Now, reasonable people will correctly infer that what the President meant was that a budget plan that cut certain programs was inconsistent with our values as Americans, somehow, and thus deserving of the “un-American” label. We could quibble at the fringes of this topic by discussing what he meant; what values we’re betraying, in his mind, by making an attempt at fiscal sanity. Let’s not do that. Let’s take another approach. Namely, there’s two gigantic pitfalls here that a politician of average intelligence should have seen, and avoided stepping in. The President didn’t, and instead has picked a strange fight. Now, most people will admit he is an intelligent man, so we can only look to the President’s ideology as his Achilles heel in this case.

Ryan’s plan, briefly, as the Weekly Standard notes “would cut 46 percent and $4.4 trillion from proposed deficit spending under President Obama’s budget, reform Medicare and Medicaid to put these programs on solid financial footing, and repeal Obamacare.” There are two problems with attacking Ryan’s plan as he did, and here I mean specifically calling it un-American.

Do you know what this document intends?

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.

Got that? Anything deviating from the intended design (that design created and ratified by Americans in 1787), then, is more accurately deserving of the un-American label. Forget all of the touchy-feely intentions of nice people for a minute, Mr. President: it’s outcomes that count in the real world.

Secondly, and more damaging, this may very well be Mr. Obama’s “Mission Accomplished” moment: calling spending cuts un-American is a slap in the face of every American who can’t print money or borrow from the Chinese. Every individual, family or business has to be focused like a laser on 1. how much they make and 2. how much they spend. I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had since the beginning of the recession with friends, family, and business owners, and they all have to be painfully aware of where every dollar comes from and where every dollar goes.

(Naturally if you work for the government, this all sounds like a foreign language to you.)

Rep. Ryan gets it. His budget proposal might not be perfect, but we have an extraordinary, existence-of-the-Republic-threatening problem on our hands. We’re $14 trillion in debt. Remember how President Bush was mocked endlessly for the “Mission Accomplished” banner? Calling the hard spending discipline that every American family has to do “un-American” further suggests that the President is out of touch and blinded by his ideology, two persistent knocks against him.

Not a good combination in your Commander-in-Chief.

By a vote of 219-212, it has passed.  Of course, the yeas consider this a victory and them doing their job.

By now, readers of this space will recognize just how wrong this legislation is.  If the Congress, by a liberal interpretation of the General Welfare clause (or the Commerce Clause, or the Necessary and Proper clause…), may choose to interject the government in whatever arena they like, we have come to the place of an elective despotism.  As Madison wrote in Federalist 58:

An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among the several bodies of magistracy as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.

Already, wise Americans are discussing repealing this foolishness.  So the question really is: can this be called a win?  Today, perhaps.  Tomorrow, possibly, but maybe not.  November?  That’s up to us.

The $787 billion economic stimulus program Obama signed into law soon after taking office included $4.3 billion in competitive grants for states, nicknamed the “Race to the Top” fund. States must amend education laws and policies to compete for a share of the money.

The Education Department is expected to announce its first of two rounds of awards in April. More than 30 states were expected to apply by Tuesday’s deadline.

Obama will ask lawmakers for another $1.35 billion so that states not chosen in either award round will have a chance to compete for money, according to the officials, who spoke anonymously Monday because the president had not announced his plans.

This all sounds rather innocent, on a superficial level.  States merely improve their education and get money from Washington.  An artful spin on this might even be that Washington is encouraging competition among the States; who could object to that?  There are a couple problems with this view, however: one problem is the effects of such policies and one problem is the sustainability of such policies.

The Department of Education’s budget for 2009 is a remarkable $64.9 billion.  I won’t make the argument in this space that the education system in the United States is a complete failure.  While a whole host of data could be drawn upon to make that argument (such as college completion rates remaining essentially unchanged, an indication of how  well-prepared students are upon graduation), that’s not the issue for now.  The question we have to ask is this: should the federal government be in the business of education?

The Federalist Papers

I generally consult James Madison when questions of propriety and responsibilities among the spheres of government come up.  Not surprisingly, in the entirety of the Federalist Papers, not a word is made about what level of government should be responsible for education.  Which is not to say that Madison didn’t have an opinion on the matter, as he notes in Fed #39:

In this relation, then, the proposed government [contemplated by the new Constitution] cannot be deemed a national one; since its jurisdiction extends to certain enumerated objects only, and leaves to the several States a residuary and inviolable sovereignty over all other objects.

It’s a recurring theme in the Federalist Papers, if you’ve taken the time to read them.  The Constitution that was to be ratified required explanation about what it authorized the federal government to do, and just as importantly, what it didn’t authorize the federal government to do.  Of course, Fed #45 also notes:

The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people; and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the state.

Perhaps another time we could recount the reasons for our arrival at this point. Certainly there are multiple causes for our ailment. One can point to the progressive left agenda dating back to the New Deal as one such cause. A general apathy about the purpose of government is another. Given time, a book could probably be written detailing each step along the way to today’s environment in which the most distant spheres of government are the most “important” and intrusive.

What we can conclude is that an entire re-ordering of the roles and responsibilities of each sphere of government is necessary.  Our current trajectory – ever more centralized, ever more intrusive, ever more unresponsive – is fiscally unsustainable and has the seeds of future failure sown in it.  The operative question we must ask in relation to government actions or programs is this: whose responsibility is it?  Just as we must do for ourselves that which only we can rightly do, so too should States do for themselves that which only what they rightly should be doing.  Abdicating our responsibility and allowing the larger sphere of government to do for us what reason and experience dictate we must do for ourselves may seem innocent enough, but it ever shall be the first chapter in the story of tyranny.