Restoring the 10th Amendment

On January 8, 1790, President George Washington delivered the first State of the Union address. In the 225 years since his address, the American Republic that the Founders left us has largely disappeared. There is very little left in our personal lives or in the realm of original State authority that the federal government does not control, despite the fact that the Founders designed the Constitution to protect our liberty by strictly limiting the power of the federal government and protecting the broad authority of State governments.

Restoring the 10th Amendment will do more to restore our individual liberty and limit the size, power, and cost of the federal government than anything else Congress could do.

Restoring the 10th Amendment will restore the American Republic that President Washington and the Founders created.

On the first day of the new 114th Congress, the first thing I did was co-author a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution, co-author the Fair Tax to abolish the income tax and replace it with a national retail sales tax, and introduce legislation to restore the 10th Amendment authority of the States to control public education and the right of parents to control their children's education without any interference from the federal government.

Last year, I succeeded in passing H.R. 106, the Restoration of Parental Rights and State Sovereignty Act of 2015 in the House as an amendment to the Student Success Act but it died in the Senate. The new Republican majority in the Senate gives me great hope that my 10th Amendment restoration act will finally be passed by the entire Congress. This week the House Education Committee will take up the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESA), currently known as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), and I am very optimistic that H.R. 106 will be included in that bill.

H.R. 106 will sunset all federal education grant programs in all 50 States unless their State Legislature passes a law accepting the federal money with all the strings attached, and openly and voluntarily subjects their State to federal control over their public school system. That will be a very hard vote for State legislators to take, and for Governors to sign into law, and I am optimistic that most States would reject the federal money. To be sure that States who want federal control do not reap a windfall, H.R. 106 would use every federal dollar returned to the Treasury to pay down our national debt and deficit.

On the first day of this new Congress, I also filed H.J.Res. 5 to amend the Constitution so that no treaty, executive order, or agreement with a foreign nation could ever diminish our individual rights and liberty or be used by activist judges to override American law. I filed this Constitutional Amendment to stop the UN Arms Trade Treaty and other treaties like it from being used by gun control advocates to diminish our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. I also helped lead a successful effort on the Appropriations Committee to defund the UN Arms Control Treaty in the omnibus appropriations bill which was signed into law late last year.

On every front, at every opportunity, I am working to stop President Barack Obama from dismantling the American Republic. I am leading efforts to stop him through the annual appropriations process.

For the long term, my overriding goal is to restore the American Republic by restoring the 10th Amendment, beginning with public education, so that Texans will truly run Texas.

 

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