Dear President Obama,
We write to call your attention to an unconstitutional and economically harmful provision contained in the recently approved 2012 highway bill (H.R.4348), and to ask you to bring relief to the thousands of small business owners and employees who will suffer immediately on its enactment.
Section 100122 of H.R.4348 amounts to an arbitrary punishment of one specific group of people, and therefore is in violation of Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution prohibiting the legislative branch of our government from passing bills of attainder.
“Bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, and laws impairing the obligations of contracts, are contrary to the first principles of the social compact, and to every principle of sound legislation. … The sober people of America a