• The "Charters of Freedom"
• The Federal Government
• The American Federalist System
• American Elections
• What is Gerrymandering?
• The Federal Budget

The "Charters of Freedom"

The U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights

The U.S. Constitution is one of the greatest political charters ever adopted, if not the greatest.  It was completed in September of 1787.  The convention that drafted the Constitution was originally convened to modify the Articles of Confederation but that was found to be untenable.  George Washington was the presiding officer but the significant influences on the substance of the Constitution included Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin.

The Declaration of Independence

The Declaration officially separated the American colonies from Great Britain on July 4th, 1776.  It laid out the greivances of the colonists but also laid out the philosophical and political arguments for the separation.  Its words are known to every American and are regarded as sacred.  Its principle author is Thomas Jefferson but it was influenced by John Adams and Benjamin Franklin as well.

The Federalist Papers

The Federalist Papers were written and published to persuade the American people to support the new Constitution.  It made numerous arguments in support of the Constitution and defended its most common criticisms.  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay wrote them over the course of a year or so after the Constitutional Convention.  The Federalist Papers are a fascinating glimpse into the minds of the Framers giving clear evidence of their intent.

The Federal Government

We all remember the basic structure of the federal government. There is the executive (the President), the legislative (the Congress), and the judicial branch (the U.S. Supreme Court). The Constitution gives the President very specific responsibilities: foreign relations, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, signs bills into law or vetoes them, nominates Supreme Court justices as well as other federal judges and administrative positions, nominates his Cabinet, grant reprieves and pardons, and give an annual State of the Union Address. That is the extent of the Constitutional authorities granted to the President.

The legislative branch has the authority to write and vote on new laws, modifying existing laws, as well as authority over the budget. It also has the power to declare and raise funds for our armed forces. This is known as the “power of the purse”.

The judiciary was originally comprised solely of the U.S. Supreme Court. All other federal courts were “created” by the Congress in the years following the Constitution. The Supreme Court interprets the law, determining if new laws violate the Constitution or existing federal law. The Supreme Court does not make policy, was not intended to create laws or rights, and definitely cannot ignore the Constitution for the sake of convenience or expediency. It is up to the two political branches (President and Congress) to make policy and the Supreme Court to determine if the policies are Constitutional.

Current Leaders of U.S. Government

Executive
• President: Barack Obama (D)
• Vice President: Joseph Biden (D)
Legislative
• Speaker of the House: John Boehner (R-Ohio)
• Leader of the Senate: Harry Reid (D-Nevada)
Judicial
• Chief Justice: John Roberts
• Associate Justice: Sonja Sotomayor
• Associate Justice: Samuel Alito
• Associate Justice: Ruth Bader Ginsburg
• Associate Justice: Clarence Thomas
• Associate Justice: Antonin Scalia
• Associate Justice: Anthony Kennedy
• Associate Justice: Stephen Breyer
• Associate Justice: Elena Kagan

The American Federalist System

The Constitution constructed a federalist system where the national government (the three branches in Washington D.C.) has certain responsibilities while the state governments (governor, general assembly, etc.) have different responsibilities. However, the Constitution intentionally lays out these authorities by listing the powers of the national government but leaves all other powers to the state government.

The Tenth Amendment:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Areas under the authority of the federal/national government

• Foreign relations, diplomacy, the power to declare war
• The military
• Collect federal taxes
• Regulating commerce with foreign nations and among the states
• Immigration law
• Bankruptcy Law
• Issue currency
• Establish federal courts

Areas under the authority of the States
EVERYTHING ELSE (Major examples are criminal law, contract and property law, building and maintaining roads, bridges, tunnels, public health, police stations, fire stations, public schools, public universities, marriage law, etc. etc.)

The only powers of the national government are clearly stated in the Constitution, if it is not in the Constitution, it is illegal. In modern times, the national government has greatly expanded its powers well beyond the enumerated powers in the Constitution through a sort of “loose” or “flexible” interpretation of the Constitution.

State governments have substantial flexibility in how to govern their people. The only limitation is that they cannot violate any of the provisions of the U.S. Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights. This was done intentionally. The Framers had a strong distrust of a centralized national government, dictating “one size fits all” policies. Instead, they wanted the state and local governments to be in charge of most domestic policy while the national government had to stay on the sidelines.

American Elections

A typical election ballot is long with races for federal, state, and local offices. In some instances voters are asked to vote on such irrelevant positions as Water & Sanitation commissioner or may even be asked to vote for a judge. Restore America’s Legacy PAC concerns itself with elections for federal offices only, including:

1. Who is running for President (elected every four years)
2. Who is running for the U.S. Senate (elected for six years, one third are up for re-election every two years)
3. Who is running for the U.S. House of Representatives (elected every two years)

All Americans have 1 President, 2 Senators, and 1 Representative that represents them in Washington.

Round 1: The Primaries

National elections are similar to a playoff bracket. A set of candidates (the teams) compete with one another to win and advance to the next round while the rest are eliminated. The process differs from state-to-state in terms of when the primary election is held and how many votes are needed to win.

The first round is the primary. Here the candidates are fighting for the party’s nomination and the right to run in the general election in November. A person can run as an independent but it is nearly impossible to win in this way. If a candidate wins the primary election (the party nomination) they advance to the general election where they go head-to-head with the winning candidate from the other party and any independent candidates if any make it on the ballot.

