Thursday, May 27, 2010

History Repeating Itself? Let Us Pray

May 27 is a great day in our nation's Constitution.  On this day in 1935, the Supreme Court of the United States in a ruling in the case of "Schechter Poultry Corp. vs. the United States" declared the "National Industrial Recovery Act" unconstitutional.  From Wikipedia:


The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), officially known as the Act of June 16, 1933 (Ch. 90, 48 Stat. 195, formerly codified at 15 U.S.C. sec. 703), was an American statute which authorized the President of the United States to regulate industry and permit cartels andmonopolies in an attempt to stimulate economic recovery, and established a national public works program.[1][2] The legislation was enacted in June 1933 during the Great Depression part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal legislative program. Section 7(a) of the bill, which protected collective bargaining rights for unions, proved contentious (especially in the Senate),[1][3] but both chambers eventually passed the legislation and President Roosevelt signed the bill into law on June 16, 1933.[1][4] The Act had two main sections (or "titles"). Title I was devoted to industrial recovery, and authorized the promulgation of industrial codes of fair competition, guaranteed trade union rights, permitted the regulation of working standards, and regulated the price of certain refined petroleum products and their transportation. Title II established the Public Works Administration, outlined the projects and funding opportunities it could engage in, and funded the Act.
The Act was implemented by the National Recovery Administration (NRA) and the Public Works Administration (PWA).[2][5] Very large numbers of regulations were generated under the authority granted to the NRA by the Act,[6][7] which led to a significant loss of political support for Roosevelt and the New Deal.[2] The NIRA was set to expire in June 1935, but in a major constitutional ruling the U.S. Supreme Court held Title I of the Act unconstitutional on May 27, 1935, in Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935).[2] The National Industrial Recovery Act is widely considered a policy failure, both in the 1930s and by historians today.[1][8][9] Disputes over the reasons for this failure continue, however. Among the suggested causes are that the Act promoted economically harmful monopolies,[6] that the Act lacked critical support from the business community,[10] and that the Act was poorly administered.[10][11] The Act encouraged union organizing, which led to significant labor unrest.[12] The Act had no mechanisms for handling these problems, which led Congress to pass the National Labor Relations Act in 1935.[13]

Great article this morning in the Wall Street Journal by Dan Danner, the head of the National Federation of Independent Businesses titled "ObamaCare vs. Small Business."  The same logic of poor administration, harmful policy, harmful to business that got NIRA overturned could well be the death knell of ObamaCare.  It is over-reaching, harmful to the creation of the very jobs that are needed to save the economy and it is unconstitutional.  Let us pray that this-

goes the way of this:



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