Rand Paul's Bill to Make You An Indentured Servant

They aren't even pretending any more. It's them and their friends as lords and the rest of us as serfs.

McConnell's a co-sponsor

Ian Millhiser at Think Progress:

More than three-quarters of the Senate Republican caucus signed onto legislation introduced Wednesday by Sens. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Rand Paul (R-KY) that could render it virtually impossible for Congress to enact any legislation intended to improve working conditions or otherwise regulate the workplace. Had their bill been in effect during the Twentieth Century, for example, there would likely be no nationwide minimum wage, no national ban on workplace discrimination, no national labor law and no overtime in most industries.

SNIP

Coburn and Paul’s bill appears to be an attempt to restore the constitutional regime that prohibited child labor regulation and other such nationwide regulation of the American workplace. While the bill does not apply retroactively — so existing labor laws would continue to function — the bill does allow a procedural objection to be raised against any new legislation that does not comply with the limits imposed by the bill.

Such an objection could be used to block any most attempts to enact new workplace laws — such as a bill increasing the national minimum wage or a bill prohibiting all employers from firing workers because they are gay. Similarly, Coburn and Paul’s bill could permanently entrench decisions by the conservative Roberts Court rolling back existing protections for workers — such as a recent decision shielding many employers whose senior employees engage in sexual harassment.

Such an effort to shrink the constitutional role of government until it is small enough to be drowned in a bathtub is consistent with Paul and Coburn’s records. Last March, Paul praised a particularly infamous Supreme Court decision empowering employers to ruthlessly exploit their workers. Coburn told a town hall meeting in 2011 that Medicare and Medicaid are unconstitutional because “that’s a family responsibility, not a government responsibility.”

 Just like the good old days of the 13th century. Unless you're writing million-dollar checks to their campaigns, to them you're a serf, and have to be treated like one.