The "Enumerated Powers Act" - a snake in the grass? [Update]

I occasionally get email from Downsize DC, a small government group whose interests sometimes overlap mine (heck, Obama found common ground with Coburn, after all). Their latest email makes me suspicious though. They are promoting a bill called the "Enumerated Powers Act," aimed at requiring Congress to specify what constitutional authority lies behind any bill.

More over the fold ---

Here's the key quote ---

The "Enumerated Powers Act" (H.R. 1359) would compel Congress to identify their Constitutional authority for every law they pass. It wouldn't stop them from passing bad laws, but it sure would highlight the fact that most of what they do has no Constitutional authority at all.

We pretty much know what they would do. They would have to invoke the so-called "general welfare clause," which is really just the preamble to the Constitution, or the "commerce clause," which was really intended to foster free trade between the states. It would become very embarrassing very quickly, and we could pound them about it constantly.

When we last reported to you the "Enumerated Powers Act" had 47 co-sponsors in the House. Well, now it has 52. But there's even better news . . .

Senator Tom Coburn introduced a Senate version (S. 3159) on June 19th, and 22 out of 100 Senators have already signed-on as co-sponsors. This is an incredible level of support that has come about very quickly.

Why are so many politicians sponsoring legislation that would serve to cast Congress in a poor light?

One possibility is that lots of them really would like to stick closer to the Constitution, but feel constrained by the Congressional leadership and the perverse incentives by which Congress operates. We're not saying this excuses their un-constitutional votes, but it could explain some of them.

That's why we've crafted proposals such as the "Read the Bills Act," the "One Subject at a Time Act," and the "Write the Laws Act." If we could just change the incentives by which Congress operates, we could also change the outcome. The "Enumerated Powers Act" could be a small but important part of this.

If wanted, I can post the list of sponsors, too, but all the names I recognize are Republicans, and not the nice ones either. Is this a trap to make it difficult to pass bills under a new president? Could folks with more constitutional savvy comment on whether it would limit things much or at all?

[Update]

Here are some of the responses to the proposed act -

Liberty Maven with one commenter's take ---

i see that the supposed great defender of the constitution dennis kucinich isn’t on the list.

On the other hand, a nice slap down of enumerated powers.

Pointoflaw calls it a "basic good-government principle."

An essay in Capitalism Magazine has this to add:

At one time there were presidents who respected the Constitution. Grover Cleveland vetoed hundreds of spending measures during his two-term presidency, often saying, "I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution." Then there was Franklin Pierce who said, after vetoing an appropriation to assist the mentally ill, "I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity," adding, "To approve such spending would be contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded."

And this survivalist site accidentally lets the cat out of the bag:

failure to comply with this requirement shall give rise to a point of order in either House of Congress, with said point of order not affecting any other available relief.

In other words, pure nuclear grade obstructionism for any s.o.b. who wants to stop anything. Grrr.