To Amend #2

by Navy Capt (Ret) Peter O’Brien

Here are two more amendments to chew on (you have only one more week to suffer through this). I repeat my earlier comment, none of this is definitive. Rather, these are the starting points for discussion. We need to fix a few points, and to fix them we first need to discuss them. The words below are my attempt to simply stimulate a discussion.

The first is to set a specific limit on the income tax, the second, to limit the ability of the bureaucracy to regulate the citizenry and the economy.

In addition to a Constitutional limit on federal spending as I mentioned last week, I would suggest a separate limit on the income tax, the purpose being to limit the federal government’s ability to tax any single income group of people; the citizenry should all be taxed in essentially the same manner. When the income tax was debated in 1912 there was consideration given to stating a specific limit to the income tax, rates which were quickly passed as we entered into WWI.

Consideration should also be given in Congress to changing the tax filing date from April 15th to October 15th, that is less than 3 weeks before any election, so that the citizenry – the voters – and the people they select to serve them, are reminded of who is paying the bills and how much those bills are.

A Proposal: Limits to the Income Tax, Amendment 16 is amended as follows:

1. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
2. The federal income tax shall be a no more than 12.5% of any individual’s total unadjusted income.
3. No exemptions, allowances or other exclusions are to be provided to any one citizen unless they be provided to all, irrespective of the actual total or the source of that income.

The point is to simply limit the bureaucracy’s ability to target various echelons of society. And, by fixing the maximum income tax rate (as was suggested when the 16th Amendment was first proposed) the citizenry knows how far government can and will go. 

When the 16th Amendment was first proposed various top limits were mentioned all of them quite below any glint in the eye of any tax collector, with upper limits well below 20%. These were all rejected because “the government would never set a tax rate that high.” In 1913 the actual bottom tax rate was 2% for those making more than $20,000 and 7% was the highest tax rate – for those making more than $500,000. Yet 5 years later, in 1918, with the US in World War I, the top tax rate had climbed to 77%, and the bottom rate was 12% for those making more than $4000.

Under the proposed amendments the upper limit would be 12.5% and, supposing last week’s spending amendment were also passed, limiting spending to 12.5% this would tend to force the bureaucracy to allow for fewer exemptions and would force a simplification of the income tax, allowing a reduction in the size of the IRS.

A Proposal: Limits to Federal Regulation

1. The Government of the United States shall pass no law or departmental regulation without establishing the cost to personal liberty, to private property, to the individual states, and to commerce of such action, and publishing these findings no less than 90 days prior to final enactment of the legislation or regulation.
2. The appropriate House and Senate Committee will conduct a biannual – that is, once per each Congress – review of each regulation passed by agencies within their purview.  Regulations which have been challenged by the citizenry or by a state, will be suspended until a “Constitutional Impact Statement” has been provided by the appropriate agency and approved by the proper House and Senate committee.
3. Any regulation that is not reviewed by the appropriate committee in both the House and Senate within a year of being placed in force will be suspended and cannot be reissued until considered by the appropriate committee.
4. This amendment will be in force immediately upon approval.

The point here is that the executive branch is the “execution” arm of the government; constitutionally, it only carries out the law, it does not create the law; Congress does that. For a government office, staffed by the unelected, who are not answerable in any meaningful way to a challenge by a citizen, to nevertheless create what are de facto federal laws, and enforce them with the full might of the federal government behind them, is usurpation of power from Congress and, inevitably, the people.