Those Cruel Constitutionalists

From The American Thinker:

September 20, 2010


Those cruel constitutionalists

Mark J. Fitzgibbons



The headline of Amanda Terkel's Huffington Post piece: "Joe Miller Says Unemployment Benefits Are Unconstitutional, Struggles to Say How He Would Deal With Poverty."





Let me start with the latter, given that the poverty level is at its highest in 51 years.





Let's nationalize HuffPo.





No, that was mocking the left. The answer is to do the opposite of what people like Ms. Terkel have been doing.





Let me get back to the unconstitutionality of unemployment benefits. Ms. Terkel was reacting to Alaskan Senate candidate Joe Miller's appearance of Fox News Sunday, where an incredulous Chris Wallace asked Mr. Miller about his belief that federal unemployment benefits are unconstitutional.





All AT readers can say this in unison:





The Constitution gives Congress certain enumerated powers.





All powers not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.





Joe Miller did not say states couldn't provide unemployment benefits. How it works, Amanda, is that the states will initially need more of our money to fund unemployment benefits, but the federal government would get less of our money.





States will then have an incentive to use policies that attract good-paying jobs, like keeping taxes low and reducing burdens on employers, entrepreneurs and good old-fashioned self-employed people.





That would help keep down state payments for unemployment benefits (Amanda, people with jobs don't need unemployment benefits).





Good-paying jobs reduce poverty levels.



It's your ideology, Amanda, of government force using unconstitutional means, versus incentives and reward using constitutional means.





Funny how they go together, huh?

Posted at 06:24 PM