Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I have long maintained that most, if not all, of the most serious and vexing problems within our Federal Government can be traced to a deviation from the twin core structural protections of the Constitution. There are two of these protections--one that operates along a vertical axis; the other, a horizontal. The vertical protection we call federalism, which states a very simple fact: that in the American system of government, most power is to be reserved to the States respectively, or the people, where it is exercised at the State and local level. It is only those powers enumerated in the Constitution, either in article I, section 8 or elsewhere, that are made Federal, those things that the Founding Fathers appropriately deemed unavoidably, necessarily national or that we have otherwise rendered national through a subsequent constitutional amendment. As was the case when James Madison wrote Federalist No. 45, the powers reserved to the States are numerous and indefinite, while those that are given to the Congress to be exercised federally are few and defined--few and defined powers, the Federal Government; numerous and indefinite reserved for the States.…”