Budget Cutting for Idiots, i.e. Congress

Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance and from under the eye of their constituents . . . will invite the public agents to corruption, plunder, and waste. . . . What an augmentation of  the field for jobbing, speculating, plundering, office-building, and office-hunting would be produced by an assumption of all the state powers into the hands of the federal government!
                                                         ---Thomas Jefferson

Did you know that  representative Shaddegg from Arizona has introduced the Enumerated Powers Act each year that he has been in the House of Representatives.  The Act would require congress to define exactly which of the 18 enumerated powers the Constitution gives the federal government justifies any law passed.  If nothing else, the act would force congressmen to study the Constitution.  Even after being introduced 15 times, each year since 1995, the Act has yet to make it out of committee.  I'll pause while you get up off the floor.  I know you are shocked.


Hopefully you are recovered now.  Another Texas representative has introduced a resolution that on September 17, Constitution Day; when every school receiving federal funds is required to spend at least part of the day studying the Constitution, Congress do the same.  To repeat, on September 17, all schools receiving federal funds are required to spend at least part of the day studying the Constitution.  Representative Conaway is suggesting that Congress also study the document, you know the one they swore to uphold and defend, on that one day as well.  His committee chairman said that was "the stupidest idea I've ever heard."  And do you know of any school that observes Constitution Day?  Or even knows of its existence?  It's been around since Robert Byrd (Democrat) introduced it in 2004 and it was passed as part of the Omnibus Spending Bill.  


Article I Section 8 of the Constitution lists the 18 enumerated powers.  The 10th Amendment states:  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.

There's the easiest way to cut the federal budget.  Each line of the budget should have a reference to which of the Enumerated Powers justifies the spending.  No Enumerated Power, no funds.  Pretty simple.