The 10th Amendment states powers not reserved for Congress are to be reserved for the states, or the people.

“It’s probably the most important part of the Constitution,” Congressman Spencer Bachus, R-AL, said Tuesday in Pell City.

Our country, he said, has been realizing that more in the past few years. He said last year’s national debate and Congressional passage of the health care bill was a good example of that amendment being ignored.

Bachus said a meeting he attended with several governors from the South last year showed that the will of the states may have been ignored when the bill was passed. He cited Texas governor Rick Perry, who wanted his state to retain federal dollars for funds like Medicaid and Medicare while letting the people seek out their own free market solution to health care.

Bachus called the pro-healthcare debate “smoke and mirrors” and said that there was no long-term healthcare to take effect for 10 years.

Two weeks ago, the bill was repealed by the House of Representatives, which is now a Republican majority. A Senate vote has not taken place yet. A Florida judge ruled last week that the bill was unconstitutional.

Bachus said he feels the judge “basically said that Congress exceeded its bounds by passing the healthcare bill without the consent of the people.”

Bachus said he feels some items in the bill, such as covering pre-existing conditions, should be left up to states and not mandated nationally.

He said that the judge’s ruling may “force a vote in the Senate, but I’m not real confident about it.”

Jobs, budgets: federal vs. private

The federal government should not be in the business of creating jobs, the Congressman — who has served for 20 years — said.

The former lawyer and current House Financial Committee Chairman said that even making check fraud a federal offense is taking money away from local governments and making taxpayers pay more for prosecuting in federal instead of local courts. By doing that, he said, “You’re taking money out of the local sheriff’s and police departments.

“America is about making our own money and keeping our own money and doing what we want with it… The government can’t spend it if they don’t take it,” Bachus said.

President Barack Obama spoke of the government investing in technologies during his State of the Union address last week.

Bachus countered that the government shouldn’t be in the business of investing, since it will be spending the people’s money. “Is the government gonna invest our way or spend our way out of this recession?” he asked. “The government or the private sector: that’s really what we should make election about.”

Egypt

The unrest in Egypt this week has many analysts talking about rising gas prices if the Suez Canal is shut down while others speak of the electoral process of one of the United State’s strongest allies in that region.

“I think it’s going to fundamentally effect us,” Bachus said.

While the hope is a free election process as the outcome, he said having the Muslim Brotherhood leading the opposition is a concern.