Live from Music Row Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Townhall contributor and constitutional attorney Jonathan Emord to the newsmaker line to comment upon the incremental socialist movement of the administrative state.
Leahy: We welcome to a newsmaker line right now again, a good friend, Jonathan Emord, a great constitutional attorney, who’s got a wonderful new article up at Townhall – townhall.com. Jonathan, welcome back to The Tennessee Star Report.
Emord: Great to be with you.
Leahy: You write, “Three-quarters of all federal law is not enacted by those we elect, but by the unelected heads of over 200 government departments, agencies, and bureaus. Under the Constitution, only Congress has the power to make laws.
And yet, through a deliberate circumvention of the Constitutions, federal agencies have for over 140 years created, enforced, adjudicated, and punished parties for violating laws Congress never enacted.”
It looks like to me, Jonathan, it’s getting worse, not better.
Emord: Well, that’s true. In fact, the agencies for years and years largely went by without public notice, except in instances where your ox was being gored by them.
But most people were simply unaware of the extent to which those agencies were functioning like a wrecking ball, destroying the free market.
They’ve become overt now in the agenda, the socialist agenda which predominates in the thinking of the administrative state – the leadership of the administrative state – is now an overt aim, and had been essentially one that was achieved in increments.
It’s now a whole-government approach to make the whole country turn into a socialist state and have a socialist economy run by authoritarians.
And that overt agenda was achieved really beginning in February of 2020, when within a day of one another, the two leaders of the Democrat Party, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, announced if a socialist were selected by the party – that is, Bernie Sanders – that the party would endorse that person and would adopt their platform. So they crossed the Rubicon then and made it a public mission of the government to pursue a socialist agenda.
Leahy: You also write in your great op-ed, “Until we limit lawmaking to Congress, as the Constitution requires, and until we end administrative agency rights violations, we will never enjoy that liberty which is our birthright as citizens of our constitutional republic.” You have a solution to that?
Emord: Yes. For Congressman Ron Paul, I wrote a bill many years ago. It’s called the Congressional Responsibility and Accountability Act, and it would restore the separation of powers and the non-delegation doctrine which were at the heart of our protection against unlimited government, or authoritarianism.
And that is to prevent any new regulation from having legal effect until Congress passes it into law, and to take every existing regulation and sunset that regulation within three years unless adopted by Congress.
And in this way, those we elect would be responsible for all laws as the Founding Fathers intended in Article One, Section One of the Constitution.
Leahy: And how is that bill, that proposal? What kind of response has that proposal gotten?
Emord: It’s gotten a very negative response from members of Congress because they don’t want to be responsible. It’s a luxury to be elected based on a platform of platitudes that you actually have no intention of ever fulfilling.
And then when constituents complain about the abuses of the EPA, the FDA, the FTC, you just deflect those abuses by directing them back to the agencies and saying, gee, you know, this is my constituent. Can you please address this issue for them? They appear to be disturbed by what’s going on.
It’s a cop out. It’s an abdication of their responsibilities under the Constitution. It’s actually a breach of their oath of office to support the Constitution because it’s an overt attempt to avoid the responsibility of making the laws, which is their obligation under Article One, Section One.
Leahy: A platform of platitudes. I like that phrase. That describes, I think, a number of how, shall we say, weak-kneed Republicans get elected and do nothing.
Emord: Yes. And it describes the common agenda of the Democrats. The Democrats now, for the first time, have actually fulfilled a number of their socialist wishes. But many of the promises that they make during campaigns are designed to induce people to vote for them based on the idea that somehow there’s an endless reserve of resources in the federal government that can be expended without causing you to suffer inflation or taxation.
That’s a big lie, because, as you see, presently, inflation has gone ballistic. And the reason is that they’ve spent over $5 trillion in excess of the $4 trillion national budget so that we’re expending over $10 trillion in the present year.
And we’re pumping into the economy faster than at any time in American history, more dollars than has ever been infused into the economy, the effect of which is to cause too many dollars to chase too few goods and to cause inflation.
Indeed, at the same time, the GDP is shrinking, so that’s actually ratcheting up even further the price of all goods and services.
So people are suffering under an enormous weight of inflation that is bound to worsen, unfortunately, until dramatic cuts are made in spending and until we return to the limits on power that are really required in order for us to have a republic.
Leahy: Jonathan, what’s fascinating to me is that you have built a career in constitutional and administrative law. You started in 1985 at the FCC during the Reagan administration. You have also served as vice president at the Cato Institute.
You now have a law firm with four or five associates. Is it difficult to practice law today and defend the Constitution? Because when I look at the legal profession, it seems to be geared to doing everything but defending the Constitution. Your thoughts?
Emord: Yes, as a matter of fact, ever since I first began practicing law as an associate outside of the government, I’ve been pressured to take positions that I believed were a violation of my constitutional oath, and I’ve refused to do that.
I guess I’m in an extreme minority, because rather than just simply using the process that exists in order to milk the system for financial gain, I’ve bucked the system, because it has been a violation of the Constitution.
I remember when I was a very young associate and had just come out of the FCC, and I was asked to draft a pleading in support of the Fairness Doctrine for one of the major regulatees. And I refused to do it because it would violate my oath of office.
And I was told it was in subordination to take that position, that I had to draft it or I’d be terminated. And fortunately for me, although I insisted on my refusal to do that, the firm as a whole decided that it was probably more economical for me to stay than it was to can me.
But had I been blacklisted at that point, right out of the FCC, I would have never had the career I’ve had in the law. But your point is a good one.
Those who stand up for the Constitution today are under assault, unfortunately. And it takes a willingness to abide by principles without regard for the consequences in order for us to save this country. And that’s what people really need to do.
Those are the people we need in elected office, those are the people that we need to be in the Senate and the House of Representatives, and the White House.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
– – –
Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Jonathan Emord” by Jonathan Emord.
