Blue State Governors Like Phil Murphy Suddenly Miss Federalism

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Months before the election, I argued that nearly half of Americans would be very unhappy no matter the outcome.

My point was that the only way we could “all get along” as a country, given our deep ideological divisions, was to transfer power from Washington to the states and let them decide policy.

Education, the environment, climate change, workforce issues, abortion, tax levels, and welfare should all be policies left to the 50 states. These should all be state issues, not federal issues. You won’t find the words education or energy policy in this book. United States Constitution. This was not carelessness of our Founding Fathers. They believed that these issues were about “states and peoples.”

Look, Donald Trump won and blue state governors are demanding that Washington leave them alone.

Democratic governors are lobbying the feds to leave their states alone. You may have seen Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, California Governor Gavin Newsom, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, and New York Governor Kathy Hochul together. organize resistance Campaigns against Trump policies.

They want to set their own labor and climate change policies and do not want to be prodded by the Trump administration. If Republicans are true constitutionalists, they should let blue states set their own policies.

One problem is that Democratic governors want power over immigration policy, one of the few powers that legally belongs to the federal government. States cannot create their own policies regarding who can enter the country. They cannot harbor criminal aliens who enter the country illegally.

But on most other issues, if blue states want to opt out of federal mandates, that’s great. There are too many federal laws that interfere with state sovereignty.

California Governor Gavin Newsom said he is concerned that the incoming Trump administration is trying to roll back clean energy measures and abortion rights. “The freedoms we hold dear in California are under attack, and we will not stand idly by.” Newsom promised.

Welcome to our world of the last four years of President Joe Biden cracking down on red states.

I hope President-elect Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress will let blue states and blue state voters determine their own policies. If they want to raise taxes, impose costly green energy legislation, force residents to buy electric vehicles, and release hardened criminals onto their streets, that’s their prerogative.

Trump threatens to counter state resistance to federal policies stoppage federal dollar. This is a bad reaction. It’s best to leave them alone.

Blue states have much higher taxes, unions have much more control over the workforce, and impose harsher regulations on their citizens. They teach the rest of the country a valuable lesson: These policies lead to disastrous results. In recent years, Americans have had a reason left CaliforniaNew Jersey and new York. Americans in other states are learning the lessons of these policies the hard way.

This is the ingenuity of the American system of federalism: residents can escape blue state tyranny by moving to red states. Normally, it is liberals who want a single set of federal laws to govern all states. They want relief because they no longer make the rules.

That’s one reason why Washington never fully restored state and local tax cuts. This allowed blue states to export only one-third of their tax burden onto the backs of red state residents. Residents of Florida and Texas, who pay no state income taxes, should not have to bear the burden of California’s higher taxes.

Similarly, each state should be able to choose its own climate change policies and its own mandatory union policies. If they want to shoot themselves in the foot, people in Florida, Iowa, and Utah shouldn’t be standing in the way of that.

Blue states should be allowed to remain in their cocoons of anti-growth progressivism. They have the right to consider themselves superior and to make sacrifices.

This way progressivism will die its own way. So governors Pritzker, Newsom, Murphy and Whitmer, you do this, too. Run towards a staggered yard line.

Americans can then vote with their feet to embrace or escape blue state tyranny. Millions of Americans will likely leave the country, and it won’t be long before Texas comes home more people Than California.

This is a repeat of the East German and West German experiment circa 2025. We know how this turns out.

Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and co-founder of Unleash Prosperity.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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