Senate Journal: Page 589: Tuesday, March 12, 2002
Senator Holveck offered amendment S-5102, filed by Senators
Holveck, Schuerer, and Hammond on March 4, 2002, to page 1 and to
the title page of the resolution, and moved its adoption.
A nonrecord roll call was requested.
The ayes were 20, nays 27.
Amendment S-5102 lost.
Senator Schuerer moved that the resolution be read the last time
now and placed upon its passage, which motion prevailed by a voice
vote, and the resolution was read the last time.
Senate Joint Resolution 2003, a joint resolution requesting the
proposal of an amendment to the Constitution of the United States
restricting the ability of the federal judiciary to mandate any state or
subdivision of any state to levy or increase taxes.
WHEREAS, in Missouri v. Jenkins, 495 U.S. 33 (1990), the
Supreme Court held that a federal court had the power to order an
increase in state and local taxes thereby violating a fundamental
tenet of the separation of powers: that members of the federal
judiciary, who serve for life and are answerable to no one, should not
have control over the power of the purse; and
WHEREAS, section 8 of Article I of the Constitution of the United
State vests with the legislative branch of government alone the
extraordinary power to "lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and
excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and
general welfare of the United States"; and
WHEREAS, the courts' actions are an intrusion into a legitimate
legislative debate over state spending priorities and not a response to
a constitutional directive; and
WHEREAS, the Constitution of the United States does not allow
for, and the states do not need, judicial intervention requiring tax
levies or increases as solutions to potentially serious problems; and
WHEREAS, the time has come for the people of this great nation,
and their duly elected representatives in state government, to
reaffirm that the authority to tax under the Constitution of the
United States is retained by the people who, by their consent alone,
do delegate such power to tax explicitly to their duly elected
representatives in the legislative branch of government, such
© 2002 Cornell College and
League of Women Voters of Iowa
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