{"id":2000,"date":"2017-02-10T09:08:39","date_gmt":"2017-02-10T15:08:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/markmeckler\/?p=2000"},"modified":"2017-02-10T09:08:39","modified_gmt":"2017-02-10T15:08:39","slug":"federal-bureaucracy-unconstitutional-may-time-sue-oblivion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markmeckler\/2017\/02\/federal-bureaucracy-unconstitutional-may-time-sue-oblivion\/","title":{"rendered":"The federal bureaucracy is unconstitutional, and it may be time to sue them into oblivion"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color: #fff; display: inline-block; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; color: #a7a7a7; font-size: 11px; width: 100%; max-width: 594px;\">\n<div style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; text-align: left;\"><a style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/609507174\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; position: relative; height: 0; padding: 60.437710% 0 0 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"display: inline-block; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; margin: 0;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/609507174?et=W4aBY5TqQ4hFZp6CAWw8ow&amp;viewMoreLink=off&amp;sig=vVC47Bxtn-QRGIY9LLnOnw9H474vc6OAbuYgBT0iGfk=&amp;caption=true\" width=\"594\" height=\"359\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"margin: 0;\">\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>When the federal bureaucracy acts unconstitutionally and sets itself up as our masters \u2014 and they have \u2014 it\u2019s time to take drastic action. \u00a0That action might include suing them into oblivion.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Lest anyone think this is too dramatic a solution, let me remind you why extreme measures are needed. If the targeting of conservative groups by the IRS isn\u2019t enough, or the horrible treatment of our military veterans by the VA, or the various abuses by the civil service system, then look no further than how bureaucrats are allowed to lord over us. Congress can\u2019t, or won\u2019t, stop them and right now, not even the president has any power\u00a0to drain that swamp.<\/p>\n<p>Writing for the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.weeklystandard.com\/is-our-federal-bureaucracy-unconstitutional\/article\/2006598\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\"><em>Weekly Standard<\/em><\/a>, Mark Hemingway points to Philip K. Howard, who penned a book in 1994 titled <em>The Death of Common Sense<\/em>\u00a0who is once again \u201csounding the alarm\u201d about the unconstitutional actions of bureaucrats. Howard wrote a recent op-ed in the <em>Wall Street Journal<\/em> which encourages\u00a0President Trump to follow through on his plans to overhaul the civil service \u2014 and ideas that has been historically resisted by Congress \u201cunder union power and public indifference.\u201d But this undermines the executive power that is allotted to the president by the Constitution, as Howard notes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Executive power is toothless without practical authority over personnel. \u201cIf any power whatsoever is in its nature executive,\u201d James Madison once observed, \u201cit is the power of appointing, overseeing, and controlling those who execute the laws.\u201d Taking away the president\u2019s power over executive branch employees is synonymous with removing his executive power altogether. This is exactly the case today. Because of civil-service laws passed by Congress many years ago, the president has direct authority over a mere 2% of the federal workforce.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>How have we allowed the president to be rendered nearly powerless to have a say in letting deadbeat federal employees go? Where in any other segment of society would a useless worker be allowed to continue in a position if they\u2019ve been proven to be incompetent? There\u2019s no reasonable expectation of such a thing.<\/p>\n<p>But it\u2019s even worse than we thought, as Hemingway points out in his piece: \u201cDid you know that one reason why it\u2019s difficult to fire federal workers is that holding on to their taxpayer-funded jobs is considered a property right?\u201d Again, here is Howard\u2019s response in which he provides some historical context on how we got here:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The slow dissipation of presidential power is a story rich with irony\u2014designed to avoid interest group capture, the civil service became its own special interest. First public employees got Congress to legislate protections against politically motivated termination. Then JFK, as a reward for public employee support, signed an Executive Order allowing public unions to bargain collectively with the government. Then the Supreme Court held that all these legal protections meant that public employment was a form of property right, protected by the Due Process Clause. Then Congress gave JFK\u2019s Executive Order statutory power.<\/p>\n<p>So we\u2019ve come full circle: Instead of guarding against public jobs as political property, the civil service has become a property right of the employees themselves. The layers of legal protection put the President in the position of a legal supplicant, facing union and constitutional hurdles that effectively eliminate accountability as a meaningful concept. Public employees answer to no one.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Replacing the civil service system is a must, and the president needs to argue this on principle. Yes, it\u2019s an extreme measure and likely to bind up in court, but one that can be achieved if \u201clegitimate goals\u201d are set and if it \u201chonors principles of neutral hiring and is designed to foster a culture of excellence\u201d as Howard notes.\u00a0And if that doesn\u2019t work, the only option left is to sue.<\/p>\n<p>We can\u2019t forget, like Hemingway reminds, \u201cIt also might be a winning fight to pick if federal workers are forced to defend the fact that the two million or so federal workers get paid an average of $123,000 a year and can\u2019t get fired even when people die because of a bumbling agency. It also seems like the GOP Congress might finally be itching to do something about a bureaucracy where their union questionably takes taxpayer dollars to fund the campaigns of the Democratic opposition.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It doesn\u2019t sound like a bad deal after all, now, does it?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Right now, public employees answer to no one, not even the president.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2673,"featured_media":2001,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The federal bureaucracy is unconstitutional, and it may be time to sue them into 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