State Rebellion Pending

From Stephen Hopkins at Aude Sapere:

Even Alexander Hamilton couldn't argue with this.

States Rebellion Pending
Professor Walter E. Williams has a very interesting article today that puts a little more punch into the state sovereignty effort. Here is a small snippet:

…Congress and the White House will laugh off these state resolutions. State
legislatures must take measures that put some teeth into their 10th Amendment
resolutions. Congress will simply threaten a state, for example, with a cutoff
of highway construction funds if it doesn’t obey a congressional mandate, such
as those that require seat belt laws or that lower the legal blood-alcohol level
to .08 for drivers. States might take a lead explored by Colorado.

In 1994, the Colorado Legislature passed a 10th Amendment resolution
and later introduced a bill titled “State Sovereignty Act.” Had the State
Sovereignty Act passed both houses of the legislature, it would have required
all people liable for any federal tax that’s a component of the highway users
fund, such as a gasoline tax, to remit those taxes directly to the Colorado
Department of Revenue. The money would have been deposited in an escrow account called the “Federal Tax Fund” and remitted monthly to the IRS, along with a list of payees and respective amounts paid. If Congress imposed sanctions on Colorado for failure to obey an unconstitutional mandate and penalized the state by
withholding funds due, say $5 million for highway construction, the State
Sovereignty Act would have prohibited the state treasurer from remitting any
funds in the escrow account to the IRS. Instead, Colorado would have imposed a
$5 million surcharge on the Federal Tax Fund account to continue the highway
construction.

The eight state legislatures that have enacted 10th Amendment resolutions
deserve our praise, but their next step is to give them teeth.