Scott Pruitt Quotes

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

Search the Constitution and you will find no power granted to the legislative branch to make laws governing agriculture, housing, medicine, energy, private ownership or weapons, and a great deal more.

This is a country that historically has had very little central government.

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.

But the basic difficulty still remains: It is the expansion of Federal power, about which I wish to express my alarm. How easily we embrace such business.

The government of the Union, though limited in its powers, is supreme within its sphere of action, and its laws, when made in pursuance of the constitution, form the supreme law of the land.

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.

We have seen a central government taking more and more control over public education, over communications, over transportation, over every detail of our daily lives.

No business is above government, and government must be empowered to deal adequately with any business that tries to rise above government.

You must not expect the central government of any country to encourage separatism.

I start with a concern about the growth of federal government. I start with a perspective concerned about the growth of that power, and containing it within the bounds of the Constitution.

Historically, there is a presumption that the legitimate police powers of the states are not to be pre-empted by federal law unless Congress has made that purpose clear.

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.

Our society today is much more Hamiltonian than Jeffersonian.

A power to regulate trade, is a power to make all needful rules and regulations concerning trade. Why may it not, then, include that of erecting a trading company, as well as, in other cases, to erect a government ?

Our devotion to individual freedom limits our readiness to give central government the power to override our traditional power structure.

States should have enormous input into the decisions that affect them.

Federalism is a guideline, not a pornographic word, you can speak it out loud...

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

U.S. v. Arizona is a landmark case not just because of the constitutional issues related to who regulates and enforces immigration, but because of its civil rights implications, too.

Conservatives deserve a consistent and thoughtful vision for the role of federal government in relationship to states.

We need the federal government to assert their supremacy over the immigration issue and make it clear to state legislatures, cowboy cops, and the American people that the federal government is in charge and effectively enforcing and regulating immigration.

I think that the more we, as a state, yield and cede decisions to the federal government, the lesser we'll be for it as a state.

Under the Constitution, federal law trumps both state and city law. But antitrust law allows states some exceptional leeway to adopt anticompetitive business regulations, out of respect for states' rights to regulate business. This federal respect for states' rights does not extend to cities.