But since the 17th Amendment, they have no direct vote on the matter.
The Feds can and have put in a 90+% tax rate before - just not on everybody.
It will be much easier for the Feds to put a 90% tax bite on the states. All they have to do is take over 90% of the function of the states in exchange.
Look how Medicare is going. It's taking a large and growing chunk of every states income. At some point, the Feds just step in and say we're taking Medicare over completely and the states must now fork over another 25% of their revenue. The cycle is: Increase the mandated spending on area X for the state until it's unendurable, take area X over in exchange for another chunk of state revenue
This can happen with education, just with a slow expansion of the NCLB mandates. Any government function can be transferred from state to federal responsibility this way, as long as you don't recognized Constitutional limits on Federal authority.
And given enough money to pay off a few states here and there, there would not be a united front of 50 governors fighting this.
The problem is not the Constitution, except for a few self-inflicted wounds like the 16th, 17th and 26th Amendmends.
The problem is the universities, the media, the bureaucracy and an ensconced dependent class who are going to have to be burned out because they can’t be voted out.
Slowhandluke,
Under the proposed 28th Amendment, ALL tax pasture in a State will be the exclusive province of that State’s government. All State governments are far more sensitive and responsive to their voters than is the Federal Government to its voters because it is obviously easier to effect change at the State level than at the Federal level.
Obviously, it will be much harder for the Fed Gov to raise taxes on the COLLECTION of the 50 State governments because State governments are organized and directly invested in spending HUGE amounts of money to manage the affairs of their States. When they have to give up billions of dollars to the Fed to fund things like “the study of bovine flatulence in the State of Connecticut” there will be bloody hell to pay. Forty Nine Governors will say hell no! - And their citizens might just agree with them.
Tell me, how could you as a Senator get re-elected in your State if you voted yes on a budget bill that brought back at best a few hundred million dollars in pet pork projects but in exchange you send billions of dollars out of your State? (You are aware this is essentially the deficit spending works, aren’t you??)