RepThomasMassie

I once had breakfast with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and about 18 other members of Congress in a private room at the Capitol Hill Club in Washington DC.

He was invited to speak on the topic of “restoring the constitutional balance of government.”

At the time of that breakfast with Scalia, John Boehner was Speaker of the House and Barack Obama was President.

There was concern that Obama was doing things we hadn’t authorized and Boehner had convinced most of my GOP colleagues there wasn’t anything we could do about it.

Scalia finished his breakfast and began to speak. He started by saying that being a referee between us and the executive branch was not his job.

He explained that his job as a jurist was to determine if there was harm and what the remedy might be.

Occasionally, constitutionality of a law was a question, but only as a side effect of Scalia’s job, which was to determine if someone had been harmed and what the remedy was.

He was adamant that his job was not to referee disagreements between the executive & the legislature.

Scalia then admonished us for asking him to fix any perceived imbalance, because after all he said, “Yours is the most powerful branch, and the tools you need are right there in the Constitution.”

/paraphrasing from memory/

One of my colleagues, a former representative from Arizona, complained to Scalia that impeachment was too unwieldy, impractical, and prone to political blowback.

Scalia said sternly, “I’m not talking about impeachment…”

Scalia continued, “You have the power of the purse. You fund everything you complain about. Quit funding it and the President won’t be able to do it.”

Most of my colleagues were dumbfounded. Boehner had convinced them the executive was too powerful for us.

I wanted to cheer.

I’m relating this story now because we find ourselves in the same situation today.

My colleagues, misled by our Speaker, tell you we are powerless against Biden.

They say we must win the White House or pray for the Supreme Court to save us. This is untrue.

What we need is a new Speaker willing to use our majority to wield the power of the purse for the benefit of America.

In just a few months, this Speaker has worked to give the Executive more authority and more money than even Pelosi granted.

Vacate this #uniparty Speaker.

Sauce/. https://twitter.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1787437936931201468