Senator Tom Coburn just launched an . . . interesting line of questioning against Elena Kagan, claiming that the Supreme Court has a broad mandate to stop Congress from running up a national debt.
SCOTUSblog’s initial notes of Coburn’s statement:
The Commerce Clause has gotten us to a place where we’ll have a $1.6 Trillion deficit for our kids to pay. We have this expansive cost, and we have to have some limit on it. If the courts aren’t going to limit within original intent, we have to throw out most of the Congress.
Actually, Senator Coburn, the American people do have a way to “throw out most of the Congress” if we’re unhappy with what they’re doing. In fact, we get a chance to do it every two years.
Senator Cardin, following Coburn, put it just right: “His definition of original intent is similar to some of my colleague’s definition of judicial activism . . . you use it to get results.”