That power was already limited by the Tenth Amendment.
The fact that congress has seen fit to ignore the plain language of the ICC and the Tenth is no reason to give them another amendment to ignore.
Unless we take back our federal courts, we have no chance of guaranteeing that our Constitution is respected, whether we amend it or not.
Aside from the 10th amendment, the Financial reform bill in the Senate now, includes the Consumer Financial Protection bill...the entire economic, financial monitoring, control, data collection, and intended manipulation of consumer behavior of ALL citizens has been turned over COMPLETELY to the Fed Reserve via the new Bureau to be established within the Fed Reserve. Think that will not have an impact on commerce? Congress has just put the financial lives of ALL Americans in a black bag and handed it over for the Fed REserve to play with in a globalized fashion. Think about it.
You want to create an amendment to take away a power that was never given to the government in the first place? I really don’t think that is going to work. There are much more worthy causes for amendments.
The power to regulate interstate commerce shall be limited to, and with objective of, establishing and maintaining the channels and carriers of interstate commerce, and the elimination and prevention of barriers or impediments to interstate commerce by the States.
the limit is in the clause itself ... “amoung the states” iow between states not within states and, most importantly not between businesses and people in and/or between the states. All of the actors specifically mentioned are soveriegn entities - and it is fitting and proper that a national governemnt was established to regulate trade between such entities. Any other attempts to bring meaning to the clause are therefore facetious.
IOW - the clause was rather quickly ignored even though its meaning and intent is clear. Re-writing it will not make it any harder to ignore. Especially when even so-called conservative Justices can declare, with a straight face(!), that just about any item produced anywhere is just “one step removed” from interstate commerce and can thus be regulated by the imperial federal government.
So, good luck on finding an iron tight wording that some scummy lawyer type can’t ooze through ....
We've seen how all three branches of our government have perverted the Commerce Clause of our Constitution. (Article 1, Section 8) That clause reads "Congress shall have the power ... To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among, but not within, the several states, and with the Indian tribes;"
From this weblog post: http://splendorquest.com/?p=41
But here, in a very short summary, is what needs to be done, if the head of steam built up by the tea party movement is not to be wasted. The text within the quotation marks is proposed amendatory language, followed by a discussion of the objective to be achieved.
1. “The words ‘general welfare’ appearing in the United States Constitution or its Amendments do not create any powers of the legislative, executive or judicial branches of the government of the United States. Any legislation authorized by the words ‘general welfare’ is repealed.” This gets rid of one of the most pernicious pieces of federal elasticity. The pretext for forcing people to buy health insurance under Obamacare — now dead, one may hope — was to have been the general welfare clause.
2. “Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution is stricken in its entirety. Any legislation authorized by that clause is repealed.” This does away with the power of the federal government to regulate commerce. The interstate commerce clause is second only to the general welfare clause as a means of enlarging the power of the national government.
3. “Amendement 16 to the United States Constitution is stricken in its entirety. Any legislation authorized by that Amendment is repealed.” Goodbye federal income tax. The federal government will have to return to taxation by capitation — the head tax.
4. “Amendement 17 to the United States Constitution is stricken in its entirety. Any legislation authorized by that Amendment is repealed.” This language puts the Senate back under the control of the states. This was a vital check on federal power. Its absence is what has permitted the most abusive usurpations of power by the federal leviathan.
5. “No governmental entity in the United States nor any office-holder or employee of any governmental entity in the United States is immune from criminal prosecution or civil litigation.” This eliminates the legal doctrine called sovereign immunity. The argument is that the people ought not be able to sue themselves. But when government officials commit crimes against citizens, they should be held fully accountable to the law. Americans fought and died so that no sovereign could tread on the rights of the people.
Taken as a whole, this language will eliminate much of the federal government. The power to defend the nation will be retained, but most of the alphabet soup agencies will be gone, as will be most of the taxes and regulations strangling our economy. The states will have to fill some gaps, but I think we will all be quietly amazed at how little value the national government brings to civic life — and how relieved we all will be to be out from under its enormous weight.