The Senate of the Roman Republic

Addresses on the Roman Constitutionalism

Robert Byrd

• Publisher: Barakaldo Books
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781839746987
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

Provides a series of fourteen addresses delivered in 1993 before the Senate by Senator Robert C. Byrd. Discusses the constitutional history of separated and shared powers as shaped in the republic and empire of ancient Rome. These lectures are also in opposition to the proposed line-item veto concept. The introduction states that Senator Byrd delivered these speeches entirely from memory and without notes.

CHAPTER 1—We Have a Solemn Covenant

May 5, 1993

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, twelve years of trickle-down, supply-side Reaganomics, Laffer curves, and a borrow-and-spend national credit card binge have left the country with a deteriorating infrastructure, a stagnant economy, high unemployment, triple-digit billion-dollar deficits, a $4 trillion debt, and a $200 billion annual interest payment on that debt.

In search of antidotes for this fast-spreading fiscal melanoma of suffocating deficits and debt, the budget medicine men have once again begun their annual pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Line-item Veto, to worship at the altar of fool’s gold, quack remedies—such as enhanced rescission, line-item veto, and other graven images—which, if adopted, would give rise to unwarranted expectations and possibly raise serious constitutional questions involving separation of powers, checks and balances, and control of the national purse.

Congressional appropriations are always the target of these patent medicines, these misguided efforts. In referring to them as misguided efforts, I do not impugn the good intentions of many people outside the Congress and many people inside the Congress in both houses.

Many of these individuals honestly believe that this is the way to go in order to control the bloated deficits that have us drowning in a sea of red ink. On the other hand, Mr. President, some of these people inside Congress, and outside Congress, who constantly press for the line-item veto, enhanced rescissions, or other quack nostrums, know, or ought to know, that these are nothing more than placebos, spurious magic incantations, witch’s brew, and various brands of snake oil remedies.

They ought to know better. Plutarch wrote that Menestheus, regent of Athens, was said to be the first of mankind to undertake to be a demagogue, and by his eloquence to ingratiate himself with the people.

In recent years, Mr. President, especially since the big triple-digit, billion-dollar deficits became an annual occurrence here in Washington, beginning with the first Reagan administration, we have seen a seeming plethora of demagogues. Mr. Reagan himself was one of the foremost disciples of the theory that the line-item veto would be a cure-all for these bloated deficits; and Mr. Bush followed quickly in his train.

I would not say that this seeming spate of demagogueic characters has sprung like Aphrodite from the ocean foam, or like Minerva from the forehead of Jove. They just seem to come in litters. Every year we are treated to this spectacle of attempts to make us believe that the line-item veto would be a painless cure, which would rid the country of its fiscal headaches and provide a sure and painless ticket to a blissful Utopian paradise that would be debt free, deficit free, and care free.

There are people in this chamber and in the other body who, I am sure, honestly believe that this is the way to go. They believe in their hearts that the line-item veto or enhanced rescissions would be the sure and painless medicine by which these deficits can be brought under control and kept under control. But there are others who appear to be making a political career of preying upon the unknowing, unsuspecting, and suffering public for political and partisan gain.

Mr. President, the deficit problem is not caused by congressional appropriations. Since 1945, and through last year, beginning with Truman, and following with Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Bush, the total appropriations—supplemental, regular, and deficiencies—have amounted to $200,848,154,902 less than the totality of all the budget requests that these nine presidents have submitted during all those years.

Discretionary domestic spending is what is most often mentioned by ultracrepidarian critics, who refer to it as congressional “pork”, but which is, indeed, infrastructure. But domestic discretionary appropriations have not created the budget deficits. The deficit problem is much broader, much bigger than this. It has been brought on by a combination of practices, such as mandatory back-door spending, tax expenditures, costly programmatic initiatives that come from authorizing committees, and the force-feeding of the military-industrial complex about which President Eisenhower so eloquently spoke as he was completing his tenure of office.

STANDING THE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS ON ITS HEAD

The question is, can we develop a way whereby a president—not just President Clinton, not just a Democratic president, any president—working with the Congress, can get better control over spending. I am referring not just to appropriations, but also to other types of spending. Keep in mind that the appropriations committees have control only over about a third of the total budget. It will not be easy. It is a very complex problem, and it will require a great deal of thought and effort to make this come about, if indeed it can be made to come about.

Only last week the House passed a bill, and the bill has been received in the Senate. That bill provides that the president may, within three calendar days following the enactment of an appropriations bill, send to the House of Representatives a message and a bill incorporating rescissions which he would suggest be made. The House of Representatives, within a very few calendar days, would be required to introduce the president’s bill and send it to the appropriations committee of the House. In a very short time span the appropriations committee of the House would be required to report that bill, or it would be considered to be automatically reported, together with a committee substitute. Then, under a very short time limitation for debate, something like four hours in the House, the House would be expected to pass the president’s bill and send it to the Senate. If the House rejected the president’s bill, then it would take up the Appropriations Committee’s complete substitute. The House then would vote on the substitute, presumably pass that substitute, and send it to the Senate.

