The Liberty Amendment

Growth of the Federal Government

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." – Thomas Jefferson

The specter of Federal Government growth in size and power is shown in the following tables, and the need for the Liberty Amendment is more desperate now than in 1963:

Growth of Federal Spending and Employment

Year	Budget Expenditures (as % of disposable personal income)	Federally Paid Civilian Employees
1910	2.6%	349,600
1920	9.0 %	593,600
1930	4.6%	541,200
1940	11.9%	910,800
1950	19.1%	1,905,000
1960	21.1%	2,580,000
...
1994	26.5%	2,984,527
2002	28.0% (Est.)	3,000,000

Federal Growth: the Last 50 Years by Spending Category
($ in billions)

Category of Federal Spending	1948 $ Conv 2003	1962 $ Conv 2003	2003	Ratio Growth 1948/1962	Ratio Growth 1962/2003
National Security (excluding Military Aid)	29	91	379	213%	316%
Foreign Affair Service Benefit General Govt	30.4	30.5	137.3	0.3%	173%
Foreign Aid	10.6	8.5	18	2%	111%
Labor, Welfare, Agricultural Resource Housing	10.5	72	1490	585%	1981%
Net Interest	2.4	9	178	275%	1877%
Total Federal Budget	80	202	2052	152%	915.9%

It is vital that we remember that this tremendous growth in expenditures (in particular, those related to the social welfare of special factions of our people) during this half century is not dollars. It represents power. Power in the end, to dictate what we say and do, and how our children will be educated.

"I own I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive. It places the governors indeed more at their ease, at the expense of the people." – Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787. (Forrest version)

These were still the great concerns also of our citizens of only a generation ago.

The feasibility of the Liberty Amendment depends upon the sale, to private enterprise, of federal government assets acquired unconstitutionally over the last 200 years, and returning to many of the states those assets which rightfully belonged to them by the Constitution as they joined the union. According to a table on page 13 of the Federal Real and Personal Property Inventory Report ... as of June 30, 1960, issued by the Committee on Government Operations, Eighty Sixth Congress, the book value of all assets held by the Federal Government was $275.9 Billion as of that date.

Additional assets of $64.9 Billion were projected for acquisition during the years of 1961,1962 and 1963, bringing the total assets by 1963 to $340.9 Billion. Less than 25% of this assessed value, or $65 Billion, received by the federal government was used in 1963 to work out the economics of the Liberty Amendment, and that was sufficient to provide a just solution to the Social Security problem by transferring the system to private insurance companies, so that it would be real insurance, providing real security. Insurance companies are regulated by the insurance commissions of the State Governments.

The time periods in Sections 3 and 4 of the Amendment allowed time for the details to be worked out. With the revenues from the sale of these unconstitutional assets added to the elimination of the cost of operation in employees and expenditures by these more than 700 in 1963,(1000s by now) unconstitutional federal businesslike agencies, not only would the budget be immediately balanced, but the entire federal debt would be retired in just a few years.

No generation has a right to burden the next with vast public debt

"What is to hinder them [the government] from creating a perpetual debt? The laws of nature, I answer. The earth belongs to the living, not the dead. The will and the power of man expire with his life, by nature's law... Each generation has the usufruct of the earth during the period of its continuance. When it ceases to exist, the usufruct passes on to the succeeding generation, free and unincumbered...[No generation has a right]... to bind the succeeding generation...[with vast public debts]" – Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to J.W. Eppes, 1813

The projection of the Liberty Amendment's Economic Plan to the present is even more dramatic. Using the experience from the years 1961,1962 and 1963 showing an acquisition of about 20% of total expenditures as facilities, then the expenditures of more than $26 Trillion during the last 35 years would have increased the facility and businesslike assets of the federal government to more than $5 trillion. Without reducing the Constitutional National Defense assets and even allowing an increase in the Defense budget, to repair its recent decay; the same conservative 25% return from sale, used in 1963, would produce a revenue to the federal government approaching slightly more than one $Trillion.

It is, then, easy to see how such a tremendous one-time revenue to the federal government today could solve the Social Security problem once-and-for-all through privatization. Private annuities and medical insurance policies for all who have become dependent upon the federal government, and to whom the government is obligated, would be purchased, and followed soon by Social Security and Medicare retirement.

A quick review of the Liberty Amendment in many States' archives, will provide the necessary confidence in the details of the plan's economic feasibility , but time is critically short. The study, showed that only eight States would be temporarily impacted by implementation of the amendment, and only a slight raise in their taxes would be necessary to eliminate that impact. Implementation today would probably show very little impact at all, because of the tremendous sale value of the unconstitutional acquisitions in facilities and businesslike activities during the past 35 years. The sale of these acquisitions to private enterprise would result in high levels of tax revenues going to the States.

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