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by Bob Barr
Last December I suggested that conservatives hold off uncorking the champagne when the Supreme Court agreed to hear oral arguments on its first major gun rights case since it decided District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008 and McDonald v. Chicago two years later. On Monday, my cautionary note proved prescient. The High Court once again sidestepped providing jurisprudential support for the fundamental right to possess a firearm.
In what has become a recurring theme for conservatives looking to Chief Justice John Roberts for a degree of constitutional backbone in protecting individual liberty against government overreach, he sided with the more liberal members of the Court in not taking a position.
The case before the Court (New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. City of New York, New York) involved a New York City ordinance that prohibited even the few New Yorkers permitted by the Big Apple’s police department to have a gun in their home, from transporting it to any location outside the city’s limits, even if necessary to practice at a lawful gun range.
In taking this case for consideration, the Court appeared ready at long last to put some teeth into its 2008 and 2010 majority decisions (which included Chief Justice Roberts), that declared the right to possess a firearm as guaranteed by the Second Amendment, to be an individual right rather than a collective right as favored by the more liberal justices and by gun control advocates like former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg.
New York City officials were not asleep at the switch, however, and once the High Court agreed to take the case for decision, they cleverly rescinded the gun-transportation ordinance; notwithstanding their earlier argument that it was “essential” for protecting the public. Their gambit appears to have worked.
On Monday, a majority of Supreme Court justices, including neophyte Associate Justice Kavanaugh and Chief Justice Roberts, sided with the Court’s liberal bloc in a 6-3 decision declaring the case to be moot; thereby sidestepping the underlying and important questions about the law’s constitutionality. Protecting Americans’ right to possess a firearm free of prohibitory restrictions imposed by local government, once again has been brushed aside for another day.
There is, perhaps, at least a bit of a silver lining in this latest dark cloud hanging over gun rights in America.
The dissent, authored by Justice Alito and joined by fellow Associate Justices Thomas and Gorsuch, clearly and forcefully laid out the reasons why the New York City law was abhorrent to the Second Amendment’s fundamental purpose. These justices also argued that the case was anything but “moot.”
Hopefully, this dissenting narrative will provide legal ammunition for federal and state court judges, who far too often defer to state and local governments that have enacted regulatory barriers severely limiting individuals’ ability to exercise their Second Amendment rights.
Noteworthy also is the position taken by Justice Kavanaugh in his concurring opinion. In it, the newest member of the High Court said the Court has a responsibility to address these important gun rights issues, and that it should consider doing so “in one of the several Second Amendment cases . . . now pending before the Court.”
There are in fact a number of cases as described by Kavanaugh awaiting decision by the Court whether to grant review; including some that present even clearer evidence of government overreach than did the New York City case did.
We can only hope that the messages delivered in Monday’s opinions by Justices Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh will be heard — and heeded — by Chief Justice Roberts.
by Bob Barr
Speaker Nancy Pelosi this past weekend launched a broadside invective at the United States Supreme Court, calling the Court’s justices – apparently all nine of them — “political hacks.” Additional opinions expected in the coming weeks, however, are likely to heighten the Speaker’s ire.
While the country continues in the grip of a medical pandemic made worse by a series of draconian measures instituted by state governors and local officials limiting individual liberty, Ms. Pelosi found time to vent her anger at the Supreme Court. Interestingly, the Court did not incur the Speaker’s wrath because it dared limit what has become the Left’s most sacred shibboleth – unfettered access to abortion on demand. Nor was the Speaker’s anger precipitated by a majority of justices finding cause to support the right to possess a firearm, which, unlike the right to an abortion, is expressly guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.
No, Ms. Pelosi was furious that the nation’s highest court let stand a decision by the Supreme Court of Wisconsin that did nothing more than allow a long-scheduled primary election to proceed on April 7th without extending the time for absentee ballots to be gathered in. From the perspective of Speaker Pelosi, who just weeks ago delayed for many days a House vote to provide essential financial assistance to individuals and businesses harmed by the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing an election to proceed according to the law makes the Supreme Court justices nothing more than petty “political hacks.”
Pelosi’s judicial peeve notwithstanding, one has to give her a small degree of credit for paying attention to the goings on at the High Court during a time when most of the federal government, the Congress included, has been hunkered down and operating on minimal cylinders.
In fact, there is much happening inside the cloistered halls of the nation’s highest court; with consequential decisions in the offing, affecting everything from Second Amendment rights to the ability of a president to fire the head of a federal regulatory agency.