If you are an independent voter, the primary election is irrelevant. Some states do allow independents to vote in the primary election of their choice (republican or democrat), but in general your interest is in the general election.

Primaries are important if there are a number of candidates that are trying to challenge the incumbent, the incumbent is unpopular and being challenged from within his own party, or if there is no incumbent and the seat is open.

Round 2: General Election

The general election is held in November. It is when the Republican, the Democrat, and any Independents go head-to-head (-to head) for the job. The winner is the one with the most votes, even if its less than 50% total.

The House of Representatives

House members are re-elected every two years and as a result are almost always in campaign mode.The House is referred to as the lower chamber. There are 435 members with each representing roughly 600,000 to 700,000 Americans. Each state is given a certain number of seats in the House in proportion to its population. California currently has the most with 54 seats while Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Vermont only have 1 seat.

State governments decide on the layout of the House districts and therefore decide which towns are in which districts. Every ten years the districts are redrawn due to the Census. After the Census, States can gain or lose seats in Congress depending on changes in their population.

The Senate

The Senate is the upper chamber due to some of its special privileges. Each State gets two senators. There are 100 total Senators currently. Each election, one third are up for re-election because they serve six year terms which are all staggered. The Senate ratifies treaties, confirms Supreme Court justices, and convicts an impeached President. But the Senate also has some special rules. If the minority party wants to defeat a bill, they can block the vote. This is the infamous filibuster or vote for cloture. To stop debate and vote on a bill, 60 Senators must vote yea to end debate. If they do not have 60 votes, debate must continue. In this situation, a minority party can block a vote as long as they have at least 41 Senators. In the House, the minority party cannot block a vote. This is done to ensure a majority party cannot just completely overrun the minority and pass whatever they wish. The House operates on a more direct fashion but the Senate is designed to be more deliberative, in other words, be more cautious in passing laws.

What is Gerrymandering?

Gerrymandering is how politicans protect themselves.  State governments re-draw the District lines every ten years.  In many cases, the two parties work together to draw district boundaries to ensure each Congressmen has a district loaded with their supporters and only a small group of opposition voters.  Often this involves drawing oddly shaped districts, cutting into neighborhoods, and sometimes surrounding only a couple city blocks and avoiding adjacent blocks that have hostile voters.

An example is Luis Guttierez's 4th District in Illinois.  The district was drawn to include as many Hispanic and Democratic neighborhoods as possible.  As a result, Gutierrez wins with 80% of the vote everytime and does not need to campaign or even interact with his constituents

This strategy allows politicians to pick their own constituents and protect themselves from challengers.  This system is undemocratic and results in bad government.  The people should choose their representatives, not the other way around.  Some states have adopted non-partisan or independent means of drawing districts.  For example, in Iowa an independent commission draws districts by their own non-political criteria.  the result is more regular looking districts that do not slash into neighborhoods or city blocks.

Gerrymandering must be stopped at the State level unfortunately.  The federal government has no authority to draw Congressional districts or push on how they should be drawn.  State legislators and governors have the power to change this undemocratic and corrupt practice.

The Federal Budget

The behemoth of the U.S. Government is expected to cost $3.73 trillion in 2011, but their overall tax revenue is expected to reach only $2.58 trillion, which means we will have a deficit of just over $1.1 trillion. When all the deficits over the years are added up, it amounts to over $13 trillion by the end of 2012.  This is known as the "national debt".

As a comparison, say your household earns about $50,000 per year. If you managed your own budget the same way, your expenses would reach roughly $70,000 a year. About $45,000 would be bills (mandatory), while $25,000 would be extra purchases (discretionary, well defense is not exactly something one should skimp on). You would also be somewhere around $250,000 in debt.

The federal government gets most of its income from individual income taxes (43%), corporate profit taxes (11%), and payroll taxes (34%). The tax rates are due to increase in 2011 and 2013 for individual income and also payroll taxes. However, this will not close the budget gap. In addition, spending freezes will not close the gap because so much of the budget is not affected by a freeze.

Mandatory programs, or those that must be paid by law, comprise about 63% of the federal budget. The biggest ones are Social Security and Medicare. Both of these programs are expected to increase in cost dramatically over the next ten to thirty years. When politicians talk about a spending freeze, it does not apply to this part of the budget.

Discretionary programs, or those that the government can choose to cut at any time, comprise about 37%. The biggest items are defense and homeland security. Other big discretionary items include health and human services, veterans affairs programs, transportation, housing, and education. In this case, a spending freeze would have some effect but most politicians propose a freeze to cover spending other than defense or homeland security. Therefore the spending freeze applies to about 20% of the budget only.

The Office of Management and Budgets expects the government to run deficits of at least $700 billion over the next ten years and that the national debt will reach $24 trillion by 2020. A significant portion of the national debt is owed to China, Russia, Japan, and Saudi Arabia. If the United States cannot keep its’ spending in check, these foreign countries may decide not to fund our debt any further, forcing us to either pay higher interest or balance the budget.

Deficits mean there will be higher taxes in the future.  The government usually hopes that economic growth will lead to higher tax revenue and that will cover the deficit.  However, the government almost always increases its spending faster than the economy can grow.  To cover the current deficit, tax revenue would have to increase by 40%, which means the economy would have to grow about the same.  For 2011, experts predict the U.S. economy will grow a meager 2.3% and is unlikely to grow much faster thereafter.