On the recordFebruary 11, 2011
Article I, section 1 of our Constitution provides that all legislative powers be granted to the Congress of the United States. I remember when I was in fifth grade, I had a teacher named Mrs. Arndt in a seminal moment in my education who taught us what was right at the time and what's been badly distorted since, and that is, that we have three branches of a government: an executive branch to apply the law; a judicial branch to interpret it; and a legislative branch to make the law. Unfortunately, that has all been turned on its head. We used to have the conventional wisdom that as we left here, that the people's life, liberty, and property were safe. In fact, as my colleague and good friend Ron Paul said, When we leave here, we lose accountability, and we turn the process over to unelected bureaucrats. The purpose of those constitutional provisions was to provide accountability through elections, the popular will; and yet this administration has consistently ignored separation of powers and legislative functions, blatantly and defiantly through unelected, often even unratified, unaccountable, nameless, faceless bureaucrats who continually thwart the popular will and sound public policy.