It is well-known that the justices have decided not to decide any Second Amendment case expanding their narrow but significant 2008 and 2010 opinions that at long last decreed that the Amendment does in fact guarantee an individual right to possess a firearm. However, in a case argued before the Court last December, the justices are poised to decide the constitutionality of a New York City ban on transporting a firearm from one location to another by a lawful gun owner.
It is likely a majority of the Court’s nine justices will decide to protect an individual’s Second Amendment rights against New York City’s since-rescinded but absolute transportation ban. And even though the scope of the expected decision is likely to be extremely limited, Speaker Pelosi’s outcry at such a result will almost certainly make her recent blast at the High Court pale in comparison.
In an unrelated but also important case awaiting decision by the Court, the justices will decide whether the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is immune from presidential control. The 2010 law establishing the CFPB uniquely protected the agency’s director from being removed by the president under virtually any circumstances.
The CFPB case was argued earlier this month, with a decision scheduled for early May. A Court majority is expected to find the unusual stature now enjoyed by this regulatory chieftain to be a violation of the separation of powers principle undergirding our three-branch federal government, according to which a president must be free to remove heads of agencies within the Executive Branch.
One can already hear the howls of anger certain to issue from the mouth of Speaker Pelosi if a majority of justices next month exhibits the gall to uphold the structure of our federal government established by our Founders two-and-one-third centuries ago, as against the “partisan hacks” who rammed through the CFPB legislation back in 2010 when – surprise – Nancy Pelosi was enjoying her first stint as Speaker.
Bob Barr represented Georgia’s 7th District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He now serves as President of the Law Enforcement Education Foundation based in Atlanta, Georgia.
by Bob Barr
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which controls the government and the citizenry of mainland China with an iron fist, is in large measure directly responsible for the incalculable economic and personal misery that has been visited on the United States and virtually every other country over the past four months resulting from the release of the coronavirus pandemic. It is time for the Trump administration to take concrete legal, economic, and diplomatic steps to hold Beijing accountable for this catastrophe.
That the virus originated inside mainland China is beyond dispute. What is becoming increasingly clear is that the CCP deliberately and intentionally withheld vital information about the virus from the United States and other nations, so as to limit our ability to stem its reach and minimize its devastation.
The Chinese government continues its campaign of misinformation and subterfuge to this day. This vile regime must be held accountable and the United States must lead that crusade.
The result of China’s intentional deception about COVID-19 has cost tens of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars in economic loss, even as it has led to immense suffering among the healthy as well. None of this was caused by good faith mistake or negligence. It was calculated and deliberate. The remonstrations by China’s lackeys at the World Health Organization (WHO) notwithstanding, the United States must take the lead in holding China accountable, in concrete and meaningful ways.
To start, President Donald Trump should announce the economic losses caused by COVID-19 will be offset by the U.S. debt owned by China; given that debt is a little over one trillion dollars, the last stimulus package alone would wipe it out completely.
Secondly, Trump should increase what he started in 2018, instituting severe restrictions on the ease with which Chinese students and researchers have gained access to our universities, research labs, and businesses. This wealth of information gained by having access to American institutions is highly valuable to the CCP as an important component in building the country’s economy and national defense, ultimately to be deployed against our interests. Severely crimping or cutting off this pipeline would be a blow to their plans.
Trade restrictions must also continue. COVID-19 revealed to even the most China-centric pundits the severity of the threat posed to U.S. supply chains running through China. While tariffs are not an ideal weapon to deploy against an adversary, those aimed at China should at least be leveraged to begin nudging U.S. interests out of China. And if not back into the U.S., then at least into less corrupt foreign nations where similarly cheap production of goods helps to lower costs for U.S. consumers.
Government contracts could be leveraged as well, prohibiting companies with supply chain links in China from winning contracts with our own government. Japan recently announced it is paying its businesses to leave China, which is also an option for the U.S. in the form of tax breaks or other incentives for repatriation.
Not to be lost in all this, is our relationship with the Republic of China, which should be strengthened publicly. The “One China” policy pressed internationally by the communist regime and acceded to by the U.S. since the Jimmy Carter administration, is a stain on America’s foreign policy and is long overdue for reconsideration. Trump has already made symbolic gestures in this direction, and now is the perfect time to accelerate such a move. It is time to start working more with Taiwan and less with its totalitarian counterpart on the mainland.
