00SENATE JOINT RESOLUTION NO. 5                                                                                           
01 Asserting the State of Alaska's Tenth Amendment rights.                                                                 
02 BE IT RESOLVED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF ALASKA:                                                               
03  WHEREAS the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States states:                                           
04 "The powers not delegated to the United States by the                                                                 
05 Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the                                                   
06 States respectively, or to the people."; and                                                                            
07  WHEREAS the Tenth Amendment defines the total scope of federal power as being that                                     
08 specifically granted by the United States Constitution and no more; and                                                 
09  WHEREAS the scope of power defined by the Tenth Amendment means that the federal                                       
10 government was created by the states specifically to assume the responsibility for exercising                           
11 certain powers on behalf of the union as a whole, including the responsibility to provide the                           
12 funding needed to carry out those powers; and                                                                           
13  WHEREAS, today, in 1995,  the states are in fact frequently required by the federal                                    
14 government  to carry out federal policy while bearing the costs of that policy; and                                     

01  WHEREAS many federal mandates are directly in violation of the Tenth Amendment;                                        
02 and                                                                                                                     
03  WHEREAS the United States Supreme Court has ruled in New York v. United States,                                        
04 112 S.Ct. 2408 (1992), that the Congress may not simply commandeer the legislative processes                            
05 of the states; and                                                                                                      
06  WHEREAS a number of proposals now pending from the present administration and                                          
07 from the Congress would further violate the Tenth Amendment of the United States Constitution;                          
08 and                                                                                                                     
09  WHEREAS  the vice-president of the United States in the "Report of the National                                        
10 Performance Review" has recommended that unfunded mandates imposed on the states be cut,                                
11 that the Congress refrain from imposing new mandates, and that an executive order be issued                             
12 to limit the use of unfunded mandates in legislative proposals and the circumstances under which                        
13 federal agencies may impose new mandates;                                                                               
14  BE IT RESOLVED that the Alaska State Legislature hereby claims sovereignty under                                       
15 the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise                              
16 enumerated and granted to the federal government by that constitution; and be it                                        
17  FURTHER RESOLVED that the federal government, is hereby instructed to cease and                                        
18 desist, effective immediately, imposing mandates on the states that are beyond the scope of its                         
19 authority under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.                                           
20  COPIES of this resolution shall be sent to the Honorable Bill Clinton, President of the                                
21 United States; the Honorable Al Gore, Jr., Vice-President of the United States and President of                         
22 the U.S. Senate; the Honorable Strom Thurmond, President Pro Tempore of the U.S. Senate; the                            
23 Honorable Newt Gingrich, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives; to the Honorable Ted                             
24 Stevens and the Honorable Frank Murkowski, U.S. Senators, and the Honorable Don Young,                                  
25 U.S. Representative, members of the Alaska delegation in Congress; and to the governor of each                          
26 of Alaska's sister states.