Stimulus Bill Process: Violation of Constitutional Principles?

Step back for a moment and check out what just happened regarding the stimulus bill.

First, representatives of some 45%(!) of voters were purposely excluded from the table (citizens' interests were denied representation) when the bill was created. Note: the Democrats claim their tax cuts in the end included that representation but: 1) just because something is called a tax cut doesn't mean it's a kind of tax cut Republicans desire (in fact, those particular ones aren't) and 2) most of what they call tax cuts are tax credits, not cuts at all so it's a huge distortion of truth to say that aspect of the bill supports Republican interests. Mostly it does not.

Second, the bill was too big and the vote forced irrationally too quickly for any(!) congressman to even read it, much less understand it. How can representation be claimed for even Democratic citizens when their congressmen didn't have time to even read it? In fact, more than half of the bill's contents are the types of things the constitution intended to go through appropriations processes. Using this emergency as an excuse to satisfy a pent-up desire for party-specific programs (therefore avoiding healthy, appropriate debates about their merit and content) is not clever. It's unconscionable and irresponsible.

Our founding fathers, via the content of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution clearly intended for there to be a balance of powers in order to avoid unfair governing as demonstrated by the desire for a fully representative form of government by including such features as the House and Senate, the electoral process as set up, three balancing branches of government, and setting everything up to balance political views via a give and take legislative process. It was clearly intended that resulting legislation should be processed so as to fairly consider and represent opposing views after having them rigorously debated and flushed out.

Bottom line, Democratic congressmen have no rational basis on which to claim their vote on this bill represented the will of The People. In addition, the debt created by this bill will force an unavoidable large increase in taxes. That means there was no assurance (and no desire or intention to achieve assurance) that either the bill's content or the resulting taxes represent the will of The People. The content and the process used in fact guarantee that the interests of a large percentage of Americans were purposely(!) avoided. Isn't that taxation without representation?

Instead of ensuring the will of the people is represented in the first place they did what they wanted, intentionally avoiding due (consitutional) process and are now embarked on a sales job after the fact to convince us what they did was the right thing.

This should bother all Americans, not just Republicans because it is a clear violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence (as in taxation without representation). The process used for this bill was puposely designed to exclude Republican participation in any meaningful way. Not a good day for our Republic.