Total government spending in the American Colonies took away just 1% to 2% of GDP. In the USA through 1913, apart from during major wars, spending took away just 3% to 8% of GNP. Now, spending takes away 43% of GDP.
National-government regulations alone now take away another 8% of GDP.
The quantity of money was inflated by congressmen and presidents using their new Fed throughout the 1920s, causing the 1929–1945 Great Depression. Double that money inflation caused the 1970s Great Inflation, and a roughly-comparable amount caused the 2007 Financial Crisis. Doubling those latter amounts, the money inflation from August 2008 to April 2022 was 303%. The covid portion alone, 120%, was of the same order of magnitude as the money inflation that had caused each of those previous crises. And like their predecessors’ hyperactivity kept all those previous crises going, current congressmen and presidents are keeping their money inflation going now.
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The national-government debt is now 123% of GDP, and politicians keep adding more. But what can’t continue forever, won’t. Already, attracting treasury-bond buyers to even the existing debt is requiring increasingly-higher interest rates.
The root cause of all of this despotism has been simple enough: both major parties have been majority big-government Progressive since 1894. Both parties’ despotic legislators have grabbed executive powers, and both parties’ despotic executives have let them.
Legislators Grab Executive Powers
Despotic legislators have grabbed the executive power to allocate line-item budgets.
They have delegated their legislative power to regulate. They have then grabbed even the resulting illegitimate executive power, by controlling the regulators, through line-item appropriations, and through oversight other than summary impeachment.
In their various oversight actions, despotic legislators have relentlessly grabbed the executive power to control how to enforce the laws: the executive powers to organize departments, to control who gets hired and who can be fired or let go, and to control even what processes the executives must follow—even dictating minute details that executives must report to the legislators.
When legislators grab executive power, they unconstitutionally combine powers. Once combined, these powers can’t offset and limit each other. Without such limiting to serve as sanctions, there is no force compelling government people to follow the Constitution’s good rules.
As plural executives, legislators are unaccountable. They leave burdensome unconstitutional statutes in place and keep adding to the burden. Meanwhile most of all, session after session, they logroll: they divvy out favors, to get cronies’ donations, to broadcast false or deceptive sales pitches, to get reelected.
Some Representatives Start Supporting the Constitution
In state legislatures and to a lesser extent in the national legislature, freedom-caucus members are beginning to bring government-limiting bills up for recorded votes. Sometimes this leads their crony-backed opponents in their own party to vote for freedom. More often so far, this creates clear voting records, and freedom-caucus members then inform voters about opponents’ bad votes to primary and defeat heavily crony-funded opponents.
Legislative blocs grow more slowly than executives can get elected, so executives are already showing how to limit governments. Recent and present state attorney generals, for example Louisiana’s Jeff Landry and Missouri’s Eric Schmitt and Andrew Bailey, and one governor so far, Florida’s Ron DeSantis, have been unprecedentedly using their powers against other government jurisdictions. Under a different constitution, Argentina president Javier Milei has rapidly chainsawed his government by 30%.
Caucuses can make greater strides in limiting governments by tightening caucus membership rules. Voters can take matters into their own hands by never voting for any national or state legislator whose latest-term Freedom Index is—or, going forward, likely could be—below 80%.
Activists, media, voters, and politicians can make the greatest strides if they understand which specific actions support the Constitution best.
Rules-and-Sanctions Boundary Must Get Respected and Enforced
When legislators first start limiting governments in earnest, they must do this by shifting to just two main actions.
First, they must quickly pass a single overall-total appropriation. It must no longer be a minutely-detailed shopping list, every item of which they claim that executives must fully spend, in the exact amount they dictate in their list. Instead, their single total appropriation must be a required constitutional check on executives’ power.
Second, legislators must pass bills that if enacted will be constitutional. Their highest priority must be to pass repeals of the many existing statutes that are unconstitutional because these statutes fail at least one of the following simple pass/fail tests:
- No misleading parts.
- Only uses powers enumerated for the national government.
- No delegation of legislative power.
- No grabs of executive power.
- No grabs of judicial power.
- Not noncritical, complex, or long, and not helping make the total corpus of law incomprehensibly complex or long.
By quickly passing a single total appropriation and then repealing unconstitutional statutes, legislators must start limiting themselves. Executives must also start limiting legislators.
Executives must use their executive powers to organize departments, allocate budgets within the legislator-passed overall-total appropriation, hire, lay off or fire, control work processes, and manage all officers who aren’t empowered and managed through processes explicitly specified in the Constitution.
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If legislators then impeach and remove an executive for doing this, succeeding executives must simply do the same. Voters will keep electing such Constitution-protecting executives, and voters will replace such despotic legislators.
Statutes that are constitutional as shown by the simple tests above will consist solely of rules and sanctions that apply to all persons. They won’t specify any enforcement actions that executives must take.
Legislators and executives must hold legislators to passing bills that if enacted into statutes will be constitutional. Executives must step up and choose for themselves every action they take to enforce the resulting constitutional statutes, similar treaties, and judicial opinions.
Within each government jurisdiction, limiting legislators to passing rules and sanctions is the fundamental process boundary.
Violating this boundary is despotism. Securing this boundary will greatly advance freedom.
