North America
Towards New Federalism?
Photo: Andrew Cuomo speaks during a daily briefing New York, Mike Segar, Reuters, 2020.
T
he dual nature of the United States government has always been its greatest strength, as well as one of its greatest issues. Out of the fear of tyranny, the necessity of common defence and the preservation of liberty, the Founding Fathers envisioned a divided government: state and federal, both emanating from the people, were to be entrusted with different prerogatives and purposes. In theory, this unique political system has remained almost unchanged for more than 230 years. In practice, as with all human institutions, it has adapted to circumstances and bowed to political pressure. The Covid-19 pandemic will not fundamentally alter US federalism on its own, but it will likely greatly accelerate an existing trend, an offshoot of increasing polarisation: the hollowing out of the central government and a resurgence of individual states. In early August, coronavirus was spreading faster in the US than any other nation, with circa 60,000 new cases and 1,000 deaths every day. The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) response to the crisis has been widely criticised as inadequate. But as the former head of the CDC Dr Tom Frieden put it, ‘blaming the CDC for the failed US response is like blaming someone who was bound and encased in concrete for failing to swim’. The reason for these failures can be better found in the system itself: a federal arrangement that has been under assault for more than 30 years. For most of the United States’ history, state’s rights were the law of the land. Individual states decided questions of race, reproduction, religion, and the like. The federal government acted merely as a guardian of the collective interests of the states and controlled foreign affairs. However, the great demands of the WWII war effort and FDR’s New Deal social programmes led to an unprecedented increase in federal tax revenue. According to historian Gary Gerstle, in 1938 federal rev-
written by Vlad Adamescu
enues made up only 40% of all government revenue. Only a decade later, that percentage had risen to 70%. This trend started to change when conservatives in the Reagan administration began pressuring Congress to cut federal taxes until the central government would simply be forced to scrap social programmes such as Medicare, in a strategy known as ‘starving the beast’. By the 1990s, this deep-rooted hostility towards federal institutions had made its way into the mainstream of political discourse and had become ‘the new centre’, with President Clinton even stating that ‘the era of big government’ was over. The assault on the federal government was well underway. This fed a cycle which turned hearts and minds, as well as policy, against the federal government: the less money the Federal Reserve receives, the less it can do, and the more people start questioning the validity of national taxes. As federal power decreases, states seem to be reclaiming power. The political result of conservative suspicion of federal power appeared in the 2010 midterms, with the massive gains made by the Tea Party – a movement within the Republican Party born out of opposition to early Obama-era economic recovery plans. The Tea Party’s goal is simple: shrink the size of the government, block any new spending and dismantle existing social programmes like Obamacare. While against the spending cuts Tea Party members call for, Democrats have similarly been pushing in an anti-federal direction. Vehement opposition to the Trump administration has meant that liberal state coalitions have become more frequent in recent years; in response to administration attempts to limit state authority over CO₂ vehicle emission standards, 23 states led by California have sued the federal government. Of these, 15 are Democratic ‘one-party states’, by which the governorship and both state houses are controlled
Autumn 2020 • Dialogue 93
