In his 2013 State of the Union Address, President Obama cited brain research as an example of how the government could and in fact should literally “invest in the best ideas.”[1] He cited the $140 return to the economy from every dollar that had been invested to map the human genome, and added that funding the Brain Activity Map would be a job-creating investment in science and innovation. In terms of comparative economic advantage, he said, enlarging the “knowledge economy” would be a good strategy for maintaining a formidable standard of living. As laudatory as more knowledge of the human brain is, Obama's perspective suffers from economic reductionism and a lack of political basis.
Economic reductionism means that everything reduces finally to its economic impact. Mapping the genome may have good economic returns, but the impact in terms of human fulfillment is arguably much more beneficial and thus important. Finding the gene that causes baldness, for instance, would surely have an economic benefit for some, but the non-economic benefits to bald men would be much more important. More importantly, to the extent that mapping the genome has led to new treatments for illness, especially those that are fatal, the primary benefits have surely not been economic in nature. An old person who can live ten more years rather than one does not leap for joy because of the the additional retirement income. Because this is obvious, Obama's economic basis can now be seen as artificial or skewed at best even it it was politically and economically prudent for him to point to economic returns as they would have been particularly of interest to the companies that made campaign and other, less direct, economic contributions to the Wall Street president. Unfortunately, people reading or hearing his speech could have gotten the idea that the reduction to the economic effect is fitting rather than distorting. A government, after all, should look after the public good, which is not only economic. Of course, it has been by lip service to the general welfare that U.S. presidents have tried to justify federal spending in virtually any area, hence robbing the state governments of more and more sovereignty.
That the federal government had any constitutional basis to be funding a map of the brain's activity is a question the federal president seems not to have considered. To be sure, balancing spending for the general welfare with the enumerated (i.e., limited) powers of the federal government is a difficult task unless the general-welfare spending is assumed to pertain only to the enumerated (i.e., listed) powers of that government. It makes no sense to say that government's powers are limited and yet spending can pertain to any domain, even preempting state spending. So by logic alone, it stands to reason that the spending clause must have been intended to furnish Congress with the authority to fund its enumerated powers.
Put another way for the faint of heart, if a positive economic return to the economy is the litmus test, then the federal government could intercede in so many areas that the state governments could eventually become little more than local governments. The crucial political benefit of federalism, wherein the state governments have the power to act as a check against encroaching or tyrannical federal power so the only check is not on the state governments by the federal government, is lost if federal lawmakers and the executive can amass virtually unlimited power for the U.S. Government (and themselves in the process!) especially if done at the expense of the states.
Economic reductionism means that everything reduces finally to its economic impact. Mapping the genome may have good economic returns, but the impact in terms of human fulfillment is arguably much more beneficial and thus important. Finding the gene that causes baldness, for instance, would surely have an economic benefit for some, but the non-economic benefits to bald men would be much more important. More importantly, to the extent that mapping the genome has led to new treatments for illness, especially those that are fatal, the primary benefits have surely not been economic in nature. An old person who can live ten more years rather than one does not leap for joy because of the the additional retirement income. Because this is obvious, Obama's economic basis can now be seen as artificial or skewed at best even it it was politically and economically prudent for him to point to economic returns as they would have been particularly of interest to the companies that made campaign and other, less direct, economic contributions to the Wall Street president. Unfortunately, people reading or hearing his speech could have gotten the idea that the reduction to the economic effect is fitting rather than distorting. A government, after all, should look after the public good, which is not only economic. Of course, it has been by lip service to the general welfare that U.S. presidents have tried to justify federal spending in virtually any area, hence robbing the state governments of more and more sovereignty.
That the federal government had any constitutional basis to be funding a map of the brain's activity is a question the federal president seems not to have considered. To be sure, balancing spending for the general welfare with the enumerated (i.e., limited) powers of the federal government is a difficult task unless the general-welfare spending is assumed to pertain only to the enumerated (i.e., listed) powers of that government. It makes no sense to say that government's powers are limited and yet spending can pertain to any domain, even preempting state spending. So by logic alone, it stands to reason that the spending clause must have been intended to furnish Congress with the authority to fund its enumerated powers.
