W. Todd Akin: “I rise today to discuss and to support the Enumerated Powers Act introduced by Congressman Shadegg. The Enumerated…”

“I rise today to discuss and to support the Enumerated Powers Act introduced by Congressman Shadegg. The Enumerated Powers Act is most important to protect the tenth amendment. We understand that with the word ``federalism.'' People perhaps, though, are not so aware of where the concept of federalism originally came from. They think some brilliant founders got together in Philadelphia in 1789 and came up with the idea of federalism, but, in fact, that is not quite true. The concept of federalism dates way, way back to 18 years after the arrival of the Pilgrims in the Plymouth Colony. It goes to the time when the State of Connecticut was being founded and a great preacher by the name of Hooker preached a series of sermons outlining how the government in Connecticut should be structured. Those sermons resulted in what was called then the ``Fundamental Orders of Connecticut.'' And what it said was that Hartford had certain enumerated powers and of anything not specifically enumerated for Hartford to handle, the other towns would have those powers. So it was that we started with the idea of federalism, that is, that there is only specific power granted to the central organizing authority, in this case the U.S. Constitution.”