We military folk and veterans took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Indeed, all federal officers take that oath. Well, the Constitution is being ignored and the result is that we, the people, have lost part of our voice in our government. And when we lose some of our power to control our government—someone else grabs it. So, military community, it’s time to stand up and demand conformance by our federal government to our Constitution.
The United States is a Constitutional Republic. A republic is a representative democracy—that is, we, the people, don’t vote on governmental issues—our elected representatives do that for us. As a Constitutional Republic we have made the rule of law—that is, the Constitution—the source of law, power, and authority in our nation.
Our Constitution, in Article 1, created the Congress; it’s the legislative or law-making branch of our government. It is composed of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Every person lives in a Congressional district and all US citizens are entitled to vote for their Congressional representative—called a Congressman or Congresswoman or, my term, Congresscritter; they serve 2-year terms. I’ll skip over the illegal voting issue for now.
Every state has two US Senators who are elected by all citizens of that state; senators serve 6-year terms.
For a bill to become law, both the House and the Senate must pass the bill; then it goes to the president, who may sign it or veto it. Once signed, it becomes the law.
By law, Congress is to pass a budget every year. However, in the past five years the US Senate has only passed one budget—they clearly are not doing their job. When there is no budget at the beginning of the fiscal year, that is, on 1 Oct, the Congress can pass a Continuing Resolution—that is, an appropriations bill that funds government agencies—normally at current levels of funding. This lets the government function while a budget is worked out.
Well, we have no budget, again. So the Republican led House passed a continuing resolution bill. The first version totally defunded Obamacare. This was partially political, as Republicans have long opposed government controlled national health—indeed, such involvement is clearly forbidden by the 10th Amendment—but I digress. The Republicans also defunded Obamacare because, as of the latest CNN poll, about 2/3 of Americans oppose Obamacare—so they were also reflecting the will of the folks who elected them—that’s what they are supposed to do.
So the bill went to the Senate. The senate leader, Democrat Harry Reid of Nevada, wouldn’t even look at it. So the House passed a milder version—this is clearly in the spirit of trying to work things out—you know, compromise; the latest version simply delays the implementation of Obamacare for a year. Again, Senator Reid will not let this bill come up for a vote. Result, stalemate and name calling.
Here’s the Constitutional issue. Because Senator Reid will not allow the senate to vote on this bill, our elected representatives, our US Senators, are unable to vote on our behalf. So, we, the people, are denied our input on this legislation—we’re being dictated to by one or two senior people and denied our rights. They have stolen from us our power to be represented by our senators—one of our ways of controlling our government.
Why are they doing this? Well, there are 54 Democrats in the Senate and 46 Republicans—so, in a straight party-line vote, the House-proposed bill would clearly be defeated in the Senate. And the standoff would be over; the House would have to come up with another version or be at fault for not doing their job.
However, it appears that a number of Democratic senators oppose Obamacare, too—after all, they represent the people of their states and 2/3 oppose Obamacare. So, rather than seeing a defunding of their favorite project, Obamacare,—they deny us our rights to have our Senators vote on this important legislation. And we’re letting them!
And, because our government is somewhat shut down, the president has maliciously stopped all citizens from doing things like visiting open air monuments—like the WWII monument and the Vietnam Wall—and all kinds of things. And while he’s taking away the rights of Americans to honor our veterans by closing off all kinds of open areas—he hosted a rally on the Mall for illegal aliens! He made it illegal for US citizens including veterans to visit national monuments in Washington, DC—while he hosted a gathering of illegal people. Can you see a total abuse of power here?
The problem lies with we, the people. We’re letting our elected representatives get away with this nonsense. The solution is political activism. Check out ConcernedVeteransForAmerica.org or Icacus.org.
