Governing by "the Ends Justifies the Means"  
By Mark Shepard

When Peter Welch ran for Congress he campaigned against Congress ignoring or disrespecting the Constitution.  Yet now that he is in Congress, he has taken on the same disregard for our Constitution that he campaigned against.

On October 5th I attended Rep. Welch’s Bennington health care discussion.  Like most Vermont families and small business owners, this is a topic of great interest to me.  I absolutely believe there is a lot of room to improve both access to and value of health care.  As a Vermont State Senator I advocated for several ideas that I felt would improve access and affordability.

However, I have great concern that the present national debate is largely avoiding an aspect that if let go would surely result in a worse situation.   Those elected to represent us have a constitutional responsibility to ensure that they do not create federal programs and powers that violate the Constitution.

That is why at the October meeting I felt it not only appropriate, but a duty, that I ask Rep. Welch where the Constitution gives the federal government authority to manage health care?   Unfortunately even after three requests along with providing him a copy of the Constitution, he just dodged the question.  The best he could come up with was that past Congresses have done the same, which I guess means that now that he is in Congress he feels he has the right to govern the same way that he campaigned against.  We are all losers under such "ends justify the means" representation, most especially our children.

If Congress wants a national policy that is not within the limits of the Constitution, then before they can lawfully enact such a policy, the Constitution must be amended.  To move ahead as though the Constitutional limits on federal powers do not matter will be a serious blow to all the rights and limits enumerated in our Constitution.

I am not personally advocating such a change to our Constitution, but rather pointing out that such an expansion of federal power must begin with a Constitutional discussion.  That discussion might help us all understand why the framers expressly limited the powers of the federal government with the Tenth Amendment: "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."

The framers were well aware that power corrupts and so the only means of limiting corruption is limiting power.  They likely also understood economics well enough to know that expanding government inflates real costs.  Sectors where government has expanded into have a much higher inflation rate than sectors that do not have access to "free" taxpayer dollars.  Health care is already over 50% government-paid and while costs have been shifted, the real cost for the same level of service has increased at a rate well above the average inflation rate.  Our present health care mess demonstrates clearly that expanding government and shifting who pays is not a real solution, but rather has only made matters worse.

Putting that debate aside, I hope we agree that the most important aspect in making federal policy is that members of Congress respect the process set out in the Constitution, which each member promised or affirmed to uphold.   As we allow those elected to ignore the Constitution, we are each responsible for moving our society from one governed by laws and process to one governed by the whims of some governing class. The ends, no matter how well-intended, never justify the means.

Mark Shepard, Bennington
Vermont State Senator, 2003-2006