GOP lawmakers in those states, as well as Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry, have been talking up the idea of secession. States say to feds: Get off our turf

The wave of government bailouts and the Obama administration’s economic stimulus package are reviving interest in an issue that’s largely been dormant since the mid-1990s: states’ rights.

From Idaho to South Carolina and in dozens of other states, Republicans are sponsoring resolutions designed to call attention to what they view as a worrisome expansion of the federal government at the expense of the states.


“What we have is a federal government that is exceeding its authority and blackmailing the states into submission through printed dollars,” said Pennsylvania Republican state Rep. Sam Rohrer. “We are trying to say to the federal government, ‘You have a role, but your role stops not too far outside Washington, D.C.’”

Rohrer has been shepherding a bill that declares sovereignty for Pennsylvania “under the 10th 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.”

He said he was particularly concerned that the federal stimulus package would lead states to become dependent on the federal government.

“This administration has the ability to stick it in the eye of the states and to really pointedly attempt to undo everything that’s been in place,” Rohrer said. “They want to throw Reaganomics out; they want to step in and tell companies what they can or can’t do.”

Rohrer is not alone in his efforts. In North Dakota, the state House and Senate approved a bill in April telling the government to “halt its practice of assuming powers and imposing mandates on the states for purposes not enumerated in the Constitution of the United States.”

A similar resolution in Tennessee said: “Today, in 2009, the states are demonstrably treated as agents of the federal government.” That bill recently passed the state’s Republican-controlled House by a vote of 85-2.

Texas and Georgia have taken the state sovereignty issue one step further. GOP lawmakers in those states, as well as Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry, have been talking up the idea of secession.

The Georgia state Senate recently passed a resolution raising the possibility of secession, and several of the state’s Republican gubernatorial candidates supported it.

In Texas, after an anti-tax “tea party” in April, Perry appeared to put the possibility of secession on the table.

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“We’ve got a great union,” Perry told reporters. “There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that.”

Following up on Perry’s much-publicized remark, a Rasmussen poll of Texas voters found that 18 percent said they would vote to secede from the United States and form an independent country, compared with 76 percent who said they would vote for Texas to remain in the United States.

The mantle of states’ rights has been taken up almost exclusively by Republicans, who find themselves completely shut out of control of the federal, legislative and executive branches for the first time since 1994.

Back then, concerned that the Clinton administration was ushering in a new era of expanded government and encroaching on civil liberties, Republicans seized on 10th Amendment-related federalism issues and pursued the cause briefly after winning control of the House and Senate in the 1994 elections. But after winning control of Congress and then the presidency in 2000, the GOP showed little appetite for handing power back to the states once they had consolidated it in Washington.

Charles Key, an Oklahoma state legislator who led the fight to pass a state sovereignty resolution in 1994, has been trying to get a similar bill passed this year. He acknowledged that even before President Barack Obama swept into the White House, the ballooning of government programs and spending under President George W. Bush was a major concern.

“The federal government treats us as if they are superior to the people in the states, and actually just the opposite is the case,” Key said. “The Constitution either means what it says or it really doesn’t mean anything at all.”

Key’s resolution won approval in both chambers but was vetoed in April by Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry, a Democrat. Another sovereignty resolution he sponsored, which does not need the governor’s approval, recently passed the state House and Senate.

Mike Boldin, founder of the Tenth Amendment Center, a website that tracks sovereignty legislation, said at least three dozen states have considered states’ rights measures since 2007. Boldin said he hatched the idea for the center during the Bush administration, and he sees proponents of states’ rights — from supporters of gay marriage in Maine to advocates for less restrictive gun laws in Montana — as united by a common belief in the principles of the 10th Amendment.

“All across the board, we’re seeing that people can be totally opposite in their political beliefs, but they are allies,” Boldin said.

Brian Darling, the director of Senate relations at the conservative Heritage Foundation, agreed that states’ rights should be a nonpartisan issue but said that the Obama administration had provoked the ire of Republicans.

“It’s an issue where many people just have natural distrust of the federal government,” Darling said. “The actions of President Obama have really inflamed many of the concerns that people have about government being too big.”

Darling said the comments of politicians such as Perry in Texas serve an important purpose: to put the issue of whether the federal government is overreaching in front of the American people.

Mark McKinnon, a Republican strategist, suggested that the states’ rights issue could become “an increasingly powerful political hot button,” especially if the Obama administration continues to expand its control over government and the private sector.

“Rick Perry is already punching the button,” McKinnon said. “It’s clear that people who care about these issues — while perhaps not a majority yet — are passionate and noisy, which means they can be a potent political force.”