Federalism in the First Congress

Federalism had long rested six feet under when democrats passed Obama’s notorious and deceptively named “Affordable Health Care Act” in March 2010. The states’ reaction illustrated the tragic disconnect between them and their post-17th Amendment senators. By January of 2011, twenty-seven states challenged the constitutionality of Obamacare in federal court. Twenty-two senators from those states had voted for the law. In seven of the twenty-seven states, both senators voted for Obamacare!1 Having dispensed with representing state legislatures since 1913, these at-large politicians from geographic areas called states gather in an institution with little apparent purpose beyond reelection and accumulating wealth…