Filibuster, Be Gone!
William Kristol ("Break the Filibuster," May 9) and David A. Crockett are spot-on in describing the unconstitutionality of using the filibuster to block presidential appointees.
The relevant portion of Article 2, Section 2--which describes the powers of the presidency--provides that "[the president] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law . . . "
You will note that in treaty-making, the president is required to have a two-thirds majority (i.e., a supermajority) of the Senate on board. However, his power to appoint ambassadors, judges, ministers, and counsels is clearly not limited by the necessity of a supermajority.
Throughout the Constitution, the Framers carefully stipulate when a supermajority is required and by which congressional chamber. Their meaning could not be any clearer: Absent an explicit requirement for a supermajority, only a simple majority is required.
The Democrats are experts at teasing out hidden and novel meanings in the Constitution. Their efforts against the Second Amendment, for example, have been breathtaking. But no matter how they torture the language of the document, Democrats' use of the filibuster to block President Bush's appointment of judges is manifestly unconstitutional.
They have left us with the question famously posed by comedian Richard Pryor: "Who you goin' to believe? Me or your lyin' eyes?"
Jim Fink
Lincoln, MA
Out of the Quagmire
Fred Barnes suggests that President Bush's Social Security reform plan is too ambitious ("A Social Security Quagmire?" May 2). To the contrary, the president should be far more aggressive on Social Security, and the system should eventually be given a proper burial.
When FDR hatched Social Security during the Great Depression, the idea was to provide a safety net for older citizens, but not to provide their primary source of retirement income. Since then it has grown into a massive socialist welfare program, which inherently redistributes income without regard to merit. It is also a fraudulent Ponzi scheme, whereby new suckers are required to pay back earlier suckers.
As Bush has pointed out, participants do not have an account balance in their own names, because their money has already been spent. Some of the payroll taxes are not even used to pay retirees, but are applied for the general purposes of the federal government. If a corporate pension plan were administered in this fashion, the company executives would go to jail. Congress would pass new legislation to prevent further abuses, and people would be demanding that the company make retribution to the employees whose contributions were misapplied for fraudulent purposes.
So instead of patching up Social Security, we should be dismantling it. A good beginning would be to allow all participants to bail out on a voluntary basis. The government should offer a lump-sum payment option: to include each participant's aggregate contributions, aggregate employer contributions, plus a nominal rate of interest (maybe 2.5 percent). After making each lump sum payment, the government would have no further liability and the recipient could invest the money however he or she saw fit. This would of course create more government debt, but any realistic solution to the Social Security crisis involves restructuring charges.
Initially, younger Americans (perhaps up to age 45) would bail out, and those already retired or about to retire would opt for remaining in the program to receive their anticipated retirement income. But eventually very few people would want to remain in the socialist program, and it would be mercifully put to sleep.
Jim O'Brien
Maitland, FL
Estate of the Union?
Seldom do I stand in such utter contrast to an opinion appearing in The Weekly Standard. Irwin M. Stelzer's "Death and Taxes" (May 9) argues that estate beneficiaries--if young and/or immature--might squander their inheritance.
A beneficiary's use of inherited wealth is not the government's business. Indeed, Stelzer's reasoning closely tracks that traditionally employed by liberals to justify social engineering policies.
In his final paragraph, Stelzer challenges the "repealers" to choose a tax that must be raised so that the revenue lost from an abolished inheritance tax can be recouped. I do not want to raise any taxes. I want to lower federal spending.
For those who might be laughing at the impossibility of a fiscally restrained Congress, I should remind you that less than 1,000 days ago a free Iraq was deemed "impossible." Conservatism has momentum. And raising a tax--any tax--represents a step backward.
Dale Kutsch
Oceanside, CA
Rarely has Irwin M. Stelzer been so wide of the mark as he is in "Death and Taxes." He makes a compelling case that inheritance money often shelters individuals from being forced to learn how to be productive. Burkean conservatives can agree. But that is not the same thing as using the confiscatory powers of the state to compel such behavior.
One doesn't need to be a libertarian to find Stelzer's argument Krugman-esque at best. If he wants to find ways to expand the government's revenue base, Stelzer need look no further than his own writings in The Weekly Standard a few months ago advocating energy taxes.
A $2-per-gallon gasoline tax would offer a superb way to raise revenue, induce productive behavior, protect the environment, and improve our security situation. It might even enable us to further lower marginal income tax rates, reduce or eliminate the even more regressive payroll tax, and liberate ourselves from mindless fuel-economy mandates.
Michael Schwartz
Mill Valley, CA
I sure hope Irwin M. Stelzer was attempting tongue-in-cheek drollery with "Death and Taxes," because the reasoning he used to support the death tax was difficult to follow.
Stelzer offhandedly wonders why conservatives do worry that welfare recipients lose the "incentive" to work but don't worry that people who inherit wealth often leave the work force. Well, there's a big difference between the two.
A person on welfare is not contributing to society and is, in fact, taxing society's resources, whereas those who are living off an inheritance still contribute to society (by spending their inheritance money and paying income taxes on investments). Moreover, estate beneficiaries have no need of the resources offered by society. The difference could not be clearer.
Amazingly, Stelzer seems to imagine that charitable giving is spurred by the death tax. Yet, even as he seems to believe this position, he presents evidence against it.
Stelzer winds up his piece with an argument by Adam Smith that inherited wealth should be taxed so that every child can discover the gratification of finding his own road in life. I presume Stelzer imagines that everyone would find some kind of moral perfection simply because he started off poor. But I was not aware that the tax code was meant to regulate morality.
Stelzer quotes Bastiat to the effect that men will take pains to be sure their children are provided for, and that inherited wealth is a natural outgrowth of this human propensity. But isn't it just as likely that overburdening death taxes might force fathers to leave their children wanting in the end?
There is a bigger question that Stelzer never seems to address: Why should anyone labor to amass a personal fortune only to have the government swoop in and gobble so much of it up? Let's remember the government does nothing whatsoever to produce wealth, and in fact does a lot to impede its creation.
Warner Todd Huston
Chicago, IL
Comic Books
As a freshman in high school, I was delighted to see Pamela R. Winnick's piece about the poor state of our textbooks ("A Textbook Case of Junk Science," May 9). In our English book, roughly one-fifth of the stories concern the destruction of the earth through nuclear war or environmental ruin. Our science books have the "Big Bang Theory" and "evolution" featured as key vocabulary words without any sort of alternate explanations.
Our social studies books, meanwhile, mention Bill Clinton three times without mentioning Ronald Reagan at all. These books were neither written nor published during Clinton's presidency.
I go to a public high school in Kentucky, but I feel as though I'm attending some sort of snobbish art school. What's worse, our principal seems indifferent on the matter.
Chris Henry
Somerset, KY
DVD Nation
Reflecting on "the aesthetic impact of the DVD," Martha Bayles ("Hollywood Means Business," April 25) asks, "Will this help to educate the public about the history of film, thereby developing its taste and improving quality overall? Or will it degrade taste by reducing the experience of watching a movie to something you can do any time, anywhere, on your ever-miniaturizing laptop?"
These alternatives are neither mutually exclusive nor mutually exhaustive. Worse, Bayles provides no reason to think there's an inverse relationship between the availability and accessibility of a movie and the aesthetic value of the experience. If there were, professors of film studies, with easy access and constant exposure to films, would be among those with the most degraded taste.
Steven M. Sanders
Franklin, MA