(Hooksett, NH) U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) spoke at the Practical Federalism Forum hosted by American Principles Project and co-sponsored by Cornerstone Policy Research and The FAMiLY Leader at Southern New Hampshire University.
Caffeinated Thoughts asked each candidate to define “practical federalism.”
“It is the genius of the Constitution. It is the genius of the 10th Amendment that the states serve, as Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandt has put it, as laboratories of democracy. The Constitution just defines the powers of Congress in Article I, Section 8,” Cruz told Caffeinated Thoughts. “They are few and enumerated, and everything that is not in there is left to the states to decide. I’ve spent a lifetime fighting and defending the Constitution. We need to get back to the Constitution and as President that is exactly what I’m going to do.”
“I think practical federalism is the recognition that our nation was founded on a set of incredibly profound, but incredibly practical principles. We need to remember who we are now. We need to remember who we are, and who we are is laid out for us, it curtails the abuse of power by government, and it lifts up the rights of individuals to pursue their God-given gifts,” Fiorina answered the question posed by Caffeinated Thoughts.
“Practical federalism is locating the solution to the problems in the area most appropriate where those solutions maximize the benefit for individuals and society,” Santorum told Caffeinated Thoughts. “The idea that you can handle a problem at the individual, family, community level that is where we should put the burden. If it is too big of a problem for that area then move it up to a local government, then state government, and it is only when the problem becomes overwhelming that the federal government needs to weigh in. So that is the principle that Jefferson espoused, and if we go back to those principles and we look at areas where the federal government inserted itself like welfare. It actually done real damage to the structure that was most designed to help people the family then we can go in and repair the family unit by exiting the government, particularly the federal government, out of that equation.”
