One of the most disturbing trends of the Biden administration is its never-ending effort to eviscerate powers reserved for the states and centralize government authority in Washington, D.C.
Never mind the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, Biden officials are determined to get their way. Our office is battling the federal government’s efforts to commandeer Arizona’s spending authority, both with the tax mandate portion of the American Rescue Plan Act and the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds program.
We filed a lawsuit last spring against the U.S. Department of the Treasury and federal officials, challenging the tax mandate portion of ARPA because it threatens to penalize, by withholding federal COVID-19 relief funding, all states that lower taxes in any fashion. Congress passed this mandate with ambiguous language, and the Biden administration is exploiting the situation to limit states’ authority to manage their taxes. How can the federal government see fit to distribute $1,400 stimulus checks to Americans across the country but forbid states from lowering income taxes? Well, it is part of a coordinated effort by the far Left to gain more control of the distribution of wealth in our country by concentrating more power in Washington, D.C., but Democrats have to overrun the states to do it.
To this end, the Biden administration opened a new front in the fight for state sovereignty, using ARPA when the Treasury Department threatened to withhold SLFRF funds from Arizona over certain educational policies the state passed to empower parents and students. Arizona again appears to have drawn the wrath of the federal government in the management of its own affairs and may now lose significant federal funds if it fails to retract policies that the Biden administration doesn’t care for. Our office informed Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen that Arizona’s sovereignty would be vigorously defended in this matter.
The moral of both of these case studies is that our federal government has grown too arrogant and powerful. In recent times, the public has largely disregarded the essential constraints our Founding Fathers placed on the country through our Constitution and Bill of Rights. As a result, our judicial and executive branches have exceeded their defined bounds, while our legislative branch, which is often in deadlock, has ceded most of the authority that it was intended to wield.
This imbalance, left unchecked, is now forcing sovereign states to choose sides between an overreaching Biden administration and the freedoms of its citizens. Unfortunately, states often submit in the face of the unlimited resources of the federal government. This has greatly diminished our constitutional republic and undermined the liberties of Americans who have no recourse to fight Washington, D.C. It is the type of situation that our founders absolutely detested and that our Constitution was established to prevent.
Ultimately, it is incumbent on all states, like Arizona, to fight back against the Biden administration’s attempted coercion with its unlawful edicts. The states created the federal government, not the other way around. States must regularly remind federal officials of that fact and resist all intrusions on their constitutionally recognized sovereignty.
Mark Brnovich is the attorney general of Arizona.
