[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 13897]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




       CONGRESSIONAL CONSTITUTION CAUCUS FOCUS ON TENTH AMENDMENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Garrett) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues who 
came before me this evening to join with us, as we do each Tuesday 
evening as members of the Congressional Constitution Caucus, to come to 
the floor to discuss constitutional issues; and this evening to discuss 
the philosophy, the intent, the foundations of the 10th amendment.
  As we discussed, and you have heard already, this amendment really 
could be said to be the most important amendment in defining what the 
Founding Fathers' vision of the role of the Federal Government should 
be.
  As stated earlier, the 10th amendment states clearly: ``The powers 
not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited 
by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the 
people.''
  These historic words, penned by the Founding Fathers, some of the 
most ingenious political minds of their time or anytime in the world's 
history, set forth an important principle: that the Federal Government 
may exercise specific powers that are listed in the Constitution. All 
you need to do is simply look to it, for example, article I, section 8, 
and they enumerate the powers that the Federal Government has. It 
really does not even go on for more than one-and-a-half pages. These 
are specific powers that the Federal Government has. The others are the 
remaining powers that are reserved to the States and the people 
respectively.
  Unfortunately, just as the authors of the Constitution have long 
passed, so too have many of their foundation principles for our 
government here. Between an ever-expanding Federal Government that for 
decades now has crept into many other facets of areas once left to 
local control, to a Federal judiciary that in many instances completely 
ignores the intent of Federalism, all resulting in a Federal Government 
that has become wildly inefficient and just a huge bureaucracy.
  So the old concept is really nothing new. It is just that we have 
lost it over time. Our founders were very clear when they established 
our system of government. They intended to set up a republic, a 
republic really, you could almost say, of sovereign states capable of 
self-governing, but with a small central government with clearly 
defined and limited powers.
  As someone else previously stated, I think the gentleman from Utah, 
our Constitution can be thought of as a social contract, a contract 
between the people and their government. We must think of this most 
important document as a trade between the rights given up between these 
competing interests. One of the most important interests that we 
receive then from the Federal Government, as set forth in the 
Constitution, is the defense of this Republic.
  All other inherently government services, the founders were very 
clear about, were to be contracts between themselves and the local 
government and contracts between themselves and the State governments. 
We refer to this as Federalism. The only powers specifically listed in 
the Constitution are to be administered by the Federal Government. All 
others are reserved to the people respectively.
  Now, earlier last month, I guess it was, we had the discussion on 
part of this forum to look at one of the legislations that is coming 
down the pike that will help facilitate this, and that is the sunset 
commission. We have discussed this in the past, and I will just talk on 
it briefly right now.
  The sunset commission will try to rein in the Federal Government by 
looking at the agencies and the powers that are already out there. We 
have suggested that it could be given, maybe even stronger, be given 
some teeth to it, and one of the ways you do that is to set it up in a 
BRAC-like format so that when it comes to Congress, it will actually 
eliminate those ineffective government programs with an up-or-down 
vote.
  Second, and maybe an important change we can make in this to make it 
even truer, is to do this, and that is to provide provisions in that 
legislation to say that you will not simply look at the effectiveness 
of programs or whether programs are duplicative. You will also look at 
whether or not the programs of the Federal Government are 
constitutional.
  Even if a program is not duplicative of other Federal programs or 
State programs, even if a Federal program is effective that is being 
performed right now, the underlying and most seminal question that we 
must ask ourselves is, do we, as Members of Congress, have the 
constitutional authority to do what the legislation is asking us to do. 
If you put that into something like a sunset commission, that we can 
review this as each bill and each legislation comes up, each program 
that is out there, we will be moving in the right direction.
  Let me just close by looking at some of the good news that just came 
out recently, today as a matter of fact, and that is the economic 
numbers showing that we are actually reining in Federal spending. We 
are seeing our deficit go down on the Federal level, and I am happy 
about that.
  I am happy that I have been able to join with other members of this 
delegation and Members of this House to try to rein in the government 
and try to bring it in the right direction.
  We must be awfully careful, though, that when we get the fiscal house 
of the Federal Government in order that we do not then decide that we 
will start spending money elsewhere. That would be the wrong direction 
to take. We have been able to get to where we are simply by putting our 
house in order as far as spending; we have been able to lower tax 
rates, allow folks to be on the family budget and not on the Federal 
budget, to have a more free-market approach.
  So I will just say this: that if we close by putting those 
limitations on the Federal Government to restrict our approach to it 
and make sure that our philosophy is the same as the Founding Fathers, 
then we will see that there is both a practical and a fundamental and 
foundational approach to doing so, and that is a constitutional 
government.

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