Hitting China in its fat wallet, whether directly or indirectly, will get their attention and pay dividends in the long run for American businesses and our own national interests. Important as it is to make Beijing pay monetarily for what it has done, hitting them legally may be equally important.
Conservative lawyer Larry Klayman recently filed a multi-trillion-dollar class-action lawsuit against the communist Chinese regime for its orchestration of the COVID-19 conspiracy. The U.S. Department of Justice should not watch from the sidelines in this battle.
Chinese assets in U.S. financial institutions should not remain immune from being frozen while legal steps are developed and undertaken.
The Justice Department in the recent past was quick to indict Russian collaborators for interfering in our elections. What China has done to harm the United States and its citizenry is far worse than what a group of Russian hackers allegedly did. If indictments of top Chinese officials responsible for visiting the COVID-19 pandemic on our country and for conspiring to cover it up is not already in the works, it should be.
by Bob Barr
For more than two decades, the system codified in federal law for ensuring that persons prohibited from possessing a firearm are not able to lawfully acquire one from a licensed firearms retailer has worked reasonably well. Since 1998 when the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or “NICS,” became operational, the FBI has completed hundreds of millions of background checks on prospective gun purchasers; 28.4 million last year alone.
For some reason, however, the FBI recently has taken to playing games with NICS, and by bureaucratic fiat ignoring or overriding an important provision in the law. Neither firearms purchasers nor retailers should stand for such skullduggery.
The provision at issue is that which permits the FBI to place what amounts to a “hold” on a prospective firearm purchase, in order to allow the Bureau time to determine if a particular purchaser falls within one of the several categories of persons not permitted to possess a gun. Under the law establishing NICS, with the FBI as the “go-to” agency, that temporary “hold” is strictly limited to “three business days.”
While the vast majority of inquiries submitted to the FBI each year by firearms dealers (Federal Firearms Licensees or “FFLs”) are approved or denied almost immediately (hence, the “instant” check system), occasionally there are those that raise questions, and in each such instance, the FFL is notified and the statutorily allowed “three business day” period begins to run. If the dealer does not receive a denial within that window, the dealer is permitted at its discretion to allow the purchase (or “transfer”) to proceed.
The three-business-day hold period is clearly defined as days in which “state offices are open” in the particular state where the transaction is taking place. This particular language was designed so as not to box the FBI into having to resolve the potential problem with a purchaser’s background on a Friday right before a three-day state or federal holiday. For the past 22 years this has been the common understanding. Until now, that is.
Since the announcements over the past several weeks of federal and state-level COVID-19 “state of emergency” decrees, during which many businesses and public events are closed, FFLs have been receiving notices from the FBI that certain transactions are delayed not for three business days, which is the maximum the law allows, but for 30 days or even longer.
Although the volume of requests to NICS during the current pandemic is unprecedented and places a strain on the Bureau’s staff in meeting the requirements of the law, there is no provision in federal law permitting the Bureau to extend any purchase “hold” beyond three business days.
The FBI may be interpreting the pandemic-based emergency decrees in effect in every state as constituting days in which state government offices are not “open.” If so, this is a subterfuge. State offices in all 50 states remain open, albeit under limiting guidelines set by the federal government and by individual state governors.
Businesses that receive notices from the FBI declaring planned firearms purchases are delayed for extended periods beyond the lawful maximum three business days are put in a delicate position. While such notices clearly are inconsistent with the law, if the retailer receiving one allows the sale to go forward after three business days – as the business is permitted to do lawfully – and the FBI later notifies the retailer that the buyer is in fact a prohibited person, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to foresee potential legal issues looming.
Moreover, NICS checks are valid only for 30 days, so a retailer who obeys a 30-day (or even longer) hold and receives no denial during that time, places the purchaser in the position of having to come back and start the process all over again in a potential never-ending loop.
The director of the FBI should step in and stop this bureaucratic skullduggery, and if he will not, the Attorney General should. Anti-gun state and local government officials are trying every trick in the book during this pandemic to deny law-abiding citizens the ability to exercise their rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment. Americans do not need bureaucrats at the FBI making it even more difficult.
Bob Barr represented Georgia’s 7th District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He now serves as President of the Law Enforcement Education Foundation based in Atlanta, Georgia.
by Bob Barr
With various states already postponing primary elections in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, questions are surfacing about whether to postpone the November 3rd general election. The complexities inherent in such consideration would make even the most seasoned constitutional expert’s eyes glaze over.
