IFF: Special Session About Federalism

In a column today, Wayne Hoffman of the Idaho Freedom Foundation writes:

Idaho lawmakers are expected to vote on a single bill when they meet in special session on Monday. But they’re voting on a topic that is even bigger, one most of the mainstream media have gotten horribly wrong in the last several weeks: federalism. Federalism is that principle that the states have a role separate and distinct from that of the federal government; that power doesn’t belong in a single, centralized government; that the federal government cannot coerce states into taking actions that they choose to not take. States are separate and independent sovereigns that “sometimes have to act like it,” U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts wrote in his 2012 ruling on Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion provisions. Federalism allows states to set their priorities, develop their own solutions and compete against other states for superior results. The 2015 special session is, plainly put, the product of the federal government telling states—all states—that they must pass certain legislation by a congressionally-established deadline. Such an edict not only flies in the face of federalism, it upends it totally. More here.