsure if I am) then the CIA is just as much unconstitutional as USAID.
Another parallel is that both agencies feel they are immune from Congressional inquiry on mission, operations, expenditures, and accountability. Over the years, Senator Grassley has papered the halls asking about programs and expenditures only to be told by the Agency they are “independent” (similar to claims by the CIA) and not subject to Congressional scrutiny.
Does your argument also apply to the Department of Education----as its existence follows a similar history of having an enabling act by legislation and then establishment by Executive Order?
Don’t get me wrong, I feel all three organizations to be abominations that strayed very far from original intent, and deserve to die swift deaths, I am just falling short on understanding how they are unconstitutional. Because, to me, if they are, then the same holds for every federal agency ever created----the bulk of which we were gifted by Wilson and Roosevelt.
“A little less conversation, a little more action.”
Busy day… I’ll get to my point later. It goes back to before ratification by several of the Founders and what they emphasized prior they also emphasized post ratification.
Socrates was considered the wisest of all ancient Greeks by the oracle who was supposedly closest to Apollo, not because he was wise but because he knew he wasn’t. Now I am certainly not Socrates or anywhere near close but I do share something in common. It is the presumption that people already understand what I know and probably know even more so I don’t have to explain some things. But sometimes I have to.
Consider the 14th Amendment and the concept that anyone born in America is automatically a citizen at conception. That was never the intent of that Amendment statement. It does not say that. Yet it is currently deemed to be the law. Consider the clear language of the Second Amendment and two SCOTUS decisions affirming what it clearly means yet some states still violate it. Judges act like legislators and executives and the NYC Bragg trial should make what they are illegally doing evident. I once asked an attorney why 501C non profits protected some HOA board members from prosecution and the answer was that all judges accept it as law. After four days of research by his law firm he (they) could not find any statute which supported such protection. It was just accepted. And that is the the point I have tried to make, time and time again, regarding America’s unconstitutional legislative behavior.
The claim that Founders, who wrote the Constitution, would allow a legislature, crafted by a document they just created, to tax and spend unrestrained, is unimaginable considering that the country just emerged from a victorious war with Britain partially based on what was considered unfair taxation. Consequently they put in safeguards. The Framers sought to limit the legislative power only to those powers granted by the Constitution. Section 8 of Article 1 sets out the bulk of Congress’s enumerated legislative authorities including those pertaining to taxing and spending. Section 8 also provides that Congress may “make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers” and other express constitutional powers. Section 9 requires a public accounting. Now let’s examine what the Framer’s actually said.
“If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions. It is to be remarked that the phrase out of which this doctrine is elaborated, is copied from the old articles of Confederation, where it was always understood as nothing more than a general caption to the specified powers, and it is a fact that it was preferred in the new instrument for that very reason as less liable than any other misconstruction”. – Letter by Jame Madison to JM Pendleton
“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.” – James Madison, Federal No. 45
“The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.” – James Madison
In 1794 Congress appropriated $15,000 to be given to French Huguenots who fled from insurrection in San Domingo. James Madison wrote disapprovingly, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” – James Madison
“With respect to the two words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." – James Madison
"Our tenet ever was that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated, and that, as it was never meant that they should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers, so it could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action; consequently, that the specification of powers is a limitation of the purposes for which they may raise money. " – Thomas Jefferson letter to Albert Gallatin, 1817
“They are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare… [G]iving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which may be good for the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please.” – Thomas Jefferson
“We must confine ourselves to the powers described in the Constitution, and the moment we pass it, we take an arbitrary stride towards a despotic Government.” – James Jackson, First Congress, 1st Annals of Congress
“Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.” – Thomas Jefferson, Draft Kentucky Resolutions, 1798. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh
I can go on. Here is one more… a whopper!
“Resolved, That the General Assembly of Virginia, doth unequivocally express a firm resolution to maintain and defend the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of this State, against every aggression either foreign or domestic … That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact, to which the states are parties; as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact; as no further valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.” – James Madison