House Republicans Form States’ Rights Task Force

A group of conservative House Republicans called the Republican Study Committee have formed a “10th Amendment Task Force” to “usher in a new area of federalism” and work to disperse power from the federal government to the states.  They are denying that this is in response to the new health care law.

“This is much more broad than one issue,” said RSC Chairman Tom Price of Georgia. “The health care bill that was passed and signed into law was just one of the most recent examples of the intrusion and the oppression that people across this land feel that their federal government is currently taking as a posture.”

Congressman Rob Bishop of Utah says the impetus for this predates the tea party movement.

“I spent eight terms in the Utah Legislature, I was speaker of the House, and I learned to hate the federal government,” he said. “I have always had this [anti-Washington] concept.”

Funny that a guy who had a good job in local government, and claims to hate Washington and the federal government, left where he wants the real power center to be go work in Washington at the federal level.  As I posted last August, the “Tenther” movement features focuses on the part of the Constitution that says,  “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.” Taken to extreme, you have people like Texas Governor Rick Perry who gives aid and comfort to those who talk about seceding from the union.

Ian Milheiser in the American Prospect shows how historically, this philosophy was used to stop – not make – progress.

In the immediate wake of Brown v. Board of Education, 19 senators and 77 representatives endorsed a “Southern Manifesto,” proclaiming — in words echoed by modern-day tenthers — that Brown “encroach[es] on the rights reserved to the States” because the “Constitution does not mention education.”

So do these Tenthers want the right to have separate but equal schools?  Do they want the right to deny voting rights to blacks?  Would they take it so far as to secede if they don’t get their way?

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.