Several candidates for the 2020 presidential nomination, including Ms. Harris, said they were open to the idea of packing the court by expanding the number of seats. Mr. Biden opposed the idea, but a week after he exited the 2024 presidential race, he announced a “bold plan” to “reform” the high court. It would pack the court via term limits and also impose a “binding code of conduct,” aimed at conservative justices.
Ms. Harris quickly endorsed the proposal in a statement, citing a “clear crisis of confidence” in the court owing to “decision after decision overturning long-standing precedent.” She might as well have added “because you don’t like the outcome.” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.) has already introduced ethics and term-limits legislation and said Ms. Harris’s campaign has told him “that your bills are precisely aligned with what we are talking about.”
The attacks on the court are part of a growing counterconstitutional movement that began in higher education and seems recently to have reached a critical mass in the media and politics. The past few months have seen an explosion of books and articles laying out a new vision of “democracy” unconstrained by constitutional limits on majority power.
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The cry for radical constitutional change is shortsighted. The constitutional system was designed for bad times, not only good times. It seeks to protect individual rights, minority factions and smaller states from the tyranny of the majority. The result is a system that forces compromise. It doesn’t protect us from political divisions any more than good medical care protects us from cancer. Rather it allows the body politic to survive political afflictions by pushing factions toward negotiation and moderation.
When Benjamin Franklin said the framers had created “a republic, if you can keep it,” he meant that we needed to keep faith in the Constitution. Law professors mistook their own crisis of faith for a constitutional crisis. They have become a sort of priesthood of atheists, keeping their frocks while doffing their faith. The true danger to the American democratic system lies with politicians who would follow their lead and destroy our institutions in pursuit of political advantage.
My research on this topic suggests that only 5 percent of the improper payments are underpayments, and most of the overpaid money is never recovered. Medicare, Medicaid, and that darling of the right and the left, the earned income tax credit, are all systematically at the top of the improper-payment culprit list every year.
Yet nothing happens except that the improper payments grow. It’s another sign that government officials, Republican or Democrat—probably including your own House and Senate representatives, dear readers—have very little respect for our hard-earned dollars. We shouldn’t tolerate such abuse.
In public policy, pundits turn to passive voice when the idea of giving someone authority to deal with a problem sounds scary. I can think of several examples.
In passive voice, it is easy to say “All illegal immigrants should be deported.” But in active voice, that means sending government agents in uniform to knock on everyone’s door, demanding proof of citizenship from those inside. Your door and my door would be knocked on, because until they try everyone’s door, the agents have no way of knowing which residences house illegal immigrants and which do not.
In passive voice, it is easy to say, “Misinformation on social media should be banned.” But in active voice, that means assigning specific individuals to sift through social media content and determine what is misinformation. Presumably, they will need help from software, but specific people with specific ideas will have to design that software. The people writing the software and making the decisions will be ordinary humans, with their flaws and biases.
Juliette Sellgren talks with Yuval Levin about the American covenant.
Vance Ginn explains that “tariffs ‘protect’ insiders, while Americans pay the price.” A slice:
The current account deficit with other countries is balanced by a capital account surplus, where foreign savings flow into the US, helping finance our national debt and keeping interest rates lower than they would otherwise be. However, the flow of funds is slowing as some countries shift away from the US dollar, opting for gold and other assets. This trend poses a risk to the US economy by potentially restricting our ability to trade with other countries and raising the cost of borrowing as interest rates rise. This shift from the dollar, known as de-dollarization, underscores the importance of maintaining strong international trade relationships and avoiding protectionist policies alienating trading partners. As global confidence in the US dollar wanes, the economic benefits of foreign investment could diminish, leading to higher costs for Americans.
David Henderson is correct: “Subsidies to the press endanger free speech.”
Bob Graboyes gets a jump on things by doing a postmortem on the 2023 presidential election.
