Obama’s Fake Federalism
20. Nov, 2009 
10 Comments
by Gene Healy, CATO Institute
This article appeared in the DC Examiner on November 17, 2009.
Friends of federalism cheered last month when the Obama administration reversed the Bush policy of prosecuting medical marijuana cases in states that have legalized the practice. Welcome though that change was, let’s hold the applause.
Not yet a year into his administration, Obama’s record on 10th Amendment issues is already clear: He’ll let the states have their way when their policies please blue team sensibilities and he’ll call in the feds when they don’t. Thus, he’ll grant California a waiver to allow it to raise auto emissions standards, but he’ll bring the hammer down when the state tries to cut payments to unionized health care workers.
That’s not how it’s supposed to work. As Madison explained in Federalist 45, the powers delegated to the federal government were “few and defined,” to be exercised mainly on “external objects” like foreign policy and international trade. All else — criminal law, marriage, social policy — remained with the states or the people.
Of course, No. 45 also contains one of the Federalist’s saddest sentences, in which Madison predicts that federal tax collectors will be “principally on the seacoast, and not very numerous.” (Sometimes the Framers weren’t all that prescient.)
Indeed, the federal government’s massive power to tax and spend has increasingly allowed it to trample state prerogatives. As the $786 billion stimulus package came online this year, for the first time ever, federal aid surpassed the sales tax as the largest source of revenue for the states.
“This money isn’t manna from heaven,” warned Indiana state Sen. Jim Buck, “it comes with a price.”
California learned that lesson back in May. Struggling to close a $40 billion budget gap, the state government lowered payments to home health care workers, but the Obama team threatened to withhold billions of dollars in stimulus money unless the wage subsidies were restored.
Officials in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s office accused the Service Employees International Union, a longtime Obama ally, of improper influence.
Just a few years back, the Republicans — nominally the party of federalism — were busily wielding federal power to enforce red state values — prosecuting medical marijuana patients, punishing doctors participating in Oregon’s “Death with Dignity” initiative, and trying to overturn Florida court decisions that allowed Terry Schiavo to be removed from life support. In that odd political climate, you often heard liberals lamenting the decline of states’ rights.
That strange new respect for the 10th Amendment lasted roughly as long as the blue team’s exile from power.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan said recently that “if we accomplish one thing in the coming years, it should be to eliminate the extreme variation in standards across America.” Diversity is bad, uniformity double-plus good; get with the program, comrade.
But one of federalism’s core virtues is the enormous diversity it allows. Decentralization makes it easier for Americans to escape unwelcome state experiments with fiscal and social policy.
It enhances the political power of individual citizens by allowing important decisions of governance to be settled closest to where Americans live and work. And it avoids making politics a centralized war of all against all, where each contested issue is settled in a one-size-fits-all fashion at the level furthest from the people.
Our federal system shouldn’t be a red team/blue team issue, respected or flouted depending on who’s up and who’s down. Conservatives are learning to rue their abandonment of federalist principles during the last administration; liberals may come to regret their rush toward centralization during the next.
Gene Healy is a vice president at the Cato Institute and the author of The Cult of the Presidency.
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Wow, that really puts things in a different light. Great perspective!
This is why the conservative states need a bargaining chip to force the liberals States to compromises with them in exchange for what they want.
Agreed, Monorprise! Like your comment on the blog, the idea of saying – "we'll support you on medical marijuana – support us on gun rights" or other issues….seems to work quite well. It's getting the normal opposing parties to work together to further their goals on a state level.
I actually think the only way for this to happen is for the party in power (whichever that might be) to relinquish power back to the states as designed. There doesn't have to be agreement or compromise, there has to be a relinquishing of rights back to the people. Kind of like when President (and could have been King) George Washington stepped down. Just one of many examples, but I'm praying that one day we'll have a president that understands and respects this instead of power hungry parties that attempt to ram things down the other parties throat instead of allowing them to live in their own state their own way.
I agree with the end result – but don't expect the party (or parties) in power to "relinquish power back to the states." They never will – and they'll just continue doing what they've been doing all along…..taking more and more power each and every year.
It's going to take people and states taking that power back – whether the party in power wants us to or not.
Hi,
I agree with every thing you said in the post… thank you!
I have one question…historically, weren't people with our point of view (10th Amendment), considered anti-federalists? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalism
In comparison to the centralizers we have today, they were ALL federalists! (Real ones,that is)
Double-plus good article and 1984 reference! This inconsistency in policy illustrates thne contempt that the feds have for our system of government.