Our Strange Brew series is being launched today with the release of a new CAC Issue Brief entitled “Setting the Record Straight: The Tea Party and the Constitutional Powers of the Federal Government.” This Issue Brief, written by CAC’s Chief Counsel Elizabeth Wydra and CAC’s Human and Civil Rights Director David Gans, takes on the Tea Partiers’ central claim: that our country’s Founders established a sharply limited, weak national government, incapable of addressing national problems like the health care crisis in America. ..
Here are some of the topics we will cover in the Strange Brew series:
- The persistent and heated claims in the courts, Congress, and the media that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional, and the suggestion by Senate Republicans that General Kagan should not be confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice because she might uphold the Act.
- Kentucky Senate candidate and Tea Party darling Rand Paul’s assertion that the federal government does not have the power to root out “private” discrimination under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, one of the most important pieces of legislation passed pursuant to Congress’s constitutional authority to enforce the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equality.
- The call by Rand Paul, Rep. Duncan Hunter and others for repeal of the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of citizenship at birth for all children born in the United States, and the efforts in states such as Arizona to interfere with the Amendment’s guarantee of equal citizenship.
- Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle’s suggestion that Americans should repeal the 16th Amendment, which allows for a federal income tax.
- Utah Senate candidate Mike Lee’s argument that his state can use the Constitution’s “Enclave Clause” to take land from the federal government in Utah.
- The call by Tea Party activists for repeal of the 17th Amendment, in order to take the power to elect U.S. Senators away from individual voters and give it back to state legislators.
- Disturbing Tea party rhetoric suggesting that perceived unconstitutional actions by the federal government are cause for armed rebellion—and the claim that the Founders would cheer such violence.
- The argument by Senator Tom Coburn and others that Kagan should not be confirmed because she, in their view, would not commit during her Judiciary Committee testimony to enforcing “God-given” natural or inalienable rights mentioned in the Declaration of Independence.