First 100 Days

The first 100 days–a phrase and a yardstick was invented for FDR in 1933. The nation, awash in crisis, looked to the new President for decisive action, for a sign of strength to stem the tide of panic.

Roosevelt delivered a strong reply. He delivered a strong reply which was (and remains) a strongly unconstitutional reply. His expansion of central federal power still haunts us today and still has us today struggling to figure out what’s wrong.

Our new President has been compared numerous times to FDR, and as such, many have looked to the First 100 Days as a yardstick to measure the job. Obama seems to relish this comparison, all the way to holding a White House Press Conference to mark the occasion. For those lucky souls who tuned in last night, you witnessed a spectacle.

Let’s compare.

FDR’s first actions surrounded the banking crisis. In a series of Presidential actions, he closed the banks under a “bank holiday” to prevent people from withdrawing their own money from the banks. Banks are allowed to only hold a fraction of demand deposits, therefore when confidence wanes, people do not have access to their own money. Instead of limiting the evil of fractional reserve banking, Roosevelt limited the liberty of people to get to their own money.

Further, in 1933, people could demand gold for their dollars as we were still on a gold backed currency at the time. Obviously, this demand for gold also constituted a crisis. So, instead of respecting the citizens rights, FDR took an unprecedented step: he outlawed citizens’ rights to possess gold (click here). “All persons are hereby required to deliver on or before May 1, 1933, to a Federal Reserve bank or a branch or agency thereof or to any member bank of the Federal Reserve System all gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates now owned by them or coming into their ownership on or before April 28, 1933.” The order dated March 5th meant that people had three weeks to comply.

Roosevelt’s initial strategy consisted of two parts: first, provide relief for those who needed it most, which often involved a redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. Second, provide long-lasting reform to the nation’s economy, through reorganization and the creation of new agencies. Most of Roosevelt’s policies can be described as “taking from one pocket to put in the other.” Fixated with a balanced budget, and fretful when it was not, Roosevelt made sure that anything given to one sector of the economy was taken from somewhere else.

Roosevelt’s legendary “First 100 Days” concentrated on the first part of his strategy: immediate relief. From March 9 to June 16, 1933, FDR sent Congress a record number of bills, all of which passed easily. These included the creation of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, and the Tennessee Valley Authority. Congress also gave the Federal Trade Commission broad new regulatory powers, and provided mortgage relief to millions of farmers and homeowners.

Obama’s First 100 days seems to mirror FDR’s two pronged approach: relief to some people, and creation of new Federal Powers. I will not highlight Obama’s specific policies in this post as I have done so in other posts and they are fresh to most people. However, Obama has been distinctly different than FDR in one key respect: Obama has not feared deficit spending. FDR did fear it.

Deficit spending in FDR’s time was viewed as the ultimate evil. It was viewed as the road to collapse. Therefore, FDR’s programs attempted to take money from others–it was a shifting of federal spending, but not necessarily a massive exapnsion of deficit spending (mostly). John Maynard Keynes, the prominent British economist who invented the mathematical justification for governmental deficit spending in times of recession, was just crafting his theory at the time.

Obama is Keynes on steroids with a twist. But, even Keynes viewed his mathematical justification for deficit spending as short term. The mathematics do not support long term perpetual deficits as justifiable in any way. That is the Obama twist.

But I ask everyone to take a step back and ask a fundamental question. Under what section of the Constitution is the President and/or Congress granted these sweeping powers? The Tenth Amendment (which is still a valid part of the Constitution despite people ignoring it) states that the federal government is granted only very specific powers and all others not specifically granted to them is reserved to the States and the people. Of note, this very same sentiment was the FIRST statement of powers outlined in the original Articles of Confederation (see Article II).

Nowhere in the Constitution is the President granted special powers with this authority. Nowhere in the Constitution is the Congress granted special powers with this authority. These actions are patently unconstitutional and should not be tolerated. Indeed, the Supreme Court invalidated many of FDRs actions in 1933 on Consitutional grounds. We are so blind at present that nobody is even looking critically at the right of the President and Congress to take these actions. We are just bickering over what specific policy actions should be taken–incredible how far we have fallen from our Founding Principles.

I fear we are about to find out why these actions SHOULD be challenged on Constitutional grounds. The Framers original and guiding Principle was that power should never be allowed to concentrate in a few hands. Any power left unchecked is a very bad thing.

Fearing for his bid for re-election in the upcoming Republican primary in Pennsylvania, Senator Arlen Specter switched parties, from Republican to Democrat. In this action, he will run virtually unchallenged in the Democrat primary. More importantly, his party switch virtually guarantees a count of 60 in the Senate for the Democrats. Senate rules completely change at 60. In this situation, the Democrats will be literally unstoppable in the Senate. There will be no check on their power in that chamber, which means that there is effectively no check whatsoever on Obama’s agenda now.

The House of Representatives runs essentially on simple majority rule, which the Democrats hold. The Senate runs on a supermajority rule (at 60), which the Democrats will hold. The Democrats hold the Executive Branch. Therefore, all legislative and executive power in the Federal Government is unchecked. Since we seem to be completely ignoring the principle of strictly limiting Federal power (in the Tenth Amendment), this means that there is no easy mechanism by which the Democrats’ agenda can be checked.

The only possible mechanism to check the power grab is for the People to reassert their Tenth Amendment privilege by Amending the Constitution to clarify limitations to Federal power. The Constitution can be amended without Congress (see Article 5) by the collective action of the States, via their States’ Legislature. This method of amendment has never been used, but it is available, and would surely be upheld by the current Supreme Court.

Obama’s First 100 days were similar to FDR’s insofar as he has used a crisis to intensify the Federal Power base in an unconstitutional manner. With his newfound complete control over the legislative branch of the Federal Government, I fear what the next 100 weeks will hold.