Position: Tenth Amendment

U.S. Constitution

Amendment 10

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

The 10th Amendment was designed to put the federal government on notice that it did not have unlimited powers. Indeed, the Constitution makes specific, limited, enumerated grants of power to the federal government and this amendment ensures that whatever powers were not specifically granted to a federal government were reserved to the States, and to the people.

Our founding fathers were justly concerned about an all-powerful federal government. They had just waged war to defeat just such a power. They sought to limit our federal government at every turn. In recent years, the federal government has climbed out of its Constitutional box and has become a monster. It claims that the commerce clause of the Constitution makes the 10th Amendment all but meaningless.

That’s just the beginning.

In reality, the government uses the tax code to exercise control over the States, and over YOUR rights. This was a fear expressed in the Federalist Papers. Alexander Hamilton addresses this concern in Federalist #31:

“Revenue is as requisite to the purposes of the local administrations as to those of the Union; and the former are at least of equal importance with the latter to the happiness of the people. It is, therefore, as necessary that the State governments should be able to command the means of supplying their wants, as that the national government should possess the like faculty in respect to the wants of the Union. But an indefinite power of taxation in the latter might, and probably would in time, deprive the former of the means of providing for their own necessities; and would subject them entirely to the mercy of the national legislature.”

The federal government has sucked most taxing abilities – and the power that comes with it – from the State governments. It returns to the States a portion of the taxation it collects, with powerful federal strings attached. The result is a federal government dictating its will to the States, and to ‘We the People’.

Our priorities are out of kilter. State and local governments are closer to the people and therefore, easier to redress. Most domestic issues should be handled at the most local level. Congress should get out of the business of education. It should get out of the business of welfare. That’s not to say that government should have no say in these issues. It IS to say that the more local the administration of local issues, the more responsive the government.

Try this experiment. Call your local city councilman’s office and ask to speak to him/her. Do the same with your Congress-critter. Which government official do you think would be easier to reach, in person? That’s no accident. It’s no accident that progressives push to make everything a federal issue. The further removed the government is from you, the less responsive the government is TO you.

It’s time to re-assert the 10th Amendment. It’s time for States to reclaim their autonomy. It’s time to send legislators to Washington that understand that there are CONSTITUTIONAL limits to their power and scope.

It’s time to return to the limited government that made our nation great.

I support federal tax cuts and spending cuts. I support limiting the federal government to its enumerated powers. I support the 10th Amendment. Your local and State governments should have more than a passing say in how you are governed – it’s how the Constitution is set up.

It would be naïve to not operate within the federal power structure, as it exists. For example, I advocate for school vouchers even as I believe that the federal government shouldn’t be in the business of education. So long as it IS, to the tune of billions of dollars, I won’t be shy about attempting to move the operation of education away from federal NEA hands and into local private and individual hands. That’s consistent with an idea of returning power locally.

I pledge to you that, if elected, I will respect the 10th Amendment and the enumerated powers limitations placed on a federal government. I pledge to you that my overriding concern as a federal legislator would be vested in the concept of returning power to as local control as possible.

I want to go to Washington to tell Washington NO. I would be honored to be your NO vote and voice in Washington.