The absence of three words from the September 26, 2016 debate between Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton was alarming. Neither the questions nor the candidate responses referenced the Constitution, Congress, or liberty. The three are the crown jewels of our democracy. The 90 minutes of debate assumed that the President of the United States commands virtually limitless power to initiate war and to kill, detain, or spy on American citizens vastly exceeding the tyranny suffered by American colonists that provoked the American Revolution against King George III.
1. HOW WILL YOU BE SUPERIOR TO YOUR OPPONENT IN CREATING JOBS?
BRUCE FEIN RESPONSE. The purpose of government is not to create jobs. It is to provide every citizen a fair opportunity to develop their faculties and to pursue their ambitions freely. That said, government efforts to create jobs are oftentimes cures worse than the disease. They routinely abort more jobs than they create by hijacking money from the efficient private sector and handing it to the wasteful public sector. Think of the huge government sums wasted on Solyndra, the Synfuels Corporation, and Alaska's fabled Bridge to Nowhere. Compare the speedy and profitable FedEx with the lead-footed and money-losing United States Postal Service. These examples are but the tip of the iceberg.
While the objective of a living wage is noble, minimum wage laws are not the way to achieve it. Studies show they increase rather than diminish unemployment. Persons in need should have access to a "safety net" supported by all taxpayers. That moral obligation should not be shouldered by employers and their patrons alone.
I would also urge repeal of every delegation of legislative authority to executive branch agencies. These unconstitutional delegations cost businesses and consumers nearly $2 trillion in unnecessary regulations annually according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Congress is shirking its constitutional duty in handing off regulatory decisions to anonymous unelected bureaucrats to escape accountability from the voters. I would also recommend enactment of the legislative veto to empower Congress to block major agency actions with more than $100 million impact on the economy.
Government borrowing sucks up private capital that would otherwise be channeled to small business entrepreneurs or otherwise. I would urge Congress to enact legislation to prohibit government borrowing except in times of war declared by Congress. It is morally unacceptable to saddle posterity with paying the bills for our luxuries. Our current $20 trillion in national debt and growing is disgraceful.
Diminishing the national debt via spending reductions would also allow our nation to lower taxes evenhandedly for everyone. This, in turn, would give employers the capital they need to hire more workers, and give consumers capital to improve their lives and opportunities for their children.
If paying taxes is an obligation of citizenship, a reciprocal government obligation is to simplify the tax code to enable citizens to pay their taxes without hiring accountants or lawyers. I would ask Congress to simply our tax laws accordingly with the aim of taxing persons of similar incomes similarly, not unequally, as is routinely the case under the current code.
The Federal Reserve Board also needs fixing. I would urge that private bankers no longer be permitted to regulate themselves through government action by sitting on the Federal Open Market Committee, which influences interest rates. I would also urge Congress to prohibit the Fed from operating without appropriated funds--which enables it to evade congressional oversight and act as haughty Platonic Guardians
But by far the greatest deadweight and destructive force on our economy is the trillion-dollar military-industrial-counterterrorism complex (MICC) about with President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned more than 50 years ago. The business of the MICC is the business of killing. Through generous compensation and career status, the MICC attracts our smartest and most creative citizens. It deflects them from inventions and innovations which would enrich lives and improve the economy towards the development of new weapons to kill people and lower the danger threshold for war. The MICC is a government jobs program for approximately four million workers by another name. Congress routinely funds weapons systems and military bases that even the Pentagon insists are wasteful. The MICC is the largest line item in the federal budget, and is racing the nation towards bankruptcy. It is convulsing the world, and giving birth to enemies who would otherwise leave us undisturbed, akin to smashing hornets' nests and then fighting the angry hornets seeking retaliation.
I would replace the MICCC with a policy designed solely--as the Constitution instructs--to deter and defend against actual or imminent threats to the United States. Unlike President Obama and candidates Clinton and Trump, I would not risk a single American soldier's life to rid the plane of tyranny, to overthrow bullies, to build nations, or to topple regimes. There would never be another heroic Captain Humayun Khan needlessly dying on my watch in Baghdad. The glory of America is liberty, not domination or control of the world.
2. HOW WOULD YOU DIMINISH THE RACIAL DIVIDE?
BRUCE FEIN RESPONSE. We need to remember that a house divided against itself cannot stand, and if we do not all hang together we assuredly will all hang separately.
In that spirit, we need to decriminalize possession of marijuana, or sale of a handful of untaxed cigarettes. Their criminalization unfairly and disparately impacts African Americans. We need to de-militarize our police forces, which would discourage excessive use of force. We need to eliminate mandatory minimum sentencing to insure the punishment fits the crime. We need more transparency in the investigation of alleged police wrongdoing, and lesser conflicts of interest by investigators. We need to encourage citizen participation in local politics that adds legitimacy to government by lessening rather than heightening barriers to voting or ballot access.
