The Bachmann Counter

by Cliopatria

Yesterday, I posted a clip of the bizarre line of questioning pursued by Maxine Waters in the Geithner hearing.

Waters, however, was hardly the only House member to go off the deep end in the session. Huffington Post highlighted Illinois Republican Don Manzullo for the"worst congressional questioning ever"--while Minnesota Republican Michelle Bachmann (below) used her time to show ignorance of the Constitution; to speak of a seeming $10 trillion(!) bailout; and to ask the nation's financial leadership about an alleged plot to create an international currency, being orchestrated by the PRC, Russia, and a country Bachmann called"Kazakastan": Again, such performances make it hard to defend the principle of congressional oversight. Perhaps if C-SPAN had always existed, we'd have lots of clips of such ill-informed hearings from earlier periods of congressional history. But somehow, I doubt it.

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David T. Beito - 3/28/2009

At least she is asking some tough questions. All too little of that happening these days from the Democratic side. The Obama supporters (who ironically like to depict themselves as champions of ordinary people) have barely uttered a hint of protest against the most massive bailout of the wealthy, probably in world history. If the Constitution can't restrict that, it is pretty much a worthless document.

Jeff Vanke - 3/27/2009

KC,

I can't believe you are unfamiliar with the three respective bases for Bachmann's three points you deride. Or do you so easily discount them? Or ...?

The easy thing first. Most glorious nation Kazakhstan has in fact just proposed a world currency. Russia endorsed a earlier version of this, an electronic Central Asian currency. I don't know about Russia & China on a global currency.
Reuters:
http://in.reuters.com/article/asiaCompanyAndMarkets/idINLE44644020090314

Second. While the U.S. government has not spent $10 trillion on the bailout, it has in point of fact spent + co-signed loans to the tune of about $9 trillion -- in theory, we could already have spent that much, in the unlikely scenario that all those loans defaulted.
San Francisco Chronicle:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/26/MNVN14C8QR.DTL

Third. Surely you're aware that the whole New Deal rests constitutionally pretty much solely on the interstate commerce clause, until such point as constitutional law in this country moves from the Constitution to the Constitution + practice and acceptance. One might add the 16th Amendment for income tax, which though it does not exactly reverse the 10th amendment, has effectively over-ridden it on many points, by enabling Federal legislation to send portions of those revenues to the states if the states agree to Federal stipulations that pretty much run against the 10th Amendment.

Constitutional constructionists argue that a whole heap of legislation from the past 80 years is unconstitutional. Bachmann asked Geithner and Bernanke for constitutional grounding for such legislation, and instead they responded with a circular argument of antecedent legislation.