GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich launched a new campaign Tuesday to solicit ideas from the public for a law strictly enforcing the Tenth Amendment and rolling back federal regulations.
The project is called Team 10, a “crowd-sourced, participatory effort” to “develop ideas for enforcing the 10th Amendment and returning power back home.” The project will also be part of a new “Contract with America” by Gingrich, the campaign said in a statement.
The Tenth Amendment states that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
In other words, all authority not granted to the federal government by the Constitution is reserved to the states in what are called unenumerated rights. States have often invoked the Tenth Amendment to resist expansive federal laws, such as Obama’s health care reform and cap-and-trade legislation.
“Since the 1930s the president and Congress have steadily ignored the Tenth Amendment,” Gingrich said in a conference call today. “Back then, there was a general assumption that life was mostly lived in your local neighborhood. But then you suddenly had a huge increase in government, followed by what Lyndon Johnson called the ‘great society,’ — although I would call it bureaucratic socialism.”
“What you’ve seen is an extraordinary increase in government power,” Gingrich continued.
The idea behind a Tenth Amendment enforcement act, Gingrich said, would be to kick federal regulations — and the resulting paperwork — back to the states, something he said could save money on both the state and federal side.
Some of the ideas being floated on the Team 10 Facebook page right now include “keeping gun control at the state level” and “annulment by judicial review” – a process that would allow states to reject acts of Congress.
“It is really important that we develop a coherent, rational approach to the Tenth Amendment,” Gingrich said in a conference call today. “If we do, it could have huge impact on reducing the deficit and recentering government.”
Gingrich said the project plans to roll out a proposed bill six to eight months in the future. He said he also hopes to garner support from congressional candidates in the upcoming elections.
“We want to write a real bill,” Gingrich said. “This isn’t an exercise in public relations.”