In either case, whether the president’s bill or the House Appropriations Committee’s substitute were passed by the House and sent to the Senate, that bill or that substitute would be sent to the Senate Appropriations Committee. The Senate Appropriations Committee would have only a very few days in which to report that legislation to the Senate.

The Senate Appropriations Committee would be required to report the House measure without substantive change, along with its own substitute. Then the Senate would take up the House measure first; if it is rejected, the Senate would take up the Senate Appropriations Committee substitute. All this is to be done within ten hours of Senate floor debate.

Mr. President, it boggles the imagination to try to comprehend just how such a measure came to be put together in the House of Representatives. I do not question for a moment the good intentions of the House members; they could have sent worse to the Senate, I suppose. But it has all the makings of a bill that was totally put together during debate on the floor of the House of Representatives.

I compliment the House leadership on both sides of the aisle and the House members for at least making the effort; they tried to do something. But what we have pending in the Senate now is a House measure that stands the legislative process on its head. Instead of voting on amendments first and then on the bill, the House and Senate would vote on the bill first and, if it were rejected, they then would vote on a substitute amendment. No amendments would be in order from the floor of either body. It is, simply, a take-it-or-leave-it situation. Take the president’s bill in the House, or, if that bill is rejected, take the committee substitute in its entirety from the House Appropriations Committee, but with no amendments from the floor.

In the Senate, we must accept either the president’s bill or a committee substitute that is sent over from the House, refer it to the Senate Appropriations Committee, and then bring it back without substantive change, accompanied only by a Senate Appropriations Committee substitute. Debate on the Senate floor would be limited to ten hours, with no floor amendments in order. The Senate would be limited to an up-or-down vote on a House-passed vehicle, and if that were rejected, the Senate would be then limited to an up-or-down vote on the Senate committee substitute—and I repeat, with no floor amendments in order.

Mr. President, I wonder what we have come to in this body, if the Senate of the United States is mandated to take up a matter of such importance, debate it in a very short time period which can be further reduced by a non-debatable motion approved by a majority, and required to act without any amendments from the floor.

I cannot conceive of senators in 1959—when I first came to the Senate—accepting this kind of a proposal. Of course, we did not have such massive deficits back then. That was before the trickle-down, supply-side theory of Reaganomics hit Washington like a storm. But even so, I cannot picture those senators accepting a legislative approach in which the Senate would be bound and gagged and unable to offer amendments from the floor. And, as a matter of fact, the House measure says that that provision cannot even be changed by unanimous consent. No unanimous-consent request would be in order in either body to allow amendments from the floor.

Is today’s Senate going to accept this kind of a gag proposition? I wonder. I wonder.

THE WISEST OF THE WISE

Mr. President, the Roman Senate, as originally created, was meant to be made up of a body of old men; not the swiftest of the swift, nor the strongest of the strong, but the wisest of the wise. That is the reason why they were to be old men. They were to have had the experience of a lifetime, with lessons learned in the hard school of experience for their guidance. And so Romulus, the legendary founder of Rome, created a Senate of old men, one hundred noblemen.

I suppose that one who has lived as long as I have—God has so blessed me with a long life beyond the psalmist’s span—can look back over a lifetime of seventy-five years and in that time will have gained some wisdom from experience—perhaps only a little; perhaps much. Some people, after seventy-five years, will be more wise than others; some perhaps not wise at all.

But if one is to gain in wisdom by virtue of his long years of life, how much more will he gain in wisdom if he studies the lives of great men? If he studies history as it bridges the centuries of time, he then becomes the recipient, the beneficiary of the wisdom of hundreds of lifetimes stretching back into the dim mists of antiquity. That is why we are told to study history.

Cicero, a great Roman senator, said that one “ought to be acquainted with the history of the events of past ages. To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?”

Machiavelli, writing in The Prince, advised the prince to study history; to study the victories and defeats of others so that one might gain there from and achieve the one or avoid the other, and to emulate some great person as Alexander the Great did Achilles, as Caesar did Alexander the Great, or as Scipio did Cyrus the Great.

Well, I took Cicero’s words to heart quite a long time ago and I have attempted to look at history, ancient history as well as the history of England and American history. I have attempted, through several years of patient and laborious study, to get a broad view of history. Herodotus, who lived between the years circa 484 and 424 B.C., wrote about the Persian empire of Cyrus the Great, Cambyses, Darius the Great, and Xerxes. Thucydides—the Athenian commander who was exiled for tw...