Chris McDaniel, running for the U.S. Senate in a special election this November, released a “Contract With Mississippi” a couple of weeks ago. He deserves credit for a document that sticks to conservative principles, but in some key areas it’s light on details. It also makes one proposal that will never be approved and another that could hurt his home state badly.
As with so many things involving Congress, McDaniel’s most glaring lack of specifics involves money. He supports Sen. Rand Paul’s “Penny Plan,” under which Congress would agree to reduce the federal budget by 1 percent a year to slowly restore sanity to Washington’s finances.
McDaniel is right when he criticizes Congress for fiscal mismanagement. But it would be nice if he offered a few ideas of programs that could be cut. After all, the federal budget is around $4 trillion, so 1 percent of that is $40 billion. This is a lot of money. Which agencies or programs should take that hit?
It’s the same story with Social Security. McDaniel acknowledges that the retirement program needs more money. But he does not support raising taxes to produce this money. Instead, he says Congress should cut spending elsewhere and steer that money into Social Security.
“With a massive federal budget full of wasteful spending, there’s much we can do,” his contract intones. Same question: Which specific agencies or programs should be reduced or eliminated in order to help Social Security? There are no recommendations in his contract.
A greatly unhelpful idea, one that frankly sounds more like a power grab, is reducing the power of the judiciary and giving it to Congress.
McDaniel believes the federal courts are out of control. To rein them in permanently, he proposes a constitutional amendment that would limit Supreme Court justices to 12-year terms. He also wants the amendment to allow Congress to override a Supreme Court ruling with a three-fifths vote — an action that he does not want subjected to a presidential veto.
Where to start? McDaniel, an attorney as well as a state senator, can read the U.S. Constitution as well as anyone, and he knows it says that Supreme Court justices and other federal judges “shall hold their offices during good behaviour.” This means they are appointed for life as long as they don’t get in trouble with the law.
The Founding Fathers specifically made these appointments permanent to reduce the influence of politics in the court system. But McDaniel wants to reverse that. Giving Congress the power to override judicial review is simply horrible policy.
Finally, it is questionable whether his support for congressional term limits of 12 years would help Mississippi in Washington.
In theory, McDaniel is right: Citizen legislators doing their public duty in Congress for a few years probably would be an improvement. But in reality, veteran legislators like Thad Cochran steered a lot of federal money to little Mississippi. How does it help the state to give that up?
Jack Ryan, Enterprise-Journal