Though we thankfully appear to be past the peak of COVID-19 infections, there is a real possibility of another viral cycle later this year; meaning the November election could take place in circumstances similar to those we face today, with mandated “social distancing” and “lockdowns” in place. This is where things become seriously and constitutionally muddled.
Per the 20th Amendment to the Constitution, terms of the President and Vice President end at Noon on January 20th. Likewise, every House Member’s term ends on January 3rd, as does the term of every Senator who currently is up for reelection on November 3rd. While Congress is empowered to set the date of the election by law, the terms of the president, the vice president, all 435 House members, and one-third of Senators are set by the Constitution and cannot extend beyond those dates. No “state of emergency” can change this.
So, who would serve as president and vice president if the November 3rd election was postponed? “The Speaker of the House” is the obvious answer, but it is hardly that simple.
Should an election not take place before these terms expire, there would be no Speaker of the House because Nancy Pelosi would not have been reelected to represent the people of the 12th District of California. But, hold on a moment — since the House elects a Speaker and that person technically need not be a member of the House, could the Democrat-controlled House choose someone else, or would Pelosi remain as Speaker since her title as “Speaker” is not dependent on her being a sitting member of the House?
Also, what would happen in the Senate, with one-third of the seats not filled after January 3rd? There are 22 Republicans up for re-election, and 12 Democrats. Should none of them be seated, the 10-seat net GOP loss, which would include current Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, would leave Democrats with a majority and an open leader seat.
This has implications for the line of succession, assuming as well that President Donald Trump’s term would end, and the presidency be vacant. The President Pro Tempore of the Senate is next in line after the Vice President and the Speaker of the House. Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, currently the most senior Republican senator, now serves in that largely honorary post, but it is not clear if he would (or could) be chosen to continue after next January 3rd (his term runs to January 3, 2023). Democrat New York Sen. Chuck Schumer serves now as Minority Leader in that body and his term continues also to January 3, 2023, so he would be a key player, especially if the consequence of all this puts his Party in the majority.
What about the Electors, chosen by the states per Article I Section 1 and as modified by the 12th Amendment to the Constitution? Would they still vote for President, even if the popular vote in each state did not take place? Would each one be free to vote for whomever he or she wished, or beholden to some other bellwether of public opinion to cast Electoral College ballots?
Complicating the matter even further is that administratively, elections are a function of the states, and not subject to presidential or congressional mandates. Would some states where the virus is particularly bad cancel their election, while others continue with voting; and, does this change how many Electoral votes are needed in order to be elected president, since the 12th Amendment only requires a majority of the Electors who have been appointed? What happens if a state chooses an alternative voting method? Should those votes be counted, or dismissed? Who decides?
States of emergency now are in place in every state and territory, overlaid since March 13th with a federal “state of emergency.” These measures, considered in many respects draconian, are being supplemented by local emergency declarations by municipal officials in communities across the nation.
This situation already is eating away at the civil compact between citizens and government, and between state and federal authorities; a construct carefully woven into the fabric of our constitutional republic. Adding to this perilous condition by deferring the November general election, could very well push us toward a darkness into which our country never has descended.
by Bob Barr
At this point in the COVID-19 pandemic, most government sectors are playing out their roles according to script. Congress is throwing money at the problem. Liberal governors are preening for the cameras and auditioning to be chosen by Joe Biden to be his running mate. The mainstream media is obsessed with criticizing Trump’s every move.
Local government officials of all political stripes are becoming mini-despots — ordering law enforcement to yank people off buses if they are not wearing mandated personal protective equipment (PPE) and instructing police to intimidate parishioners wanting to attend in-car religious services.
Federal regulatory bureaucrats are doing what they do best – demanding that every rule be followed to the T even if doing so slows down salubrious processes.
Outside the glare of the TV cameras, however, it is the president, perhaps alone, who is trying to take meaningful steps that will actually improve the chances the United States will be better prepared to both avert a future health crisis imported from outside our borders as well as to respond to health crises wherever their origin.
Regulatory reform has been the quiet storm of the Trump administration. Unnecessary and burdensome rules have been identified and, where possible without congressional action, limited or rolled back entirely. The Left, as seen in a recent New York Times piece by Lisa Friedman, is worried sick about Trump’s efforts in this regard. Liberal efforts to slow this hallmark policy of the administration, however, will not succeed; unless, of course, the November election returns control of either the White House or the Senate (or both) to Democrat control.
Long before the onset of the current health crisis, Trump knew that regulatory red tape was hampering innovation in our domestic economy. More important to the current analysis, Trump understood that such regulatory suffocation was a major factor driving American businesses and manufacturing abroad.
