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Why We Need A New Constitution: Part 10 of 21

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On July 19, the House declined to bypass its Rules Committee and vote on legislation to establish public financing of Congressional campaigns for 1980. The Rules Committee, which clears bills for floor action, is opposed to the measure.

Another attempt at passage will be made next year. However, some supporters fear that the large amount of money poured into the campaigns of incumbents who won re-election will make passage of the bill even more difficult, and the phenomenon . . . will go on. [5]

The cycle of our time is that big business requires big regulation - but a constitutional structure inadequate for the passage of necessary legislation means that Legislative power must be delegated to bureaucrats; and, since bureaucrats are not accountable in the traditional sense, Congressmen and/or special interest lobbyists must intervene:

The growing numbers and powers of lobbies have been in part a result of two decades of increased Government involvement in the affairs of powerful economic interests. Over the last 15 years Federal laws and regulations have increasingly put the Government in the business of overseeing or regulating aspects of the automobile, oil, gas, education, and health care industries among others.

In turn, each of these interest groups has organized or expanded its effort to influence Government activities at all levels, and the success of those efforts has stimulated the organization of still other lobbies to augment or oppose the presence of the first in Washington.

'We have a fragmented, Balkanized society,' Stuart Eizenstat, President Carter's chief adviser for domestic affairs, has said, 'with an economic proliferation of special economic interest groups, each interested in only one domestic program - protecting it, having Government spend more for it, unwilling to see it modified.'. . .

Tom Matthew, a consultant to several public-interest groups on the political left, says that probably no more than 6 percent of the population is involved in the whole beehive of activity - from the people sending in contributions to some causes to the people traveling to Washington or to state capitals to do their lobbying.

The rest of the population only lives with the results. [6]

END PART 10: TO BE CONTINUED

FOOTNOTES

[1] The New York Times, November 14, 1978, p. 1.

[2] "Constitutional Conventions and the Deficit." E. Donald Elliot, 1985 Duke Law Journal 1093-94 (footnotes omitted) (emphasis supplied).

[3] 1985 Duke Law Journal 1094-95 (footnotes omitted) (emphasis supplied).

[4] "Governing America," The New York Times, November 12, 1978, p. 1.

[5] The New York Times, November 13, 1978, p. B-9.

[6] The New York Times, November 14, 1978, p. B-14.

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Barry Krusch is president of Intelligent Communities, Inc., sponsors of The Intelligent Community Initiative. He is also author of 2 books, The 21st Century Constitution and Would The Real First Amendment Please Stand Up?
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