A bridge collapses in Minnesota, with tragic
and deadly consequences. A
report shows hundreds of bridges across Massachusetts
are in similar need of repair.
Each year, education think tanks decry the chronic underfunding of many public
schools. Meanwhile, In a
desperate bid to refill depleted town coffers, the residents of a quiet little
town vote 2-1 to allow casino gambling – a decision that will change the face of the town forever and bring in its
wake a whole new world of social and other problems.
What links
all of these seemingly disparate headlines
together? Well, it could very well be federalism,
a concept that, given the economic disparities facing our country, may be due
for a renaissance. Federalists, who believe in reallocating funds and authority
from the federal level to the states, have spent decades lamenting the feds’
steady expansion into areas of American life previously left to the states,
cities, and towns, such as education and local transportation. By and large,
liberals have been skeptical. It may be time for that attitude to change.
This expansion has been enabled by
a positive feedback loop, in which more federal government spending requires
increased federal taxes, and increased tax revenue enables more federal
government spending. Indeed, adjusted for inflation, federal tax revenue has
grown by two hundred and thirty percent since 1965, according to conservative
think-tank The Heritage Foundation. Remarkably, federal spending increased by
two hundred and fifty percent over the same period. Besides the damage to
taxpayers’ paychecks, this cycle has spawned an additional and quite pernicious
side effect: whatever funds the feds cannot collect, they borrow – saddling our
children and grandchildren with frightening budget deficits.
Faced with
all this, some liberals who extol the virtues of the social welfare state have
to ask themselves whether the expansive federal government approach has
backfired, and whether the Federalists have a point. (Of course, it is
perfectly consistent for liberals to favor both a welfare state and a small
federal government. This “blue federalism” would suggest that, when faced with
an incompetent and illiberal federal government committed to obstructing
progressive values, liberals should instead embrace state and local government
as vanguards of those values. At the very least, citizens of a city or state
have a better chance of influencing the actions of local and state government
than they have of causing even a ripple in Washington.)
But if one takes the federalist
logic seriously, it suggests the question: Are the American people getting a
solid return on their investment? Consider the following:
In a case
of perfect accidental timing, the Pioneer Institute finished a review of our
Commonwealth’s public bridges the same week as the collapse in Minneapolis and designated 558 of them
“deficient."
This shameful neglect can be witnessed first-hand by anyone who has visited
virtually any state, county or municipal courthouse in the state, except for
the recently refurbished Adams Courthouse in Boston that is home to the state’s
highest court. The deplorable state of those buildings—for example, it is hard
to find a working toilet in many of them—undermines public respect for one of
our state’s great institutions.
And while federal
buildings are well-funded and generally well-maintained, for the most part our
tax revenues sent to Uncle Sam appear to be poured down a massive sinkhole.
Consider the recent report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that
the Iraq War has already put the American taxpayer on the hook for a trillion
dollars, with no end in sight and without, it is generally agreed, a strategy
worthy of the name. The catastrophic failure of the Department of Homeland
Security to deal with the devastating flood that destroyed New Orleans and
environs when Hurricane Katrina hit is now well-documented. And the recurring
reports of outrageous pork-barrel projects inserted into federal budgets by
powerful congressmen, for little purpose other than assuring their re-election—does
anyone remember the Alaskan “bridge-to-nowhere” supported by Alaska Senator Ted
Stevens, who is now under corruption
investigation?—make one skeptical that the federal government could run a
typical household budget.
The bottom
line is that as the federal government becomes more profligate and seemingly
less competent—past the level of merely dysfunctional, and possibly attaining
the level of pathological—our states and cities and towns become more and more
starved for the cash siphoned off and then recklessly wasted by Washington. It would be
one thing if Washington
took the money and returned a sane and sensible foreign policy, an efficient
military establishment devoted to truly defensive missions essential for the
national security, a functioning health-care system, a better educational
system, and public safety in the face of natural and man-made disasters.
Strict federalists would still
object to some of these areas falling under federal government jurisdiction –
health care and education among them – but at least the taxpayers would get
their money’s worth and these functions would not require as much state
financial support. But the federal government appears incapable of these tasks,
perhaps because many of these functions are, or should be, inherently local
undertakings. So maybe the federalists have it right, and this is where “blue
federalism” slips in: Washington
should get out of trying to micro-manage the states, cities and towns. While
federal tax rates could be radically cut, instead states could tax their
citizens sufficiently to perform the essential tasks that people have a right
to expect from government: a functioning health care system, schools that
educate children, bridges and roads with structural integrity, and public
buildings that are a source of pride, not embarrassment.
* ** * * *
It is
reasonable for readers to ask why it is that this subject occupies space under
the rubric of “TheFreeForAll” blog. What does shifting the balance of power and
authority back from Washington to Beacon Hill have to do with liberty? The answer is
simple. Just as Massachusetts citizens have more ability to monitor and
influence how state and local governments spend their money on providing
essential services than they do when the feds are involved, so they are able to
have a say when police misconduct arises, when local citizens’ free speech
rights are infringed, or when government in any way crosses the line and
infringes our liberties. It is much easier to deal with incompetence and
misconduct in a local prosecutor’s office or a town police department, than to
contain the excesses of the Department of Justice or the FBI. If the
libertarians perhaps overstate the case when they say that “small government is
beautiful,” it does seem true that local government is at least controllable.
And given the out-of-control and incompetent band of fools and worse in the
executive branch in Washington, the increasingly dysfunctional Congress, and a
Supreme Court that seems more and more out of touch with the realities of
modern life, maybe it’s time that we citizens re-assert some control over those
who govern us. If, as Tip O’Neill was fond of saying, “all politics is local,”
then it logically follows that effective control over politicians is likewise
local. Reducing the size of federal government, and increasing the funding of
state and local government, would appear to be a move toward not only sanity,
but also increased liberty.