Put another way for the faint of heart, if a positive economic return to the economy is the litmus test, then the federal government could intercede in so many areas that the state governments could eventually become little more than local governments. The crucial political benefit of federalism, wherein the state governments have the power to act as a check against encroaching or tyrannical federal power so the only check is not on the state governments by the federal government, is lost if federal lawmakers and the executive can amass virtually unlimited power for the U.S. Government (and themselves in the process!) especially if done at the expense of the states.
A Congressional rendering of how the human brain might be mapped. Source; nytimes.
Admittedly, a person could look at the U.S. Constitution and point out the spending clause, whereby the Congress has the authority to spend funds “for the general welfare.” in itself, the clause contains no limitation, and the general welfare is indeed wide in scope. Scientific advancement, it could be argued, is surely in line with advancing the general welfare of the people. Virtually any purpose, even those purposes in which the effect on the general welfare is merely a byproduct, could fit within the clause. To restrict the clause could foreseeably hold back the general welfare from what it would otherwise be.
Turning to the enumerated powers of Congress, the commercial implications from mapping the brain's activity might seem to fit within the interstate commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution. After all, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in Wickard v. Filmore (1942) that even a farmer in Iowa who grows wheat for his family's own consumption can be subject to regulation. Even if his activity "be local and though it may not be regarded as commerce, it may still, whatever its nature, be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce and this irrespective of whether such effect is what might at some earlier time have been defined as 'direct' or 'indirect."[2] The majority opinion reasons that the harvests of wheat for private consumption, if aggregated, would have a significant effect on the interstate wheat commerce. Even an indirect effect on the interstate wheat market can justify even the growing of wheat for private consumption being subject to the interstate commerce clause, and thus federal power. So it is no accident that the federal executive publicly justified the federal funding to map the brain's activity by characterizing such a map as "a job-creating investment in science and innovation." Obama may have engaged in warped economic reductionism in order to gain more power for his government. He and the federal court before him both distorted logic for the sake of additional power going to the federal government.
The institutional and personal conflicts of interest should be obvious. Since that ruling, the reach of the commerce clause has expanded. Even something that is not itself commerce can be federally regulated as commerce. This flawed logic should be enough of a red-flag to tell us that something went deeply wrong in the federal court's reasoning where federal power was at stake or could be expanded.
In regard to funding the mapping of the brain's activity, commerce of the completed map could indeed extend beyond state lines (i.e., be interstate commerce), but to argue that the regulating of interstate commerce extends to investing in manufacturing of the product itself conflates spending with regulating, which is to set rules.
President Obama could be challenged for his presumption that the federal government is the definitive level of government for virtually any matter of public policy to be enacted into law. He could have quoted from Alexander Hamilton, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention and the first U.S. Treasury Secretary, who had wanted the states to be mere districts implementing federal policy. Of course, he also wanted the U.S. president to be in office for life.
Before Obama was the federal executive, I asked Sandra Day O’Conner, a former justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, why the Court had allowed the Congress to encroach so onto state matters. "It takes a majority," she said (meaning of justices). Then she observed that Congress was “acting like a state legislature.” This remarkable insight would prompt me years later to wonder whether Obama himself was conflating the federal and state levels. He may not have fully realized the distinctiveness of federal government on the empire scale from governance on the state, or kingdom, level. Whereas an empire-scale government of a federation must take into account differences in culture, political and moral ideology, economy, and even religion that exist from state to state, a state government need not as a state can be homogeneous rather than diverse within. The British, who had once had an empire to manage, suppose their state in the E.U. is diverse. I submit that the E.U. itself is much more diverse from state to state, and so taking into account such differences is an appreciable aspect of E.U. governance but not of that of a state, even the United Kingdom (or California in the U.S.). Yes, Virginia, such a comparison is valid.
I submit that President Obama did not sufficiently heed the vital differences between the federal and the state governments. Nor have majorities of justices sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court. Viewing things from the perspective of the federal government, and even having its interests at heart, it is possible to interpret general welfare and the commerce clause so broadly as to warp logic and yet not even notice this or the eventual cost (to use an economic term!) to the Union itself (i.e., impairing its federal system). Economic reductionism can be placed in service, resulting in bloated federal power and a warping of priorities (i.e., financial as the definitive litmus test for everything, including the public good). Of course, big business feels right at home in such a society--societal norms and values reflective of those of business. Meanwhile, the warped system feeds on itself, without being noticed and becoming even more warped in the process. For all of the reliance on the general welfare, who exactly is looking out for it as regards the impact on it from the federal system of government and the economic reductionism?
