[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 13896]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




   THE BALANCE OF POWER BETWEEN THE STATES AND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to claim the 
unused time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Without objection, the gentleman from Utah 
is recognized for 5 minutes.
  There was no objection.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my good friend from 
Idaho's having started this process in talking about this particular 
issue. And I am also looking forward to hearing from my good friend and 
colleague from New Jersey who will be talking about the 10th amendment 
in a moment as well. For, indeed, it is one of those central issues 
that we need to remind ourselves at all times.
  In the Federalist No. 32, Hamilton tried to persuade people to ratify 
the Constitution, and the question was, Would this new government with 
which we now function have too much power? Hamilton wrote that ``I am 
persuaded that the sense of people, the extreme hazard of provoking the 
resentments of the State governments, and a conviction of the utility 
and necessity of local administrations for local purposes would be a 
complete barrier against the oppressive use of such a power'' by the 
national government. He went on to say that ``I affirm that under the 
plan of the convention,'' which he was referring to the Constitution of 
the United States, the States ``would retain that authority in the most 
absolute and unqualified sense and that an attempt on the part of the 
national government to abridge them in the exercise of it would be a 
violent assumption of power, unwarranted by any article or clause of'' 
the proposed ``Constitution.''
  Now, in recent times we have strayed slightly from that philosophy. 
We have in this country today the idea that federalism is not when the 
central government simply graciously allows the States to do this or 
that, that it is not that the States are simply another form of 
administration or level of government. Federalism is when the people of 
the States set limits on the central government.
  It is true that in the name of States' rights that sometimes harm has 
been done to individuals. One must remember that the idea of the 
Constitution, of balancing power between the national and State 
governments, had one purpose and one purpose only, and that was to 
ensure individual liberties. And when any branch of government, whether 
it be States or the Federal Government, harms those individual 
liberties, they are doing an assumption and they are moving boldly from 
the concept and the process that was originally intended to be there.
  Sometimes we forget that back then when the Constitution was 
established the idea of States' rights or federalism was a given to our 
Founding Fathers, that those people who wanted to centralize powers 
were the ones on the defensive at all times and that it was clearly 
understood that the Bill of Rights, when it was passed, was the way of 
the States to bind the Federal Government to stay out of certain areas 
as in ``Congress shall make no law,'' et cetera, et cetera.
  The only way to preserve civil liberty, then, is for government to 
check its own power, government counteracting government. And the only 
way of checking power is to disperse that power and to divide it. The 
Federal Government will, even though it is against their basic 
interest, always have to learn to check itself. That is the purpose of 
federalism. That is the reason there are States and national 
government. That is why we are here week after week, speech after 
speech, in some ways trying to pick on issues and prod a conscience to 
realize the real purpose of federalism has the goal of preserving 
individual liberty and that when we do that, we are doing good, and 
that for some reason for the national government, the Federal 
Government, we here in Washington, if we really want to do well for 
people, if we want to protect people and their rights, we have to learn 
to try to limit our own power.
  That was the goal of the 10th amendment, and it is the goal of this 
caucus to try to reemphasize all the time that for the rights of people 
and to preserve people and to help people, the national government has 
to lose power and share and balance that power with the States.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I will be looking forward to the comments of 
my good colleague from New Jersey.

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