[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 1 (Tuesday, January 27, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3-S5]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          MRS. ALICE WYNNE GATSIS SPEAKS ON THE 10TH AMENDMENT

  Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, the North Carolina General Assembly 
embarked in 1997 on a significant course--that of inviting some of our 
State's best-known and best-qualified citizens

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to address joint sessions of the legislature's house and senate. Dr. 
Billy Graham, for example, made a remarkable and unforgettable 
appearance during the year.
  Meanwhile, the North Carolina General Assembly's Select Committee on 
Federal Education grants heard a splendid address by a prominent and 
learned North Carolina lady, Mrs. Alice Wynne Gatsis, of Rocky Mount, 
whose distinguished husband is a retired general of the U.S. Army, 
Andrew J. Gatsis.
  General and Mrs. Gatsis are stouthearted defenders of the U.S. 
Constitution. They are exceedingly knowledgeable about the perils 
confronting this Nation as a result of constant tampering with the 
intent and the meaning of the Constitution. In short, Alice Wynne 
Gatsis and her husband understand the miracle of America.
  That, Mr. President, is why the North Carolina General Assembly's 
Select Committee on Federal Education Grants invited Mrs. Gatsis to 
address the committee on November 10 of last year.
  Mr. President, I have in hand the text of Mrs. Gatsis' address and, 
being enormously impressed with her remarks, I have decided to share 
them with Senators and others who read the Congressional Record.
  Therefore, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of 
Mrs. Gatsis' address be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

   Alice Wynne Gatsis--November 10, 1997--Speech to the N.C. General 
    Assembly--House of Representatives--Select Committee on Federal 
                            Education Grants

     Note: For purposes of definition, and the benefit of any 
     egalitarians among us, I will be referring to man and men 
     generically in the sense of man being the human race--it is 
     not my intention to slight the ladies.