We need to make it the policy of every law enforcement agency in the United States that deadly force be a last resort, and that an officer's gun is to be drawn only if there is a reasonable likelihood that deadly force will be used by the suspect against the officer or another.
Police officers should be trained to offer medical assistance to persons hurt in encounters with criminals or themselves.
I would encourage educational and community outreach programs in our public schools to teach our citizens how they should handle a situation involving law enforcement to diminish the probability of conflict or acrimony.
Citizens in all places and at all times should be judged exclusively by their character and accomplishments. Nothing else should matter--including but not limited to race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, nationality, or age. Destructive tribalism would wither and die.
3. WHAT IS YOUR NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY, INCLUDING DEFENDING AGAINST CYBER ATTACKS?
BRUCE FEIN RESPONSE. I would immediately end all presidential wars--which would mean ending our ongoing wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, and against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria everywhere in the world. They are unconstitutional and ill-advised. Every participant in the drafting and ratification of the Constitution denounced presidential wars because they invariably lead to the destruction of liberty at home. They entrusted the war power exclusively to Congress because it gains nothing by wars not in self-defense. Cyber warfare can only be decided by the Congress, not the President.
In lieu of our Republican-Democratic policy of multi-trillion dollar perpetual presidential wars, I would establish a policy of invincible self-defense. The tens of thousands of American soldiers currently stationed abroad would be returned to the United States, and be given pay raises as a mark of our appreciation of their courage. They would defend our borders, our sea lanes, and our air space from enemy attacks. They would be risking that last full measure of devotion defending their families and friends on American soil, not foreigners who pay us no taxes and give us no allegiance. Our countless foreign military bases will be closed.
I would renounce the frightening limitless power claimed by President Obama and the two major party nominees to play prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner to kill any American citizen the President decrees is an imminent danger to national security based on secret, untested evidence never vetted by any independent authority. The several Americans who have been exterminated by predator drones without trial on the President's say-so alone should be terrifying reminders of how far we have wandered into the domain of government lawlessness.
I would disclaim any treaty obligation to go to war on behalf of another country, including members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The United States Supreme Court definitively declared in Reid v. Covert that treaties are subordinate to the Constitution, and the Constitution empowers only Congress to declare war. It cannot be done by treaty, which entails Senate ratification but excludes the House from participation. It is shameful that the United States has fought multiple unconstitutional wars since World War II without congressional declarations, including but not limited to Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Kuwait, Panama, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Iraq. If a NATO member is attacked, I would defend it with military force only if Congress first enacted a declaration of war. If that congressional consensus cannot be achieved, the war is not worth fighting.
I would revoke the President's Executive Order 12333 to the extent it authorizes the military to spy on Americans without judicial warrants for foreign intelligence purposes. We are not a military state living under martial law. The use of military and military operations permitted by the Executive Order against the citizens of the United States is repugnant to the very essence of civilian supremacy. In my view, under the Fourth Amendment, Americans should be targeted for government surveillance only if there is credible suspicion of their implication in crime, including the provision of material assistance to listed terrorist organizations. The right to be let alone from government snooping is the most cherished among civilized people. It should be disturbed only for serious law enforcement objectives.
I would end the use of executive agreements to circumvent the Treaty Clause of the Constitution. President Obama's agreement with Iran aiming to restrain its nuclear ambitions--the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)--should have been submitted to the Senate as a treaty requiring a two-thirds majority for ratification. Instead, it became effective as the unilateral act of the President. (It never would have commanded a two-thirds Senate majority necessary for ratification). The JCPOA sets a dangerous precedent that would probably be wielded by a President Hillary Clinton to impose sweeping climate-change regulation on the United States economy via an international climate change agreement with no participation or authorization from the Senate or Congress.
Finally, I would repudiate the extra-constitutional doctrine that the President of the United States is also the Leader (President) of the "free world" with a mission to take up arms against every perceived bully. Our glory is liberty, not domination or conquest. Our march is the march of the mind, not the march of the foot soldier. Our influence abroad should be the influence of example, not the influence of the bayonet.
While we wish liberty and independence well everywhere, we fight only to defend our own. We must avoid the trap of believing we are a chosen people without sin, temptations, or ulterior motives. For more than 60 years, our foreign policy has been fueled by the hubris that we are the locomotive of mankind and all the rest of the world the caboose. Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make arrogant. My national security policy would be fashioned and implemented accordingly.
My policy of invincible self-defense, i.e., billions for defense but not one cent for Empire, would not make the United States vulnerable to aggression. All of our history confirms what Abraham Lincoln understood more than 150 years ago:
"At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?-- Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!--All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."