It has become common knowledge, for example, that one of the reasons N95 masks and some other PPE are in too short supply during this pandemic is at least in large measure the result of regulatory roadblocks for their manufacture and distribution erected by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). It is those same regulatory processes that work, in reverse, to make it easier for plants in other countries, notably China, to manufacture goods and to then export them to the U.S. domestic market.
Consider just one product much in today’s news – drugs. When it becomes easier and cheaper to manufacture drugs overseas, it comes as no surprise that this is precisely what companies have been doing for years, and why a significant, perhaps frightening percentage of generic drugs are made in China and imported into the United States. The one federal agency responsible for monitoring this sector, and for ensuring the efficacy of those imported products – the FDA — apparently does not even know how significant this problem really is.
In congressional testimony last fall, months before the Chinese Wuhan Coronavirus made its hellish appearance, a top FDA official admitted the agency does not know how many facilities in China are licensed to manufacture APIs (Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients). What is clear is that China (along with India) now is one of America’s largest suppliers by far of generic drugs, and drug manufacturing plants in that country have become adept at evading the strict scrutiny by which the FDA monitors pharmaceutical companies inside the U.S.
Ironically, it is here in our country that many of the Chinese business and science leaders learn the skills that are taken back to their homeland and deployed to the advantage of their country to the disadvantage of ours. Trump gets this irony and has moved to address it.
Academic leaders in the U.S., of course, bewail the Trump administration’s two-year old policy of limiting the flood of Chinese students (whose parents have become wealthy off of that country’s communist-run oligarchy) into American colleges and universities. The FBI has raised alarms about the ease with which these students, particularly those at the graduate level, thereby gain access to research with military and other national security ramifications.
Hopefully, this latest health crisis visited on us by China, will further invigorate the administration to use all the regulatory, immigration and national security tools at its disposal, to protect America from future such occurrences. If there were just a single reason to reelect Trump to a second term, that would be it.
Bob Barr represented Georgia’s 7th District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He now serves as President of the Law Enforcement Education Foundation based in Atlanta, Georgia.
by Bob Barr
Everything New York Sen. Chuck Schumer says is political; and since President Trump took office in January 2017, everything Schumer says is political with an anti-Trump stinger. However, the Senator’s recent call for the President “to designate a senior military officer” to control the federal government’s COVID-19 response, is dead wrong. The proposal reflects a troubling perspective that, while perhaps popular to many citizens in times of crisis, cuts against the grain of how our country is governed; that is, if in accord with the principles and philosophy underlying our founding charter.
The United States is a constitutional republic governed by individuals accountable to the people. This principle is codified in the Constitution itself, and explained further and at length in documents from The Federalist Papers to Supreme Court opinions, and in extensive presidential commentary beginning with George Washington. As noted by Richard Brookhiser in his book, “George Washington on Leadership,” it was our very first Commander in Chief who “made the template for American military leaders and their civilian superiors” (emphasis mine). America at its core is a country led by civilians according to civil law, not military individuals operating according to martial law.
The distinction is not merely technical or strictly statutory (though such distinctions are extremely important). The “template” establishing the supremacy of civilian leadership over military in our country and in our culture, reflects also the civilian mind-set over the military.
Armed forces operate on strict chain-of-command. Navy Captain Brett Crozier, former commander of the nuclear aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, recently learned that going outside the chain of command brings serious consequences.
Principles of civilian due process and equal protection are very different in that environment. This makes perfect sense. In the military, particularly during hostilities, failure to execute orders without question can, and probably will, result in loss of life and possible defeat on the battlefield.
It is this consistency and certainty that makes the notion of placing the military in control of federal government functions in times of emergency or crisis, appealable to many people. Having a military figure at the helm, barking out orders and demanding results without question, offers a sense of security and comfort. It is understandably easier for many people to be told what to do than for them to have to decide for themselves.
When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans 15 years ago, for example, it was not any of the civilian officials involved who rose in stature and popularity. It was a military personality, Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore.
The use of the National Guard to augment and assist state governments (and occasionally the federal government) in times of true emergency – whether caused by force of nature or of disease – is appropriate and in many circumstances, essential.
The propriety of employing military resources and administration in such domestic settings, however, comes with an important caveat – civilian authorities, whether under command of a state governor or the president of the United States, must remain in control of policy decision-making and -implementation. This may lead to some bad decisions being made, and it may appear far messier than the chain-of-command paradigm within which military operations are conducted; but it is the way things happen in a representative democracy – in a free country.