See related: Institutional Conflicts of Interest, Essays on Two Federal Empires, and British Colonies Forge an American Empire, available at Amazon.
Turning to the enumerated powers of Congress, the commercial implications from mapping the brain's activity might seem to fit within the interstate commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution. After all, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in Wickard v. Filmore (1942) that even a farmer in Iowa who grows wheat for his family's own consumption can be subject to regulation. Even if his activity "be local and though it may not be regarded as commerce, it may still, whatever its nature, be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce and this irrespective of whether such effect is what might at some earlier time have been defined as 'direct' or 'indirect."[2] The majority opinion reasons that the harvests of wheat for private consumption, if aggregated, would have a significant effect on the interstate wheat commerce. Even an indirect effect on the interstate wheat market can justify even the growing of wheat for private consumption being subject to the interstate commerce clause, and thus federal power. So it is no accident that the federal executive publicly justified the federal funding to map the brain's activity by characterizing such a map as "a job-creating investment in science and innovation." Obama may have engaged in warped economic reductionism in order to gain more power for his government. He and the federal court before him both distorted logic for the sake of additional power going to the federal government.
The institutional and personal conflicts of interest should be obvious. Since that ruling, the reach of the commerce clause has expanded. Even something that is not itself commerce can be federally regulated as commerce. This flawed logic should be enough of a red-flag to tell us that something went deeply wrong in the federal court's reasoning where federal power was at stake or could be expanded.
In regard to funding the mapping of the brain's activity, commerce of the completed map could indeed extend beyond state lines (i.e., be interstate commerce), but to argue that the regulating of interstate commerce extends to investing in manufacturing of the product itself conflates spending with regulating, which is to set rules.
President Obama could be challenged for his presumption that the federal government is the definitive level of government for virtually any matter of public policy to be enacted into law. He could have quoted from Alexander Hamilton, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention and the first U.S. Treasury Secretary, who had wanted the states to be mere districts implementing federal policy. Of course, he also wanted the U.S. president to be in office for life.
Before Obama was the federal executive, I asked Sandra Day O’Conner, a former justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, why the Court had allowed the Congress to encroach so onto state matters. "It takes a majority," she said (meaning of justices). Then she observed that Congress was “acting like a state legislature.” This remarkable insight would prompt me years later to wonder whether Obama himself was conflating the federal and state levels. He may not have fully realized the distinctiveness of federal government on the empire scale from governance on the state, or kingdom, level. Whereas an empire-scale government of a federation must take into account differences in culture, political and moral ideology, economy, and even religion that exist from state to state, a state government need not as a state can be homogeneous rather than diverse within. The British, who had once had an empire to manage, suppose their state in the E.U. is diverse. I submit that the E.U. itself is much more diverse from state to state, and so taking into account such differences is an appreciable aspect of E.U. governance but not of that of a state, even the United Kingdom (or California in the U.S.). Yes, Virginia, such a comparison is valid.
I submit that President Obama did not sufficiently heed the vital differences between the federal and the state governments. Nor have majorities of justices sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court. Viewing things from the perspective of the federal government, and even having its interests at heart, it is possible to interpret general welfare and the commerce clause so broadly as to warp logic and yet not even notice this or the eventual cost (to use an economic term!) to the Union itself (i.e., impairing its federal system). Economic reductionism can be placed in service, resulting in bloated federal power and a warping of priorities (i.e., financial as the definitive litmus test for everything, including the public good). Of course, big business feels right at home in such a society--societal norms and values reflective of those of business. Meanwhile, the warped system feeds on itself, without being noticed and becoming even more warped in the process. For all of the reliance on the general welfare, who exactly is looking out for it as regards the impact on it from the federal system of government and the economic reductionism?
See related: Institutional Conflicts of Interest, Essays on Two Federal Empires, and British Colonies Forge an American Empire, available at Amazon.
1. John Markoff, “Obama Seeking to Boost Study of Human Brain,” The New York Times, February 17, 2013.
2. Wickard, 317 U.S. at 125.
2. Wickard, 317 U.S. at 125.
