Congress should
- encourage constitutional debate in the nation by engaging in constitutional debate in Congress, as was urged by the House Constitutional Caucus during the 104th Congress;
- enact nothing without first consulting the Constitution for proper authority and then debating that question on the floors of the House and the Senate;
- move toward restoring constitutional government by carefully returning power wrongly taken over the years from the states and the people; and
- reject the nomination of judicial candidates who do not appreciate that the Constitution is a document of delegated, enumerated, and thus limited powers.
The New American Magazine notes the power of Congress over the other two branches of government:
The very first sentence of the first Article of the Constitution states, “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States” — making that body the most powerful of the three branches of government. Neither the Presidency nor the Judiciary can make laws — except by usurpations tolerated by Congress. Congress could, for example, prohibit the federal judiciary from issuing usurping rulings in such cases as the infamous Roe v. Wade (abortion) decision simply by exercising its enumerated power to limit the jurisdiction of the federal courts (see Article III, Section 2). Also, Congress could employ its impeachment power in order to tame a corrupt and imperial President.
Congress, the Courts, and the Constitution Cato
Remembering the Constitution
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