States Can Fix What’s Ailing America

Posted on 26 Sep at 7:55 pm

States Can Fix What’s Ailing America

Dear Friends:

It is often said that each presidential election is the most consequential. Most people agree that this one is! Rather than leaning right or left as in the past, the two political parties appear diametrically opposed in plotting America’s course. That places our nation in dangerous territory.

This Election is far bigger than two people vying to occupy the White House. Your liberty is contracting in the opposite proportion of the federal government’s expanding powers. No matter who is in the White House, Presidential Executive Orders have usurped many of the powers and duties of Congress. Meanwhile, non-elected Washington bureaucrats run roughshod over states, issuing regulations and mandates that far exceed the federal government’s Constitutional authority and often contradict state statutes.

The State Solution

My friend, and fellow Federalist, Rep. Ken Ivory (R-Utah), explains the solution with this illustration, “When a bicycle has one bloated tire and one completely flat, the answer is not a new, stronger rider or steering the bike harder to the right or the left. The simple solution is to restore the balance of the tires and the bike’s structure.”

He concludes, “Similarly, when the structure of our government is out of balance and in disrepair, passing more laws, regulations, and mandates is not the answer to save America!”

The solution is for the States — representing the sovereign in our American governing enterprise — to be the boss again and accept the responsibility to restore, maintain, and defend the limits, balance, and divisions of power in the structure of government. States must muster their courage to assume their rightful Constitutional sovereignty to restore the structural protections of liberty built into the foundation of our constitutional government.

The Original Structure

I suspect our Founders knew that government is like a two-year-old. We love it, need it, and can’t live without it. But if we don’t watch it every minute of every day – BIG GOVERNMENT will get into trouble.

Knowing this, our Founding Fathers engineered an unparalleled government structure with intricate limits, balance, and divisions of governing power to secure our inalienable rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness from centralizing and oppressive government.

Acknowledging the significance of the structural protections of liberty engineered into the blueprint of our Constitution – Justice Antonin Scalia warned, “The fragmentation of power produced by the structure of our government is central to liberty, and when we destroy it, we place liberty at peril.”

In Federalist 45, James Madison wrote, “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite.”

Whenever any entity ignores its organizational roles and responsibilities, its governing structure devolves to look and feel something like this:

Resorting Constitutional Blueprint

The United States Constitution is the most exceptional blueprint for liberty and prosperity in the world’s history. It comprises four critical elements that are primarily disregarded today.

These elements enable the sovereign people to hire their state leaders to build, restore, defend, and maintain the blueprint of liberty that the architects of America sacrificed their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to establish for us.

First, the People are sovereign, endowed by our Creator with all governing power, including our unalienable rights. In America, the people are the boss of our exceptional governing enterprise.
Second, the people only delegated a tiny, limited speck of sovereign power to the government, reserving to citizens (as the Ninth Amendment affirms) all other powers not enumerated in the Constitution to the government.
Third, the Tenth Amendment directs that this tiny, limited speck of governing power is meticulously balanced between two different governments — “few and defined” powers delegated to the federal government and “numerous and indefinite” powers reserved to the states, which double-secure the rights of the people. The states are responsible for restoring and maintaining this crucial balance of governing power.
Fourth, the tiny, limited speck of power, balanced between the two governing spheres (federal and state), is further divided among three coordinated branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. Each governing sphere was to be a check and restraint on the natural tendency of government to amass unbridled power.

Our founders expected that we, the people, would engrave this law of self-governance on our hearts and minds and endure all necessary sacrifices to preserve these structural limits and balances to secure liberty and the pursuit of happiness for posterity. Today, most Americans don’t know how our government should be correctly structured.

Standing Up for SC

During the upcoming legislative session, you will see House Republicans pushing back forcefully on the federal government to fortify the Constitutional blueprint created by our nation’s Founders. Asserting South Carolina’s sovereignty will take much work.

Today, we face a federal government that has taken hundreds of thousands of steps beyond the boundaries drawn by the Constitution. Turning things around from a government with tens of thousands of unconstitutional laws, regulations, rules, and orders will not happen in a single step. It will take a unified, concentrated effort by all three branches of the South Carolina government. We’ve already started.

Pushback Underway

On the judicial frontlines, South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson has been zealous in filing litigation against the federal government to challenge Washington’s overreach and usurpations. His office has filed 59 lawsuits against the Biden administration. Most often, South Carolina joins like-minded states seeking legal relief in more favorable Federal Judicial Circuits.

While Attorneys General challenged the Biden Administration’s Title IX regulations, which weakened the definition to include sexual orientation and gender identity, State School Superintendent Ellen Weaver pushed back on the feds, telling local school superintendents to disregard the new federal regulations, which they did. Thankfully, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled the Biden Title IX initiative unconstitutional.

Another significant moment came in 2022 when the South Carolina General Assembly passed the Article V Convention of States Resolution, becoming the 19^th state to call for a state convention to propose Amendments to the Constitution to limit the federal government’s powers. I was the primary sponsor of this initiative, and it took nine years in the legislative gauntlet to win approval.

More recently, the just-concluded legislative session saw numerous bills filed that qualify as part of the legislative pushback for ‘Standing Up for SC.’ The best of those not passed will likely be refiled, and more will be added.

For example, I am refiling my legislation to ban Federal Bank digital currency — a dangerous initiative to control your personal money, as the Chinese government does. Another bill would authorize the General Assembly to review presidential orders to determine their constitutionality. Another calls for South Carolina to ban our foreign adversaries (China, North Korea, Iran, etc.) from purchasing land in the Palmetto State.

SC is Already Leading

I conclude with encouraging news. South Carolina is ranked #3 among states on the Federalism Scorecard by the Center for Practical Federalism at the State Policy Network. Utah is #1, and Wisconsin is #2.

And Finally…

Regardless of who wins the Presidential Election, federal overreach will remain one of South Carolina’s significant challenges. There will be a different person in the Oval Office, but Congress will continue to be politically polarized, and the bureaucracy will remain. Your state leaders must stand for your liberty.

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