Ryan J. Reilly May 16, 2011, 4:47 PM

The supporters of a proposal that would allow two-thirds of the states to collectively repeal laws and rules of the federal government say their Repeal Amendment is nothing like nullification. And while supporters of the proposed constitutional amendment have their own particular law they’d like to see repealed — health care reform — they say the amendment should nonetheless have bipartisan support.

Rep. Rob Bishop (R-GA) told reporters at a press conference Thursday announcing the introduction of the Repeal Amendment that the proposal isn’t nullification.

“The philosophy of nullification is that an individual state can declare an act of Congress or policy null and void within that state, so North Dakota could say for North Dakota this law doesn’t apply. So that’s nullification, that has nothing to do with this,” Bishop said.

“I would assume that anyone who supports this may have a particular item they’d like to see changed, but this bill per se isn’t about a particular item on our agenda,” Bishop said. “This is about an overall process. So somebody could be voting for this process because of a pet-peeve they have, but don’t limit it just to that, it’s much much broader.”

Marianne Moran, executive director of the Repeal Amendment, also told TPM in an interview last week that a new onstitutional amendment might be easier than repealing the 17th Amendment, which allows for the direct election of senators.

“A lot of people feel that’s the way that Washington controlled much more power and took it away from the states. It’s hard to take away direct election of senators from the people, but it was the idea of the founders that give state legislators more power,” she said. “And that’s why a lot of those people who support repeal of the 17th love the idea of the repeal amendment because it’s easier to sell to a large majority of people that you’ll be able to repeal bad acts of Congress.”

Video of the press conference is embedded below.

Repeal Amendment, Rob Bishop