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13 Republican state attorneys general are suing the Biden administration over a provision in the $1.9 trillion relief bill. The provision prohibits states from using federal aid to offset tax cuts.
“Never before has the federal government attempted such a complete takeover of state finances,” Patrick Morrisey, West Virginia Attorney General, said. “The Constitution envisions co-sovereign states, not a federal government that forces state legislatures to forfeit one of their core constitutional functions in exchange for a large check equal to approximately 25 percent of their annual respective general budgets.”
Attorney’s General from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Utah joined Morrisey in the lawsuit. A spokesperson from the Treasury Department defended the mandate earlier this month.
“The law does not say that states cannot cut taxes at all, and it does not say that if a state cut taxes, it must pay back all of the federal funding it received,” the Treasury Department spokesperson said in a statement.
“It simply instructed them not to use that money to offset net revenues lost if the state chooses to cut taxes. So if a state does cut taxes without replacing that revenue in some other way, then the state must pay back to the federal government pandemic relief funds up to the amount of the lost revenue.”
