The most disturbing element of bailout madness, that is:
It is futile, but not pointless, to note that the federal government’s blizzard of bail-outs is unconstitutional. At least that would be the correct judgment were the policy brought before the Supreme Court to be judged with reference to the doctrine of “nondelegation.”
Congress is supposed to make laws, not turn over that function to bureaucrats.
Improper delegation is inherent in unlimited government, under which hyperkinetic legislators, for whom Attention-Deficit Disorder is an occupational hazard, are jacks of all trades and masters of none. Their expertise is inadequate to their pretensions of omnicompetence. Their desire to intrude government into every nook and cranny of life requires that their attentions be spread thin. So the “laws” they pass are often little more than endorsements of vague aspirations.
Will even cites a familiar figure in making his case against nondelegation:
John Locke’s “Second Treatise of Civil Government” (1690), which deeply influenced America’s Founders, says: “The legislative cannot transfer the power of making laws to any other hands: for it being but a delegated power from the people, they who have it cannot pass it over to others.” And: “The power of the legislative … being only to make laws, and not to make legislators, the legislative can have no power to transfer their authority of making laws, and place it in other hands.”
But that is essentially what TARP has done. It has made Treasury Department bureaucrats into legislators; or perhaps it has made Secretary Hank Paulson the fourth branch of government.
Speaking of Paulson, I?m reminded of comments John Hood expressed earlier this month.
