The federal government with aid and assistance from the federal courts has for decades used crowbars and blasting caps to pry open the Commerce Clause of the Constitution of the United States. The Commerce Clause can be found in Article 1, Section 8, and is one of the enumerated powers of the federal government. When the Articles of Confederation was the fundamental document of national governance, various states engaged in trade wars to protect their local industries and enterprises. When the Constitution was devised, the Framers sought to eliminate the state versus state competition and open the national marketplace for everyone. In essence, the Commerce Clause was designed to assure that individual states would not erect trade barriers against other states. The purpose was to protect intrastate and interstate commerce. Times have changed.
Although states still cannot erect unfair obstacles today, the federal government has latched onto the Commerce Clause to justify its intervention into nearly every area of American life. The tempo for federal involvement while using the Commerce Clause as justification picked up during the 1930’s with FDR’s aggressive big government agenda. It has continued through today with Presidents and Congresses of both parties continuing to expand the federal role in our lives. As an example, education has been the responsibility of the states since the founding. Beginning in the Thirties the government began to provide some level of subsidies for the states and later for local districts. It was the George W. Bush administration that dramatically expanded the reach of the federal government with the passage of the “No Child Left Behind Act.” This legislation broadened the subsidy-goodie aspect of federal involvement to include a punitive element. Does public education qualify as interstate commerce? Well, if you are an overreaching Big Brother or Nanny State, you would cite the facts that textbooks move across state lines, students sometimes relocate with their families to other states and every classroom has maps of the nation and the world hanging on the wall (just kidding about this one, but I expect some bureaucrat to use it someday).
Just like your nosy neighbor, Big Government wants to call the shots for every aspect of your life. There is a problem, however, and it’s that pesky Constitution. Our fearless leaders whom we’ve elected over the years and their bureaucratic flunkies searched diligently for a flaw in the document that would allow them to have their way with us. Apparently, they’ve found it with the complicity of the courts. Anything that involves commerce of any type at any time can be subjected to federal control and regulation. That covers just about everything, doesn’t it? Oh no, it does not. Ask Roscoe Fillburn.
Roscoe was a wheat grower. During the Depression the government set acreage limits on various crops to limit production in an attempt to increase prices. Roscoe Fillburn exceeded his acreage allotment, but he did not intend to sell his excess wheat. He wanted to feed it to his own chickens. He was NOT going to sell the wheat, but he was charged with violating the law. The rationale was that because he fed the excess wheat to HIS OWN chickens, he, in effect, was not purchasing wheat on the open market which he would have done if he had not violated the acreage limits. In other words, Roscoe was in violation of the rules and regulations justified by the Commerce Clause because he did not buy wheat. It started in the state court when Roscoe Fillburn challenged the charges, and ended with the Supreme Court of the United States siding with the government and against Fillburn (Wickard vs. Fillburn, 1942). So, friends and neighbors, for the past 70 years or so, failure to engage in commerce is open to regulation by the Nanny State. Once the government gets its claws into you, it never lets go. The only remedy is for the people to fight it en masse. If it is unconstitutional for the federal government to overreach and over-regulate in domestic commerce, how much more egregious is it for Big Brother to control and FORCE non-commerce. How’s that Obamacare working out for you? The GOP House must, absolutely must, stop the $105 billion appropriation that was hidden in healthcare enabling legislation. It must be stopped in the Continuing Resolution. If Boehner, Cantor, McCarthy and others do not address this for fear of a veto, they should be removed from office by any means possible…immediately.
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