       Mr. Chairman, Ladies and gentlemen I have been invited to 
     speak this morning on the Tenth Amendment, that heart of the 
     U.S. Constitution which says, ``The powers not delegated by 
     the Constitution or prohibited by it to the States are 
     reserved to the states, respectively or to the people.
       You may be asking yourselves, busy people that you are, an 
     important committee with an important mission, why this 
     subject at this time?
       It seems to me that every now and then in a nation there 
     comes a time when there is a need for restoration, a 
     resetting of the pillars that are the foundation of all that 
     is great in America. It must be apparent to many in both 
     public and private life that the time has come.
       It must be apparent, as well, that for some time an 
     evolutionary process of unconstitutional usurpation of power 
     has escalated to an alarming degree, and in spite of the law 
     of the government (the Constitution) which forbids it.
       All aspects of the domestic affairs of the people have 
     become a federal concern to the point where we now have a 
     president and congressmen, and, yes, innumerable bureaucrats, 
     bureaucrats who appear to be accountable to nobody, 
     addressing daily the domestic affairs of the people from soup 
     to nuts.
       It was not pleasing to hear Donna Shalala, Secretary of 
     Health and Human Services, say, at her confirmation hearings 
     in the first Clinton administration, that the President views 
     the states as ``laboratories'' for the federal government. 
     Her statement represents the apotheosis of many years of 
     usurpation and preemption which has taken place in all 
     administrations, not just the Clinton administration, for the 
     last fifty years. It has slipped into our great free system 
     on quiet little feet, taking a step forward and a step back 
     but steadily advancing in the path toward centralizing and 
     unifying the divided and enumerated powers which have made us 
     a free people. There are reasons innumerable that such 
     unlawful inroads have been made, perhaps federal money, 
     perhaps false philanthropy, perhaps expediency. It is not 
     necessary to engage in the ``politically correct'' subjective 
     analysis of ``why.'' Objective judgment reveals that the 
     problem exists and must be addressed, if the first great 
     republic in history is to be the inherited blessing of our 
     descendants.
       Attention to the 10th amendment is growing as its 
     importance cannot be overestimated. What would the system be 
     like without it? Where would you be?
       The founders were not ignorant men; they drew on their 
     knowledge of Greek and Roman law, the American colonial 
     experience, the English legacy of common law and checks upon 
     power, the Christian theories of natural law and then they 
     added that best and newest ingredient, government at the 
     local level. State legislators sit at the pinnacle close to 
     the people with their powers enumerated over all domestic 
     law. There is no finer elective position in the country. The 
     authority of state legislators, faithfully executed has power 
     in many ways to keep America stable.
       Thankfully, it can be said that the 200 year old 
     Constitution stands, relatively unchanged, amended only 17 
     times since the Bill of Rights. Within it, the 10th 
     Amendment, in spite of assaults against it, stands unchanged 
     too, because when Con-cons and conferences of the States come 
     along, the people realize that their Constitution is 
     endangered and combine to preserve it.
       One of the strongest reasons for defeating the Equal Rights 
     Amendment, once the emotional aspects of it were put in 
     perspective, was that it was a major 10th amendment issue, 
     the second part of this amendment transferred all authority 
     over the domestic affairs of the nation to the Federal level. 
     Not everyone realized that this was the true goal but 
     constitutionalists did.
       Standing in the way of ratification of the United Nations 
     Treaty on the Political Rights of Women and the U.N. Treaty 
     on the Rights of the Child is the Tenth Amendment.
       The discredited health plan of the first Clinton 
     administration ran into roadblocks as the bevy of lawyers 
     assigned to the health care commission were told, ``You can't 
     do that because of the 10th amendment.''
       The recent Supreme Court ruling that the Religious Freedom 
     Restoration Act is unconstitutional, drove a dagger into the 
     heart of some conservatives who will bend the Constitution a 
     bit if their issue is at stake, but Religious Freedom 
     Restoration Act really is unconstitutional. The ruling of the 
     court made it clear that the enforcement power of the 14th 
     amendment does not override the broad powers of the 10th.
       One great ally of the Tenth Amendment is Supreme Court 
     Justice Clarence Thomas. He has enunciated hard nosed 
     positions limiting federal power. Writing about him, Joseph 
     Sobran said, ``In the 1995 Term Limits Case, he insisted on 
     the pertinence of the Tenth Amendment and added a brilliant 
     new twist to the debate. The Tenth not only limits the 
     federal government to its enumerated powers, he argued, it 
     reserves to the states and to the people all powers not 
     specifically denied to them.''
       The clear purpose of the founders when they produced the 
     U.S. Constitution was to create a federal government with 
     strictly limited powers. It was the states who created the 
     federal government not the other way around. Their shared 
     attitude was best expressed by Thomas Jefferson when he said, 
     ``In questions of power then, let no more be said of faith in 
     man, but bind him down with the chains of the Constitution.'' 
     Also he said, after reading the new constitution, which he, 
     of course, had no part in writing, ``I assume that if the 
     federal government were to be involved in education, there 
     would have to be a constitutional amendment.'' There has been 
     no constitutional amendment in this area, because it is 
     understood that the American people do not want education 
     transferred to the federal level. They are the rightful 
     authorities over the education of their children; their 
     authority is protected by the 10th amendment and state 
     legislators are obligated to uphold that right--no where in 
     the Constitution is ``here-in granted'' for the federal 
     government to make laws about education and no where is there 
     authority for legislators to transfer voluntarily their 
     enumerated power to another branch of government.
       There are those who would, if possible, scrap the 
     Constitution. They have openly said so; they are prominent 
     people, known public figures. One of their spokesmen, 
     Professor James McGregor Burns said it, during the observance 
     of the 200th anniversary of the ratification of the 
     Constitution. I thought it a strange way to celebrate this 
     occasion, but he said ``let's face reality, the framers have 
     simply been too shrewd for us. They have out witted us. They 
     designed separated institutions that cannot be unified by 
     mechanical linkages, frail bridges, tinkering. If we are to 
     turn the founders upside down, to put together what they put 
     asunder, we must directly confront the constitutional 
     structure which they erected.'' This quote comes from page 
     160 of Professor Burns book Reforming American Government.
       Threads of this agenda from Reforming American Government 
     surface from time to time. For instance in Newt Gingrich's 
     new contract with America 2000. He wants that year's 
     Republican candidates for the House, Senate and Presidency to 
     run as a team committed to enacting a 10 point contract with 
     America. He foresees a parliamentary-like campaign in which 
     the entire national party runs on a unified platform. This 
     has the net effect of solidifying allegiance to the Party and 
     diluting allegiance to the Constitution and Congressional 
     constituents. The Contracts with America are 10th amendment 
     issues, because they generally address domestic affairs--but 
     never mind that--``conservative'' activists are already 
     trying to get their issues into the Contract.
       Identifying the undermining of local state government, 
     several legislatures have passed 10th amendment resolutions, 
     and more of them will be as evidence mounts that the federal 
     government is out of control, and that ignoring the oath that 
     public servants take is dangerous to the liberty of all.
       State legislators are so important. You are not only, by 
     decree, closest to the people, along with county and city 
     government, but you come from among us--the people. You are 
     our neighbors, our friends and part of the businesses and 
     activities that make up our various communities. Any 
     qualified citizen can sit in the halls of the legislatures if 
     fellow citizens so elect. Once that happens and the oath is 
     taken, you become a citizen-legislator who can represent the 
     rest of us only

