"Unemployment compensation is unconstitutional"
The same article on the Tea Party movement that inspired my previous post also contains:
"The Senate candidates include Joe Miller of Alaska, who has said unemployment compensation is unconstitutional."
This one is wrong too, but in a subtler fashion. What Miller actually claims, as one can check pretty easily by listening to what he says, is that federal unemployment compensation is unconstitutional. That is not the view of the current court, but it is a defensible reading of the Constitution based, as Miller makes clear, on the doctrine of enumerated powers. On that interpretation, the federal government is only entitled to do those things that the Constitution explicitly says it can do, with the Tenth Amendment providing that anything else is reserved to the states and to the people.
Unemployment compensation is administered by the states, funded by both the federal and state governments, and varies from state to state. Eliminating the federal role would be a substantial change but one well short of eliminating unemployment compensation, which is what "unemployment compensation is unconstitutional" seems to imply that Miller is proposing.
It seems I have a new hobby—debunking overstated claims about what Tea Party supported candidates have said.