CORE Beliefs – Hint: Washington DC Forgot Them All!

Posted on February 2, 2011 by Brian Reilly in Articles

The U.S. House of Representatives is working on a bill to replace the 2,000+ page health care law.

To say that there are good laws and bad laws that Congress has passed may be a little elementary. Those “bad” laws I’m referring to are often overreaching, unnecessary, unconstitutional, or dumb. Those “good” laws are Constitutional and equally applied at the federal, state, or local level.

There are several reasons why lawmakers propose legislation:

On the flip side, there are people who don’t believe that laws should exist and embrace anarchy (See: Julian Assange of Wikileaks).

Mind you, no one will ever agree 100% on what should be law and what shouldn’t be law. We may agree that taxes are necessary, but a progressive tax system where 47% of Americans don’t pay any federal income tax meets the definition of crazy.

Invariably politicians and lawmakers are always busy creating (You guessed it!) new laws.

I say “politicians” and “lawmakers” without deference to their political brand. There can be liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats, but not many of the latter exist in reality these days. And of course there are Green Party, Libertarian, et al.

As a fan of American liberty, I did some thinking about what makes “good” law. And I came up with an easy acronym: CORE.

CORE stands for Constitutional, Optional, Relevant, Equal

Ask yourself this question: Is the new idea/proposal/bill/law you’re hearing about…

Constitutional?

Does this legislation follow the Constitution? The individual mandate found within the Health Care law was recently struck down in a Florida federal court for being unconstitutional.

Optional?

Is this legislation voluntary? Why is it not? If Social Security is such a great idea, why is it mandatory? Obviously not every piece of legislation can be “optional”, but more need to be.

Relevant?

Does this legislation contain any irrelevant material? Is there pork? Are we paying to study dinosaurs on Mars?

Equal?

Does this legislation treat everyone equally under the law or take from some to give to others? Who benefits most from this legislation?

Keep lawmakers accountable to our Constitution!

CORE Beliefs: Pass it on.

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