Placing our country’s response to the coronavirus pandemic under the command of a “designat[ed] senior military officer” as Schumer desires, may appear to him and to Trump’s critics as a way to fill what he claims is an “existing federal leadership void.” Such a move might even appeal to a large segment of the voting public and to many in the media. In their perspective, it makes sense – we are “at war” with a viral enemy, and who best to lead the defense against that enemy than a “senior military officer.”
After all, so the argument goes, over the centuries America has produced some of the best military leaders the world has seen (beginning with Gen. George Washington), and our armed forces remain the very best in the world.
It is a seductive argument that Schumer makes, even if prompted by his dislike for President Trump. But it is fundamentally wrong and reflects either a deep ignorance of the principles on which our nation was founded, or a conscious decision to brush those principles aside to make a partisan political point. Trump, who categorically rejected Schumer’s letter the same day it was sent, understands what is at stake, just as did George Washington before him.
by Bob Barr
“Hotspot” is a word that has gained new meaning these past four weeks. Early predictions that February had brought us simply another seasonal flu of the “coronavirus” type quickly gave way to the harsh reality that the United States, as with democracies and totalitarian regimes alike across the globe, is going to be fighting this virus for quite some time to come. Residents from virus “hotspots” like New York City and New Orleans are being “blacklisted” from travelling into less-affected areas of the country. Even states in America’s heartland, such as Illinois, are emerging as viral hotspots.
People everywhere are struggling. The unemployment numbers have skyrocketed. You know things are bad when the ink barely has dried on the presidential signature for a $2 trillion spending bill, and already even Republican senators are entertaining talk of yet another spending bill to come.
We now are approaching the middle of April, when many experts predict the number of COVID-19 cases will peak. And yet, at this very time — before hardly any of the federal stimulus money has been mailed from the U.S. Treasury to millions of families that live paycheck-to-paycheck — families in parts of the country may be facing higher utility bills not caused by weather, but by legislatively-permitted rate hikes.
Maintaining livable conditions, which is dependent on adequate and constant electrical power for homes, businesses and hospitals, is essential for the success of both mandated and voluntary quarantine efforts. Even during “normal” times, people on ventilators have died because of power shutoffs following their inability to keep current their utility bills. Some states have been getting ahead of utility billing issues by mandating holds on utility disconnects and late fees. However, other states have run into problems that could raise state-wide rates, right at a time when our most vulnerable citizens need a break. Consider, for example, the Clean Energy Jobs Act (CEJA) pending before the Illinois legislature.
CEJA is designed to reform the energy market in Illinois to make it more responsive to the need for “green” energy. But what appears to have happened is that specific objectionable provisions within the bill were written in a way that will allow Exelon, a major energy company in the state, to increase electric capacity prices by over $414 million. Such a move will inevitably hurt taxpayers — likely to a significant degree. The timing for such a development in the middle of a pandemic could not be worse.
There have been conflicting reports about the impact of legislation. The Chicago Sun Times Editorial Board, for example, recently published an article claiming CEJA would lower rates, and urged the legislature to pass it as soon as possible. Not surprisingly, the editorial board’s view fits the perspective supported by Exelon. It appears, however, that the data on which the newspaper based its editorial recommendation is inaccurate; with an independent analysis concluding that proposed changes would actually increase rates.
This should hardly come as a surprise. The FBI and SEC already are looking into Exelon’s past lobbying efforts in support of rate hikes, and it is highly doubtful the status quo has changed this time around. The company has a relatively successful track record for obtaining rate increases, and given the current estimates from independent analysts, it is likely this bill will bring about the same costly results for consumers.
Considering the unprecedented struggles families are now facing, and with communities riding out a storm that could remain devastating for months to come, utility rate hikes are another blow many Americans cannot afford. As homeowners and businesses alike make do in this challenging environment, representatives at all levels in government have a special responsibility to protect citizens against unnecessary hikes in regulated industries that are essential to individual and community well-being.
Late last month, Attorney General Bill Barr announced a crackdown on price gouging and hoarding of essential medical supplies during this pandemic. It would be ironic indeed if state lawmakers, like those in Illinois, decide to give the green light for utility companies to do lawfully to American households and businesses what the Trump Administration is trying nationally to prevent.
Bob Barr represented Georgia’s 7th District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He now serves as President of the Law Enforcement Education Foundation based in Atlanta, Georgia.
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