Scott Pruitt Quotes

Particularly as a supposed 'conservative,' Trump ought to know something about the relationship between the federal government and the states.

Our best protection against bigger government in Washington is better government in the states.

Since my election as Oklahoma attorney general in 2010, I have been a proud member of a group of federalism-minded state attorneys general who have methodically, indeed relentlessly, worked to restore the proper balance of power between the federal government and the states.

The Federal Government should be the last resort, not the first. Ask if a potential program is truly a federal responsibility or whether it can better be handled privately, by voluntary organizations, or by local or state governments.

The federal government should stay out of it.

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. –

When the federal government imposes a mandate on the states or supersedes a state policy, conservatives often rise in protest.

Wringing your hands about states' rights, forget it. They're gone. Basically, the federal government can do whatever it wants. Who's going to protect the states? My court? Ha - we're feds!

We have become bound by a political straitjacket that frames every debate: Too much federal government. Yet our forefathers forged this system for us. The federal government can accomplish what the states, acting alone or even in concert, cannot.

My goal was to make New Jersey's state government a model for all other states to emulate, hopefully thereby to stem, or at least slow down, the flow of power to the federal government.

But again, you know, the views that we've expressed are transferring power back from the federal government to the states, giving Alaska an incredible opportunity to expand its economy, especially at a time when our federal government is coming close to bankruptcy. So that is a broad-based appeal. It's not an extreme view.

I think the federal government should be doing only what the Constitution says it should be. We don't have authority under the federal Constitution to have a big federal criminal justice system.

The United States being a limited form of government, one of the restrictions to which it is subject is in regard to its power to levy taxes. The States may levy them for a great many purposes for which Congress cannot, because to the States belong all of the powers not delegated to Congress.

I think the governors would all agree that what we don't want from the federal government is unfunded mandates.

What is good for Alaska is good for the country. Transferring power from the federal government to the states provides opportunity to all states, not just Alaska.

Nullification is the Jeffersonian idea that the states of the American Union must judge the constitutionality of the acts of their agent, the federal government, since no impartial arbiter between them exists.

It is a fundamental principle of American law that the regulation of the local police of all the domestic affairs of a State belong to the State itself, and not to the Federal Government.

Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force

The fate of this government depends absolutely upon raising it above the state governments.

Texans can run Texas without the federal government telling them what to do.

The bill is incapable of being executed …. It proceeds entirely upon the idea that the State governments will lend their aid to carry it into effect.

a vile law system, calculated for expense and with a design to draw by degrees all law business into the Federal Courts. The Constitution is meant to swallow all the State Constitutions by degrees.

[The new Federal Government] would either triumph over the state governments and reduce them to entire subordination or in the course of a few years … the contests about the boundaries of power between the particular [State] governments and the general government … will produce a dissolution of the union.

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. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce;... the powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and prosperities of the people.

The Constitution preserves the autonomy and independence of the States; “federal supervision of their action” is in no case permissible except as to matters specifically delegated to the United States. Any interference ... except as thus permitted is an invasion of the authority of the States