The United States Constitution endows Congress -- not the executive branch -- with overriding responsibility for both foreign and domestic policy. But Congress has unilaterally surrendered its constitutional primacy to the President on an installment plan for more than a century. Without constitutional amendments, the President is currently de facto crowned with virtually limitless power eclipsing the authorities of British King George III which provoked the American Revolution.
This counterrevolution against the Constitution was born in pursuit of an American empire (initially begun under the banner of “Manifest Destiny”) in lieu of the American Republic ordained by the Constitution’s makers. The glory of the Republic is liberty -- the opportunity to march to your own drummer. The glory of empire is the armored knight and raw power for the sake of power racing abroad in search of monsters to destroy. An empire requires a Caesar characterized by secrecy, energy, unity of command, a “decider” in the words of President George W. Bush. The deliberative processes, transparency and compromises of Congress have no role.
All empires crumble like the Roman Colosseum. The American version is crumbling and will ultimately fall unless Congress asserts itself against the executive to restore liberty as the center of our constitutional universe. The earmarks of impending collapse are multiple: perpetual wars; $1.5 trillion in annual national security expenditures that swallow the lion’s share of all discretionary spending, military bases or special forces in virtually every country in the world; a national debt exceeding $31 trillion and climbing; chronic trillion dollar budget deficits; spiraling inflation and interest rates; plunging academic achievement; the migration of national genius from producing goods and services that answer consumer needs to strengthening the warfare state through ever-increasing proficiency in killing; a surveillance state that annihilates individual privacy; and the defilement of due process epitomized by the President playing prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner to kill any person on the planet based on unsubstantiated speculation that the victims are or might in the future become national security threats.
Committee Vice Chairman, constitutional scholar and attorney Bruce Fein will elaborate on the ignored counterrevolution against the Constitution and the self-diminishment of Congress to an inkblot and lay out an agenda to restore separation of powers. Bruce was associate deputy attorney general under President Reagan and counsel to the Joint Congressional Committee on Covert Arms Sales to Iran. He has testified as an expert witness on more than 200 occasions before Congress and is author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy and American Empire Before The Fall. Representatives will be in attendance.