Kentucky Resolution: Sovereignty Under the 10th Amendment
05. Jun, 2009 
4 Comments
On 06/02/09, Kentucky State Representative Stan Lee prefiled House Concurrent Resolution 10 (HCR10) for the 2010 legislative session.
The purpose of the resolution is to claim “sovereignty over powers not granted to the federal government by the United States Constitution; serve notice to the federal government to cease mandates beyond its authority; and to state Kentucky’s position that federal legislation that requires states to comply under threat of loss of federal funding should be prohibited or repealed.”
Read the full text of the resolution below:
A CONCURRENT RESOLUTION claiming sovereignty over powers not granted to the federal government by the United States Constitution; serving notice to the federal government to cease mandates beyond its authority; and stating Kentucky’s position that federal legislation that requires states to comply under threat of loss of federal funding should be prohibited or repealed.
WHEREAS, the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States provides that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”; and
WHEREAS, the Tenth Amendment defines the total scope of federal power as being that specifically granted by the Constitution of the United States and no more; and
WHEREAS, the scope of power defined by the Tenth Amendment means that the federal government was created by the states specifically to be an agent of the state; and
WHEREAS, today, in 2010, the states are demonstrably treated as agents of the federal government; and
WHEREAS, many federal mandates are directly in violation of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States; and
WHEREAS, Article IV, Section 4 of the United States Constitution states that “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government…” and the Ninth Amendment of the United States Constitution states that “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”; and
WHEREAS, the United States Supreme Court has ruled in New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144 (1992), that Congress may not simply commandeer the legislative and regulatory processes of the states; and
WHEREAS, a number of proposals from previous administrations and some now pending from the present administration and from Congress may further violate the Constitution of the United States;
NOW, THEREFORE,
Be it resolved by the House of Representatives of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, the Senate concurring therein:
Section 1. The Commonwealth of Kentucky hereby claims sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States.
Section 2. This Resolution serves as notice and demand to the federal government, as our agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers.
Section 3. It is the position of the Commonwealth of Kentucky that all compulsory federal legislation that directs states to comply under threat of civil or criminal penalties or sanctions, or requires states to pass legislation or lose federal funding be prohibited or repealed.
Section 4. The Clerk of the House of Representatives shall distribute a copy of this Resolution to the President of the United States, the President of the United States Senate, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, the Speaker of the House and President of the Senate of each state’s legislature of the United States of America, and to each member of Kentucky’s congressional delegation.
If you enjoyed this post:
Click Here to Get the Free Tenth Amendment Center Newsletter,
Good to see someone getting the ball rolling for 2010!
I want to encourage all TEA Partiers not to waste time focusing on issues like repealing the 16th Amendment or income tax. These things aren’t going to happen. And even if they did, they would not make significant change. Even without the income tax, the federal government is taxing us indirectly through depreciation of the dollar and “print and spend” Keynesian economics. And it is this that is ruining the country.
Commodity money (gold/silver) is the only true money and since government cannot create wealth, to get real money government must levy taxes, which there is a definite limit political realities will allow. Witness California. The voters refused to be taxed more and because California cannot print money, it was forced to cut back on the size and expense of govenrment. The same is true of Washington: Shut down the printing presses and government will be returned to WE THE PEOPLE. However, once money is divorced from gold or silver, the government can do ANYTHING it wants by borrowing monetized debt into circulation. This is what has been happening in the US for decades under the Federal Reserve System, and it is this, not the income tax, that has brought our nation to the brink of ruin.
If we want to get our nation on sound financial and monetary basis, we must abolish the Federal Reserve and reinstitute a gold or silver standard, as called for by the Constitution.
“No State shall coin money, emit Bills of Credit [paper money], make nay thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts” Art. I, Sec. 9.
The federal government can emit bills of credit (sometimes a necessary evil in times on war when money and credit are tight), but to make paper money a “legal tender” unbacked by gold or silver it has no legal authority to do. Moreover, since the Federal Reserve is a consortium of private banks and not part of the government, it violates the Constitution which gives Congress alone power to “coin money and regulate the value thereof.” (Notice that “money” is ultimately coin – gold & silver coin, not irredeemable paper.)
One useful thing we can all do to help this process along is to ask our Congressman to be a co-sponsor of Ron Paul’s HR 1207 to audit the Federal Reserve. There are 186 co-sponsors right now from both parties. There will never be another opportunity like now to make a fundamental change in our system. Please ask your congressman to co-sponsor HR 1207.
Next, we should realize that Washington is almost certainly beyond reform. The fix is in at the top for presidential campaigns. No true conservative who is serious about restoring Constitutional government to America will ever get near the White House. The last presidential campaign was a perfect example. Out of the available candidates, not one (except Ron Paul) even talked about restoring the Constitution. Huckabee, Giuliani, Romney, McCain are all establishment, politicians who would only have continued “business as usual” in Washington: More government, more print & spend fiat money, more loss of reserved States’ Rights.
Moreover, the idea that a Republican Congress can save us is pretty wishful thinking. Most republican candidates don’t have a clue about economics or the printing press money. Most Republican candidates are little better than “soft” Democrats, “moderates” who would compromise principle to broaden their appeal and win control. In short, more George Bush Sr.’s and George Bush Jr.’s who together have destroyed the Republican Party and delivered the White House to a radical socialist (who does not even appear to be a Natural Born citizen of the U.S. or at least is resisting all attempts to see his long form birth certificate which alone can settle the question) – a radical socialist, we say, who only the day before yesterday declared June “Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, and Transgender Pride Month.” Thanks George!
No. We must demand a Constitutional Convention called by the States to propose Amendments. A Constitutional Convention cannot enact Amendments, it can only propose them. Any Amendment to the Constitution – whether proposed by Congress or by the States in a Convention – can ONLY be ratified by 3/4 of the State Legislatures. Hence there is no danger from a Convention. Just the opposite: certain ruin lies ahead if we do nothing.
We need Amendments radically down-sizing Washington DC and returning our Constitutional form of government back to the ORIGINAL INTENT of the founders, rather than the perverted thing 100-years of bad case law and federal usurpation have straddled us with. Anything less than this and we are just fooling ourselves and wasting our time.
If this doesn’t work, I believe our only remaining option is to work for State Secession from the Union. We simply have no interest in Washington’s agenda, its “new world order”, its print & spend economics, its anti-Christian policies, its abortion on demand, its “gay pride”, its trillion-dollar world empire, or its impending economic ruin and collapse.
States like Texas and others need to break away and gain their independence – for our CHILDREN’S SAKE – for it is they who will suffer most if we continue with “business as usual.”
God’s blessings,
It might be more to the point to simply Get the Kentucky State legislator to repeat the one they wrote in the 1790’s.