Imposing national curriculum standards

Next month, the Obama Administration will begin granting waivers to states that are not on track to meet proficiency requirements in the No Child Left Behind Act. Education Secretary Arne Duncan will be granting these waivers selectively, based mostly on states' willingness to abide by new executive branch mandates not included in NCLB, likely including adopting national curriculum standards.

Duncan has the authority under NCLB to grant waivers, but not to compel states to jump through administration hoops in order to earn them, as Neal McCluskey has documented clearly.

As Neal notes in today's Cato Daily Podcast, essentially imposing national standards – as well as other potential waiver demands – represents a large-scale assertion of federal executive power over local education:

We've broken any semblance of a Constitutional balance of power between the executive and the legislative branch. Now the President is just going to dictate to every school what they're going to teach. And that is a giant threat to freedom and to the American education system.

A broader recognition that the Constitution grants neither Congress nor the President any role in education would go a long way toward fixing these problems. NCLB may be, to quote Arne Duncan, "a slow-motion train wreck," but using that law to transfer power away from parents, states and Congress is easily a solution worse than the problem.

What can Kentucky do about Obamacare?

Not only will failing to bring down Obamacare result in a loss of our personal liberties, it will also offer the equivalent of a "do not resuscitate order" for one of America's greatest founding principles -- federalism, writes the Heritage Foundation's Robert Moffit.

Moffit notes the uniquely American principle of federalism "was already on life support before the individual mandate."

In a recent edition of The Insider , he makes a strong case for state officials going to battle with the federal government over this issue -- not just because of what it will do to our health care system, but due to the precedent it will set in opening the floodgates for other government intrusion.

Of course, Kentucky officials have been very partisan, choosing to side with their political pals in Washington on this issue rather than serve the citizens they committed to protect and the Constitution they swore to uphold.

He urges state officials to:

* "Move ahead with their own agenda for health reform, not just play a waiting game until 2014, listening for Washington to tell them what to do and how to do it.

* "Seize every inch of territory in the health policy debate within the law, such as health insurance market reform."

* "Challenge every transgression of their legitimate authority if and when federal officials violate it."

* "Hold their own public hearings on the impact of the federal law on their citizens, employers, employees, insurers and medical professionals, and state agencies."

* "U.S. senators who voted to impose costly mandates on their states should be invited to state legislative hearings to give an account of their actions and explain why they believe such mandates advance the true interests of the states they represent." (Since neither Kentucky U.S. senator voted for this fiasco, we would urge, instead that House members who support it be invited to Frankfort.)

* "Invite federal officials to appear and explain how they intend to implement mandates and make them justify their proposed rules in broad daylight."

* "State legislators, in cooperation with colleagues in sister states, should make it clear that dumping hundreds of pages of complex federal rules into the Federal Register for public notice and comment is no longer sufficient."

We wonder when our Governor and Attorney General might quit just feeling good about sending out meaningless press releases full of warm fuzzies about ribbon cuttings and start getting serious about fulfilling their constitutional obligations to protect Kentuckians from an ever-encroaching federal government.

Quote of the day: Federalism

"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite." --James Madison, "The Federalist, No. 45"