Lawmakers in 8 States Move to Reclaim
Sovereignty
By Dr. Jerome R. Corsi of
WorldNetDaily.com
As
the MetroVoice was going to press, the
Obama administration was attempting to push through Congress a nearly $1
trillion deficit spending plan that was weighted heavily toward advancing
typically Democratic-supported social welfare programs. A rebellion against the
growing dominance of federal control is beginning to spread across the nation at
the state level.
So far, eight states have introduced resolutions declaring state sovereignty
under the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution,
including Arizona, Hawaii, Montana, Michigan, Missouri, New 
Hampshire,
Oklahoma and Washington.
Analysts
expect that in addition, another 20 states may see similar measures introduced
this year, including Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Georgia,
Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Nevada, Maine and Pennsylvania.
“What we are trying to do is to get the U.S. Congress out of the state’s
business,” Oklahoma Republican State Senator Randy Brogdon
told WorldNetDaily (WND). “Congress is completely out of line spending trillions
of dollars over the last 10 years putting the nation into a debt crisis like we’ve never seen before,” Brogdon said, arguing
that the Obama stimulus plan is the last straw taxing state patience in the
brewing sovereignty dispute.
“This
particular 111th Congress is the biggest bunch of over-reachers and underachievers
we’ve ever had in Congress,” he said. “A sixth-grader should realize you can’t
borrow money to pay off your debt, and that is the Obama administration’s
answer for a stimulus package,” he added.
The
Ninth Amendment reads, “The enumeration
in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or
disparage others retained by the people.” The Tenth Amendment specifically
provides, “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.”
Brogdon,
the lead sponsor of the Oklahoma Senate version of the sovereignty bill, has
been a strong opponent of extending the plan to build a
four-football-fields-wide Trans-Texas Corridor parallel to Interstate-35 to
Oklahoma.
[The
Trans-Texas Corridor is part of what
has been called the “NAFTA Superhighway” which, if allowed to be built, will
extend from
Rollback Federal Authority
The various sovereignty measures moving through state
legislatures are designed to reassert state authority through a rollback of
federal authority under the powers enumerated in the Constitution, with the states assuming the governance of the
non-enumerated powers, as required by the Tenth Amendment.
The
state sovereignty measures, aimed largely at the perceived fiscal
irresponsibility of Congress in the administrations of Bill Clinton and George
W. Bush, have gained momentum with the $1 trillion deficit-spending economic
stimulus package the Obama administration is [at least at press time] currently
pushing through Congress.
Particularly
disturbing to many state legislators are the increasing number of “unfunded
mandates” that have proliferated in social welfare programs, such as Medicare
and Medicaid, in which bills passed by Congress dictate policy to the states
without providing funding.
In
addition, the various state resolutions include discussion of a wide range of
policy areas, including the regulation of firearms sales (Montana) and the
demand to issue drivers licenses with technology to
embed personal information under the Western Hemisphere Travel
Initiative and the Real ID Act (Michigan).
Hawaii’s
measure calls for a new state constitutional convention
to return self-governance, a complaint that traces back to the days it was a
U.S. territory, prior to achieving statehood in 1959.
“We
are trying to send a message to the federal government that the states are
trying to reclaim their sovereignty,” Republican Representative Matt Shea, the
lead sponsor of Washington’s sovereignty resolution told WND. “State
sovereignty has been eroded in so many areas, it’s hard to know where to start,”
he said. “There are a ton of federal mandates imposed on states, for instance,
on education spending and welfare spending.”
Shea
said the Obama administration’s economic stimulus package moving through
Congress is a “perfect example.” “In the State of Washington, we have increased
state spending 33 percent in the last three years and hired 6,000 new state
employees, often using federal mandates as an excuse to grow state government,”
he said. “We need to return government back down to the people, to keep
government as close to the local people as possible.”
Shea
is a private attorney who serves with the Alliance Defense Fund,
a nationwide network of about 1,000 attorneys who work pro-bono. As a counter
to the ACLU, the alliance seeks to protect and defend religious liberty, the
sanctity of life and traditional family values.
Republican
State Representative Judy Burges, the primary sponsor of the sovereignty
resolution in the Arizona House, told WND the federal government has been
trouncing on our constitutional rights. “The real turning point for me was the
Real ID Act, which involved both a violation of the Fourth Amendments rights
against illegal searches and seizures and the Tenth Amendment,” she said.
Burges
told WND she is concerned that the overreaching of federal powers could lead to
new legislation aimed at confiscating weapons from citizens or encoding
ammunition. “The Real ID Act was so broadly written that we are afraid that it
involves the potential for ‘mission-creep,’ that could easily involve
confiscation of firearms and violations of the Second Amendment,” she said.
Burges
said she has been surprised at the number of e-mails she has received in support
of the sovereignty measure. “We are a sovereign state in Arizona, not a branch
of the federal government, and we need to be treated as such,” she insisted.
