Power corrupts. Power in Congress corrupts Congress

Limiting congressional power

By Henry Lamb
Sunday, January 17, 2010

Power corrupts. Power in Congress corrupts Congress. In hopes of preventing, or at least minimizing congressional corruption, the nation’s framers carefully limited the power of Congress to those specific powers set forth in Article 1, Section 8. The 10th Amendment makes it impossible to misinterpret the limitation of congressional power by expressly stating that all power not granted to the United States by the Constitution is retained by the states or by the people.

The House of Representatives once recognized this limitation and included this language in their rules of procedure:

“Each report of a committee on a public bill or public joint resolution shall contain the following: A statement citing the specific powers granted to Congress in the Constitution to enact the law proposed by the bill or joint resolution.â€