|
Wyatt’s World
By Wyatt Emmerich MS joins list of states fighting medical program Gov. Haley Barbour has added Mississippi to a list of states fighting the federal government’s new medical program. “The
Health Care Law passed earlier this year is an unprecedented expansion
of federal power,” Gov. Barbour said. “The Constitution does not give
Congress or the federal government the authority to force every
American to purchase health insurance.” Many
political commentators have scoffed at this effort by the states to
battle the federal government. They say the governors are tilting at
windmills and wasting money on a frivolous lawsuit. The
struggle between the states and the federal government is anything but
frivolous. In fact, this has been one of the central battles throughout
the history of the United States. Almost all of
the developed nations of the world have strong central governments. The
United States is remarkably unique in having independent states which
wield considerable powers independently of the central government. For
instance, the majority of criminal and civil law is governed by the
states and can vary immensely from state to state. That’s one reason
lawyers have to pass the bar in each state in which they desire to
practice. Each state has very different laws. This
is in stark contrast to France, for example, where the provinces are
adjuncts of the national government. In France, the police are employed
by the national government. In the U.S. the police are employed by the
city governments, which are sub-units of the state. The
U.S. Constitution governs the division of powers between the states and
the federal government. Unfortunately, there is debate about the
wording of the Constitution. Those who advocate states’ rights point to Article 1, Section 8 of our Constitution which is titled “Enumerated Powers.” This section lists about 20 powers of the federal government. To
hammer home this point, the 10th Amendment states, “The powers not
delegated by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are
reserved to the states respectively, or the people.” States’
righters have a simple argument. The Constitution lists the powers of
the federal government and medical insurance isn’t one of them.
Everything else belongs to the state. Not so
fast, say those favoring a strong central government. There are other
clauses of the Constitution that offset the “enumerated rights” concept. For
instance, the commerce clause gives the federal government the power to
“regulate commerce.” The general welfare clause states that “Congress
has the power to provide for the general welfare of the United States.” “General
welfare” and “commerce” are pretty broad concepts. Liberal judges have
used those vague terms to basically give the federal government
unlimited power over the states. Adding to the
federal power is the supremacy clause of the Constitution which states
that the laws of the United States “shall be the supreme Law of the
Land” and “every State shall be bound thereby. . .” So which is it? The strict enumerated powers of the federal government with everything else left to the states? Or is it the broad power for the federal government to promote the general welfare in supremacy to the states? We’ve
been arguing about this since the start of the country. Too bad our
Founding Fathers couldn’t have been a little bit clearer. That’s the
problem with broad terms, they are easily construed to fit the desires
of one group or the other. President Clinton
expressed this concept best during his testimony before a grand jury
involving the Lewinsky affair. When asked about whether Clinton had
lied previously about the affair, Clinton responded that, “It depends
on your definition of “is.” And so there we have it. Some people have one definition of “is” and others have another. In
truth, the states have some pretty strong legal on their side,
otherwise the federal government wouldn’t resort to the questionable
tactic of withholding federal grants until the states “willingly”
conform. A perfect example of this was the
55-mile-per-hour federal speed limit law. Setting speed limits is not
one of the enumerated powers of the federal government and many states
refused to comply until the feds refused to send any highway
construction money until the states cooperated. This technique strikes
me as a slimy backdoor attempt to circumvent the Constitution, yet it
has been used for everything from marijuana laws to the federally
mandated size of our toilet bowls. This battle was the essence of the Civil War. The states didn’t like being told what to do by the feds and opted out. The
Unionists said there was no checking out of Hotel California. Millions
of men spilled their blood. This is not a trivial pursuit. No
doubt if you are African-American, the Civil War was about slavery.
Arguments over federal versus state power seem irrelevant if you have
no personal freedom. But history is more complex than that. Slavery was
one of the bigger issues in the overall issue of who held the power,
the feds or the states. This misunderstanding still vexes us today. Who can best run the country - independent states or a strong central government? The debate rages on.
|
