Congress to us: Damn the Constitution, full spending ahead ...

Hardly a day goes by when I don’t get a press release dropped in my in-box from someone announcing that the federal government is kindly spending another $50,000, $100,000, $1 million, or $10 million in Montana.

Gee, thanks. I’m sure we appreciate it, Uncle Sam.

But don’t you think maybe, what with the $1 trillion deficit and the $14 trillion national debt, you should stop showing off and buying stuff with money you don’t actually have?

Isn’t there a name for that?

Actually, there are many names for it. Take your pick.

Fraud. Pork. Spending like a drunken sailor. Vote-buying. Business as usual.

But, dear citizen, you don’t have to worry about it.

In fact, if you do, you are a spoilsport, a party pooper, a Grinch. How dare you raise the possibility of dismantling a federal program — any federal program — that funds something that someone somewhere likes, needs or just plain wants.

Expect the government to operate Social Security in a financially sound manner? Cut off grants for green energy? Turn off the spigot of agricultural funding? Less money for colleges?

Not bloody likely!

Remember, people in Washington are spending your hard-earned money for the best of reasons — they like the way it makes them feel.

And, face it, the people who get the money like the way it makes them feel, too.

And with all those happy feelings beaming from happy faces, it’s hard for regular folks like me and you to peep up with little old questions about the Constitution or fiduciary responsibility.

Still, someone has to do it.

So here goes.

The United States Constitution — written in 1787, ratified in 1788, and taking effect in 1789 — is indisputably the supreme law of the land. All powers of the national government must emanate from it, or else be fraudulent and tyrannical. No act of the president or the Congress should be allowed to stand unless it is directly authorized by the Constitution. That is plainly spelled out in the 10th Amendment, which says, in its entirety, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Got that? If the Constitution doesn’t say the Congress or President can do it, then they can’t! Unfortunately for us — for We the People — this amendment is utterly ignored by the government it is supposed to restrain.

So, dear citizen, please take a look at Section 8 of Article I of the U.S. Constitution. It’s not hard to do so. The section runs to less than a page of printed material. You can look for it online under the heading of “Powers of Congress,” and when you find it, be prepared to have your world rocked — because Congress has almost no power to spend money. You, ladies and gentlemen, have been taken for a ride.

In a nutshell, you will find that Congress can do the following: Collect taxes, pay debts, borrow money, regulate commerce with foreign nations and between states, establish rules of naturalization, establish bankruptcy laws, coin money and regulate its value, establish laws regarding counterfeiting, establish post offices and roads to ensure that the mail can be delivered, regulate copyright; establish lesser courts; “define and punish” crimes committed on the high seas and “offenses against the Law of Nations”; declare war; grant letters of marque and reprisal; raise and support armies; provide and maintain a navy; make rules to govern the military; provide for “calling forth the militia” and for “organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia”; exercise legislative control over the District of Columbia and over military forts and facilities; and make such laws as are needed to carry out these duties.

There you have it — just a long paragraph’s worth of “powers,” and nary a word in there about health care, education, farm subsidies, or a national endowment for the arts. Don’t take my word for it. Look for yourself. Try in vain to prove me wrong. Or admit the truth, no matter how much it hurts.

Because it is time to say it plainly — the American people have been swindled. This isn’t government of the people, by the people and for the people. It is government of the looters, by the looters and for the looters.

How did they — how DO they — get away with it?

Two simple words — “general welfare.” At the beginning of section 8 of Article I of the Constitution, the looters found this phrase, which was the “open sesame” for trillions of dollars of treasure — “Congress shall have Power to ... provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.”

Through the portal of the “general welfare” — and with the acquiescence of the judiciary — Congress has been able to loot the wealth of this great nation for any purpose it deemed worthy, thus neutering the Constitution and leaving Americans without a fig leaf to their name.