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     by strict adherence to the law of the Constitution. Since the 
     majority are not always right, that adherence to the 
     Constitution assures justice for all. The 10th amendment, 
     then, protects the law-makers and the people to whom they are 
     bound. This is an arrangement worth preserving.
       Why then have state legislators been allowing their just 
     powers to slip away? Federal bureaucracies are doing more and 
     more unconstitutional runs around them.
       It is time for a wake up call. As this committee prepares 
     to take up its duties, more end runs are occurring in 
     Washington. On Friday president Clinton traded off some of 
     his national education standards for a couple of years, and 
     the House voted overwhelmingly to fund charter schools by one 
     hundred million dollars, giving them a certain autonomy if 
     they teach performance-based education. The President, who 
     has no enumerated authority, any more than Congress does, 
     over education has highly endorsed charter schools as long as 
     they teach national standards. The net effect will be the 
     nationalizing, long term, of the school system, putting it 
     into the hands of special interest private boards, gradually 
     absorbing current public and private schools.
       So much for elected local school boards, so much for local 
     legislators if they let it continue.
       The more these federal intrusions into education create 
     massive failures in education, the more bent these federal 
     ``nannies'' seem to be on more of the same.
       Will state legislators seize the initiatives which are 
     rightfully and lawfully theirs? If they do not, as I have 
     said before, they will end up figure heads in a regional 
     satrapy run from somewhere on high.
       Never before in recent times has the choice been so well 
     defined--On the one side is the Republic of the United States 
     of America a nation under God as defined by the Declaration 
     of Independence, a nation governed by God's law as 
     incorporated into the Constitution. It establishes limited 
     government, and divided powers. Most of all it leaves 
     citizens free to guide and direct their own lives. God given 
     rights are unalienable and may not be taken away; they are 
     eternal.
       At the opposite end of the spectrum is the United Nations 
     Charter which enshrines the religion of man (generically 
     speaking) as the source of rights. Man through government can 
     give and take away rights from other men, women and children. 
     It is government farthest from the people run by councils of 
     ``wise'' men. We will have to choose whom we will serve. 
     Knowing that where the spirit of God is, there is the spirit 
     of liberty. I trust that citizen and legislator alike will 
     not remove the ancient landmarks which our fathers have set.
       In summary, this select committee has some very serious 
     matters to investigate, probably the tip of the iceberg--in 
     an ongoing chore. I wish you well and hope that you will ever 
     keep before you the basic truths of the 10th amendment base. 
     The law is on your side.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire is recognized.
  Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield for a moment for a unanimous 
consent request?
  Mr. GREGG. Yes.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that after the 
Senator from Vermont takes his time, I be allowed to have 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from New Hampshire.

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