Why the Michigan Senate passed the state sovereignty resolution

Today and tomorrow, I will post the remarks made by the co-sponsors of Michigan's SCR4, passed by its Senate Sept. 17. While both co-sponsors are Republican, the resolution was agreed to by all 14 Democrats present:

This is by Sen. Cropsey:

This resolution, if taken to heart, probably would affect us as a state legislature maybe more so than any place else in the United States, when every state legislature says, “You know what? The federal government has enumerated powers that are spelled out in the United States Constitution.”

There was a lot of controversy when the Constitution was adopted. The controversy was why do you need a Bill of Rights? If the federal government is only supposed to do what is enumerated in the current Constitution, then you don’t need a Bill of Rights because they can’t do anything beyond that. They can’t worry about freedom of speech and freedom of the press because they aren’t even supposed to get into that area. The people’s rights are safe in the sense that the federal government will not encroach upon it. That was the Federalist viewpoint.

The anti-Federalist viewpoint was, “We understand what you are saying as Federalists, but we still don’t trust the government to do what it is really supposed to do; that it will stay within its enumerated powers.” They said, “We want to make sure that we have these rights enshrined in our Constitution.”

The Tenth Amendment was added basically to say to the people of the country, “Just because we have put these first nine amendments onto the Constitution doesn’t mean that that is giving any power to the federal government.” It’s like the Constitution is putting on a belt, and this also puts on the suspenders to make sure that we are binding the federal government to its delegated powers. The Tenth Amendment is saying just because you have enumerated certain things the federal government can’t do doesn’t mean that they can start doing other things.

The Tenth Amendment was critical in reaffirming what the Federalists said, and it was critical in order to get things passed as far as our Bill of Rights. It is very unfortunate when you take a look at our federal government today that it has been going into areas that are way beyond the scope of the Constitution of the United States. I wish that every federal judge, every United States Senator, every United States Representative, and the President would take a good look at the Tenth amendment, the history of our Constitution, and get back to a constitutional form of government. They have gone so far beyond where they are supposed to be and what the founders envisioned. A lot of what the federal government is doing should have been left up to the people and the states. [Emphasis added]

I want to thank the sponsor of this resolution and the following resolution for bringing this to our attention to once again remind us that we need to get back to federal principles and fundamental principles that made this country great.

Tomorrow, I shall post Sen. Patterson' s statement.