If there ever were an independent judiciary, this sham would be exposed in a minute. It doesn’t take long to figure out that the “general welfare of the United States” is something quite different than the individual welfare of one farmer, one student, one university, one automobile manufacturer — yet most of the largess handed out by the federal government is done so on an individual basis.

Besides, if “general welfare” allows the Congress to spend money on anything it wants, the Founding Fathers could have saved a lot of time by writing Section 8, Powers of Congress, as this: “Congress can do whatever it thinks is in the best interest of the United States.”

Moreover, even the use of the phrase United States in the Constitution means something quite different than what we imagine it does. Before the Civil War, it was well understood that our country was indeed a federation of individual and sovereign States. Thus, when contemplating the “general” welfare of the “united” States, we were specifically talking about what was good for ALL the states as a UNIT, not what might please one state, and certainly not the kind of targeted spending that has become famous in congressional earmarks. A half-million dollars to fund a Teapot Museum is probably good for the welfare of the people who run the museum, and maybe for teapot collectors, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the welfare of the 50 united States.

And it’s a lot more than a half-million dollars.

Consider the evidence of my in-box. In the week of Oct. 3-9, I kept track of the goodies coming to Montana by way of Uncle Sam’s charitable contributions. Lots of it doesn’t have a specific dollar amount for Montana, as it is part of a bigger handout, but let’s just concentrate on the ones with a pricetag attached,and which ultimately trace back to federal dollars.

Oct. 4: “The Montana Department of Agriculture this week mailed award letters to seven successful applicants for specialty crop block grants [funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture] totaling $292, 955.”

Oct. 4 “U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood today announced a combined $776 million for urban and rural transit providers in 45 states and the District of Columbia to help bring buses, bus facilities and related equipment into a state of good repair.” The Missoula Urban Transportation District project to renovate the downtown transfer center received $590,400.

Oct. 5: “Montana Senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester are applauding the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Hiring Program for the Flathead County Sheriff’s Department... The Flathead County Sheriff’s Department will receive $209,304.”

Oct. 7: “Montana Public Radio receives $500,000 in grants [from the U.S. Department of Commerce] to expand coverage.”

Oct. 8: “Montana’s senior U.S. Senator Max Baucus announced today Montana is one of three states selected for a new initiative to improve health care for veterans in rural areas, particularly when they’re in need of emergency care. Today’s news means Baucus’ legislation has come full circle, now that Montana was awarded nearly $300,000 to enhance health care services offered to veterans in rural Montana under the new authority created by his legislation.”

So let’s add it up. That comes to $1,892,659 for one week of handouts. Some of that is just for Flathead County or Northwest Montana and similar grants may have been made across the state, but let’s just assume that is everything done for the entire state for one week.

Then multiply that $1.9 million by 52 weeks. You can see that the kitty for federal payouts to Montana is then $98,418,268 for one year. What the heck, let’s call it $100 million.

Now let’s figure that Montana has about 1 million people (we actually have less, but round numbers are cool). Let’s figure moreover that the United States population is 310 million (you can probably see where I am going by now).

That means we can multiply Montana’s total amount of federal largess for one year by 310 to get the total amount being doled out by our good-hearted senators and representatives in Washington.

Do the math. That comes to $31 billion in goodies for our senators and representatives to feel good about.

Yeah, but a lot of that money is spent on worthy causes, our liberal friends will argue. It may or may not be worthy. That isn’t the issue. Most of it, however, is constitutionally suspect, at best, and criminal at worst.

Mind you, the $1.9 million in grants I know about are just the goodies that they bothered to send me, and mostly are focused on Northwest Montana. It would probably still be a conservative estimate to say that during the same week, all of Montana received at least $5 million in federal grants and awards.

If that’s true, then using the same multiplier formula, we would get $260 million spent on the state in one year, and $80 billion spent on the 50 states in the form of feel-good spending.

We can look at that number — $80 billion — and say one of two things: “So what?” or “What an outrage!”

If you said, “So what?” then I say to you, “What an outrage!”