Joseph Sobran, the late columnist and constitutional scholar, used to say that “anything called a program,” meaning most of what the federal government does, is unconstitutional. The bazillion-dollar “continuing resolution” to fund the government, which was larded with unconstitutional pork, illustrates this point. Congress passed a so-called clean bill, yet the original resolution’s failure nearly shut down the government, which would have been a baleful turn of events. Or so we are told every time those bad conservatives on Capitol Hill refuse to approve a bill loaded with more waste — this one included funding for a “gay senior home” — than Staten Island’s Fresh Kills Landfill. The point is, most of the government should be shut down.

What the shutdown hysterics fear most would have meant nothing to the average American even as late as the early 20th century. Until then, a mailman was about the only federal agent with whom Americans had contact. Americans paid zero federal income tax. But at least in 1913, federal lawmakers still thought enough of their nation’s primordial law to propose and solicit the states to ratify the 16th Amendment, which permitted the federal government to levy the tax.

The legislators who conceived that tax didn’t likely anticipate what mischief lay ahead, once politicians learned they could confiscate tens of millions, then hundreds of millions, then billions and hundreds of billions of dollars to spend as they wish. The ensuing cash bonanza enabled them to create afterward one unconstitutional “program” after another: education, welfare, Medicaid, etc. The unconstitutional Social Security and Medicare programs are subsidized by their own unconstitutional taxes. 

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