Here's another Gore Tax commentary from WSJ - Folks cut and paste this to your favorite site. An additional 5% unconstitutional telephone tax is bull...
Commentary
Congress Passes
The Buck--
Your Tax Buck
By DAVID SCHOENBROD and MARCI HAMILTON
Americans are about to find an unpleasant surprise on their long-distance
phone bills: a new federal tax. New taxes are never popular, but this one is
particularly galling because it flies in the face of the principle that sparked
the Boston Tea Party: No taxation without representation. For the new tax
is being imposed by fiat from the Federal Communications Commission.
Under the Constitution, only Congress has the authority to levy taxes.
Indeed, the Framers went so far as to require that tax bills begin in the
House of Representatives, since senators served by appointment in the
early days of the nation. With the people's elected representatives directly
responsible for the taxes, taxpayers know exactly whom to hold
accountable.
But members of Congress have hit on a way
of shirking their constitutional duty and
spending other people's money without taking
responsibility: They tell unelected officials to
impose the tax. The new phone tax is a case
in point. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 uses the most veiled of
language to authorize the FCC to tax: "Every telecommunications carrier
that provides interstate telecommunications services shall contribute, on an
equitable and nondiscriminatory basis, to the specific, predictable, and
sufficient mechanisms established by the [Federal Communications]
Commission to preserve and advance universal service."
This language represents a complete delegation of taxing power from
Congress to the FCC. Members of Congress now pathetically claim that
they never expected the FCC to impose such a whopping tax. But it was
they who gave the FCC the power to tax without limit. Congress is trying
to take the money, but not the blame.
This is not the only case of Congress delegating the taxing power. Patent
filing fees, for instance, far exceed the requirements of the Patent and
Trademark Office. Congress and the president have helped themselves to
the surpluses generated by such fees, using them to pay for unrelated
programs like legal aid and welfare.
Rep. George Gekas (R., Pa.) plans to introduce a bill next week that
would stop any tax levied by an administrative agency from going into
effect unless Congress enacts it the old-fashioned way--the constitutional
way. Agencies could propose taxes, but Congress would have to take
responsibility by enacting them before we have to pay.
If the Constitution mandates that
Congress imposes taxes, why is such
a bill necessary? The Supreme Court
must share the blame. Until the
1920s, the court consistently made it
clear that Congress could not
delegate its legislative powers to the
executive branch. But since then, the
justices have let Congress authorize
bureaucrats to impose laws through
agency regulation and have even
signaled that Congress might be able
to delegate the power to tax.
There is hope, however, that the court may be returning to constitutional
first principles. In the 1996 case of Loving v. U.S., the justices, citing
Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution, declared that "the lawmaking
function belongs to Congress . . . and may not be conveyed to another
branch or entity."
Whether this portends a firmer line on delegation may quickly become
apparent. The court will soon hand down its opinion on the constitutional
challenge to the Line Item Veto Act. That statute delegates to the
president another one of Congress's core powers--the power to decide
the composition of the federal budget--as well as the taxing power by
permitting the president to choose to negate particular aspects of enacted
statutes.
The court should make clear that taxation without representation is
unconstitutional. And Congress too has a duty to uphold the Constitution.
A repeal of the FCC tax, an end to stealth taxation through the Patent
Office and the passage of the Gekas bill would be a fitting way of
celebrating the Fourth of July.
Mr. Schoenbrod is a professor at New York Law School. Ms. Hamilton
is a professor at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. |
