The importance of sovereignty

Governor Phil Bredesen recently expressed a notable concern that under President Obama's health care proposals-in their various incarnations-the federal government intends to pass the burden of funding health care even further on to the States than it already does. Bredesen is concerned, as are many Tennessee leaders in both political parties, that a greater obligation to deal with the costs of health care will create budgetary havoc for a State which literally had to create a budget with money that was not there for 2009. Some legislators and political pundits have even argued that Tennessee's most recent budget was not balanced in the way that the State Constitution requires, pointing to its reliance on bonds to fund road projects (Tennessee is traditionally a "pay-as-you-go" State, and traditionally does not rely on bonds because of the propensity for perpetual debt and an inability to keep the budget balanced).
 

There is a far larger issue at stake than mere money, however. The seeming desire of the present Administration to cover its fiscal irresponsibility by passing the financial burden of its programs to the States is but the latest in a long line of federal abuses of the rights of the States. States often fear standing up for themselves because some elected leaders operate under the notion that a Union victory in the War Between the States meant that there really is no such thing as States' rights anymore. The Late Unpleasantness did not nullify the Constitution, and the Tenth Amendment is clear that if a power is not enumerated to the States by the Constitution, that such power is reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

So why don't more States stand up for their rights, since the States are the creators of the federal government, and without them, the federal apparatus has no historical or constitutional reason to exist? Largely because the federal bohemoth has become far greator than its creators, the child, as it were, lording its authority over its parents. A certain stigma has also grown up around raising the issue of States' rights because of the use of the constitutional doctrine to maintain slavery in the years leading up to the Civil War, and in later years to maintain forced segregation.