It’s time for Congress to reclaim the power it never had the authority to give away.
‘N o taxation without representation” was the rallying cry for the American founders as they threw off the shackles of unaccountable rule. Among the grievances levied against King George III in the Declaration of Independence was that he had “cut off our Trade with all parts of the world” and imposed taxes on us “without our Consent.” When the Founders met for the Constitutional Convention in 1787, one of their primary motivations for replacing rather than merely reforming the Articles of Confederation was the need for the national government to raise revenue to fund the limited scope of its operations.
As Chief Justice John Marshall famously wrote in 1819, “The power to tax involves the power to destroy.” President Calvin Coolidge, about a century later, said, “Taxes take from everyone a part of his earnings and force him to work a part of his time for the government.” The Founders understood these things and so vested in Congress alone this incredible power to deprive people of the fruit of their own labor. In Congress, any proposal to raise taxes would have to survive a deliberative process and would be considered by representatives from the entire country. Senators Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) and Maria Cantwell (D., Wash.) and Representatives Don Bacon (R., Neb.), Jeff Hurd (R., Colo.), Josh Gottheimer (D., N.J.), and Gregory Meeks (D., N.Y.) have introduced legislation that would begin to reassert that authority, the Trade Review Act of 2025.
Our Constitution creates a government of limited powers, restricting Congress and the president to only those powers specifically listed. Article I of the Constitution gives Congress the exclusive power to tax. The president has no such power. Therefore, he cannot legally exercise it. However, Congress has illegitimately yielded to the president some of its power to tax. It cannot do that, and this week’s tariff announcement exemplifies why. Before the 90-day reduction to 10 percent across the board, President Donald Trump’s tariffs represented the largest peacetime tax hike in American history. Neither the original tariffs nor the reduced rate were the result of careful congressional consideration but the whims of one man.
A growing chorus of legislators led by Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) has expressed concerns about the president’s tariffs. Senator Paul has called on Congress to pass a joint resolution to end the emergency declaration that was intended to justify tariffs against our closest ally, Canada. On the floor of the Senate, Senator Paul rightly said that the Founders “so feared the power of taxation that they gave it to Congress” and that “taxes should not be imposed by one person.”
Senator Paul’s joint resolution would be an important step in the right direction, but Congress must do more, and it has options. As Advancing American Freedom explained in a recent letter to Capitol Hill, Congress should pass, with a veto-proof majority, the ARTICLE ONE Act introduced in 2019 and reintroduced in 2023 by Senator Mike Lee (R., Utah) and Congressman Chip Roy (R., Texas). That bill would end presidential emergency declarations if not approved by Congress within 30 days. Similarly, the bill introduced by Senators Grassley and Cantwell would require Congress to approve new tariffs within 60 days or they would expire. It would also empower Congress to cancel existing tariffs. Congress must pass legislation to rein in the abuse of presidential emergency declarations.
In his 1924 speech quoted above, President Coolidge noted that the cost of all government at the time, national and local combined, was the “stupendous sum” of $7.5 billion, which is about $140 billion in today’s dollars. The national annual budget today, not including the cost of state and local government, is about $7 trillion, 50 times higher than the total cost of government a century ago, in real dollars. Arguing for less spending rather than higher taxes, President Coolidge said, “I want the people of America to work less for the government and more for themselves. I want them to have the rewards of their own industry. This is the chief meaning of freedom.”
He was right. The Founders created a system of government that granted the most important powers to Congress, not to the president, because they believed that doing so was essential to protect liberty. It’s time for Congress to reclaim the power it never had the authority to give away.
President Trump has promised that his tariff policies will usher in a golden age such as the one America experienced in the late 19th century. However, as economic historian Phil Magness has pointed out, “19th century tariffs were a corrupt and economically hurtful mess,” and “the income tax was adopted to escape the tariff trap.” America will certainly enter a new age if Congress refuses to reclaim its power to tax and the president refuses to relent. It will be an age not of gold but of pyrite: fool’s gold.