alt Hacker NewsThat's the thing Republicans say to justify what they're currently doing.
Here's the second clause of the 18th amendment (prohibition of alcohol), ratified in 1919 and repealed by the 21st:
> The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
In other words, in 1919 it was generally understood that the federal government didn't have the power to so much as prohibit alcohol, and they needed a constitutional amendment to grant that power (without withdrawing it from the states through preemption).
Most of what the federal government currently does was intended to be unconstitutional, until FDR threatened to pack the Supreme Court if they didn't knuckle under and approve his unconstitutional acts, and then they did. Likewise Roe v. Wade, initiated by the Court itself in a year the left held the majority and then kept that way for half a century even though its logic was muddled and inconsistent with those same opinions they themselves wanted that said the government does have the power to regulate healthcare providers. Likewise gun control, which the constitution not only didn't give the federal government the power to do, it explicitly constrained them from it.
You can think that any of these things would be good policy, but without breaking the rules to enact them you'd need to amend the constitution. So never mind 20 years, this has been going on for a lot longer than that.
But if you abandon the rules because it's expedient, and then they abandon the rules because you did, and then you abandon even more of the rules because they did, we all end up in a place nobody likes.
All such arguments about the constitution and federal power are just a waste of time. The constitution is so riddled with flaws that there's little point in attempting to save the good parts. We absolutely should throw out a large proportion of the "rules" in the constitution. The idea that some policies are okay for state governments to do but not okay for the federal government to do also makes no real sense. It's just an arbitrary jurisdictional distraction from the substantive content of policies. Talking about "breaking the rules" in this context is like there's a basketball game where fans, coaches, and players are all kicking each other in the nuts and you're worried about calling double dribble.