SCAAP, the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program. It’s a program that reimburses states for a portion of the money they spend housing illegal immigrants who have been convicted of crimes.
The program is a mess, the way it distributes funding is irrational (there’s one case where the feds gave Surry County, NC $12,107 for somebody who was only there for five days, but only gave Clairborne Parish, LA $1223 for somebody there 363 days).
It’s basically a clusterfuck, and in 2006, OMB recommended it be terminated, saying that it doesn’t reduce crime and that in a lot of cases, it’s impossible to be sure about the immigration status of people the states claim for. Arizona constantly complains that they’ve been shortchanged by the program.
But if you look at how difficult it would be to get all those states to endorse repeal, it’s much more difficult than bringing a court case.
Before the last election, there were 27 Democratic-controlled legislatures, and 9 split Republican/Democratic controlled. All it takes is one house of the legislature in half of those states to either not act upon, or vote down, the repeal of the law, and the whole thing is for naught.
Furthermore, we don’t actually know to what extent the health care law may be amended in the next several years. It could be that President Palin and the GOP Congress trash the whole thing in January 2013, showing that the present system works fine.
I think it would be better to use a less contemporaneous issue to demonstrate a divide between large numbers of states and the Federal government.
The only issue I’ve thought of that might draw together large numbers of states are laws like the military base closure commissions, which are unpopular because they kill jobs in many states at the same time. Other than that, I got nothing.
I really think that this repeal amendment would solve a problem that doesn’t exist.
Considering that I despise state legislatures to the extent that I blame the ineptitude of Congressmen on their “farm team” background in statehouses, obviously I think this is going in the wrong direction; unless it’s a step toward dissolution. These obscure provincial legislators–who have no real responsibility for their states’ economic or political well-being–are ill-suited to second-guess national policy; but if the states were in the position of having to take full responsibility for themselves, they might attract a more responsible breed of legislator.
But since this seems unhelpful to dissolution, & in fact likely to stave it off, I must oppose it.
How? IIRC Highschool correctly, repealing a law is done by passing a new law amending the US code to say the law isn’t in effect anymore. Isn’t that bar exactly as high as passing the law in the first place? I don’t recall any procedural hurdles DADT repeal has had to pass through that DADT didn’t, to cite a recent example.
As other posters said, this Amendment appears to be a solution in search of a problem. IMHO, Amendments should be passed only to fix some demonstrated deficiency in our current gov’t.
Plus as a practical concern, I don’t think its a good idea. I kinda like state elections being about state issues. But in cases where controversial federal laws have been passed recently, I can see them becoming referendum on unpopular recent legislation. The end effect, IMHO, would be the radicalization of the state legislatures. Do your really want your state legislature to be more like the US Congress?
Looks like the courts may do just that – the federal court in the eastern district of Virginia today ruled that the mandated purchase portion of the health care law exceeds Congress’ powers under Article I.
You said it yourself, though - once it gets to the Fourth Circuit it’s not going to matter what a trial judge in the Eastern District of Virginia says.
No. A law passes Congress and becomes law with the President’s signature. But as long as the same President is in place, repealing that law requires overriding the President’s veto.
Is this a fact? If so, why is the bar higher? How high should the bar be? And lastly, is giving individual state legislatures the best way to adjust said bar?
As an academic question: how does the 2/3rds vote play out in the current scheme of general elections?
Let’s say that the worst federal bill in the world is passed, pretend it’s Obamacare times a thousand, and it’s based on taxing 2/3rds of the states to provide free coke and blowjobs to the other 1/3rd.
At t=0 the President, the House, and the Sentate are 100% Party A. In two years, there will be an election, some of the house and some of the senate. How much power can shift during that election? In other words, what does the current system do?
I don’t like the idea of amending the Constitution because a bunch of Republicans don’t like the Health Care Reform Bill and want a back door way of getting rid of it. The Senate was designed for this very thing-- to make sure every state gets an equal say at one point in the process.
But passing the law in the first place requires the same thing. Either the Prez needs to not veto it or his veto needs to be over-ridden. Again, the bar seems to be equally has high coming and going.
“Presidents signature” is just another way of saying “having the President not veto the bill, or if he does, overriding the veto”.
Nope. The procedure to introduce and pass a law stating “Existing Law X is hereby repealed” is precisely as high as the bar to pass Law X in the first place.
For one thing, it does not take into account the fact that most legislators are routinely re-elected, and, especially in the case of the Senate, that means that over the years, there is rarely more than a 10 vote swing in control of the body.
A proposal that garners 60% of the Senate one year is highly unlikely to garner 60% of that body’s support for repeal of the legislation until many years later, because of the high re-election rates, staggered terms, and length of the terms.
So your list is correct, but it just doesn’t take into account the actual difficulty of such things. It’s like saying, “All I have to do to hit a home run is knock that ball over that little fence over there?”
Your original statement was in no way confined to the term of the current President.
In the case of a law passed over a presidential veto, the bar for repeal would be lower if the same President were in office, ready and waiting to sign the repeal.
In a manner, they did. The Senate was supposed to be selected by state legislators, and was intended to reflect the views of the states qua states in the federal government. The 17th amendment altered that balance, and there has been a steady growth of federal power at the expense of states ever since. It’s gotten so ingrained that intelligent people can reflexively assume that traffic problems in Dallas ought to be resolved in Washington rather than Austin without a moment’s pause.
I’d prefer the repeal of the 17th amendment as a means of returning to the framer’s idea of the balance of power. Since that’s not gonna happen, this seems like at least a half-step.