|
|
|
The views expressed on this page are soley
those of the author and do not
necessarily represent the views of County
News Online
|
|
Getty Images
The Daily Signal
How
States Look to Resist ‘Overreach’ by Federal Bureaucrats
Kevin Mooney
January 27, 2019
Parents from Indiana to South Carolina who expect to have a voice in
what their children are taught in public schools find that more
difficult, state lawmakers and policy analysts say, because the federal
government has overstepped constitutional boundaries and interjected
itself in state and local affairs.
Proponents of legislation aimed at reforming the federal grant-making
process cite this example to drive home their concerns that state
governments have surrendered too much authority to the federal
bureaucracy.
“The federal government has set the tone as to what education will look
like in America and it’s different from what parents want for their
children,” conservative scholar Emmett McGroarty told The Daily Signal,
adding:
What parents want is for their children to know the great minds in
history [and] literature, and to understand scientific thought and
philosophy and math. But this vision has been replaced with a national
progressive view of education that is really geared toward producing
lower-quality workers, giving children a lower-quality education that
puts them two to three years behind the top performing students in
other countries.
The idea behind reforms proposed by the American Legislative Exchange
Council is that federal bureaucrats shouldn’t be able to control state
spending to the point of imposing policy preferences on unsuspecting
taxpayers without their input.
The time has come to “push back against federal overreach,” proponents
argue.
Model legislation from ALEC—a nonpartisan network of state lawmakers
who favor constitutional limited government and free markets—is
designed to safeguard states against unfunded federal mandates and
restore usurped policy-making authority.
The bills, outlined in the legislative council’s August meeting, are
under consideration in state legislative sessions underway in South
Carolina and Indiana. West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Colorado are among
other states expected to pursue their own versions of the proposals
later this year.
The main bill, titled “Reforming How Federal Grants Are Provided to the
State,” calls for state officials to perform a cost-benefit analysis of
federal grant proposals and to obtain the approval of the state’s
governor before an application for a grant is submitted.
A separate bill provides for creating an economic analysis unit in
either a state’s legislature or executive branch to evaluate the impact
of federal grants on state finances.
Indiana state Sen. John Ruckelshaus, a Republican, told The Daily
Signal that he sees an opportunity to restore accountability and
transparency in the grant-making process.
“Anytime you are dealing with the federal government, even where there
are good intentions, there can be a lot of strings and edicts attached
to programs,” Ruckelshaus said. “That’s why we need an exhaustive
analysis up front of each grant proposal. You might fall in love with a
program today that could be tomorrow’s nightmare, because of all the
strings attached.”
Ruckelshaus introduced his version of the proposals for consideration
in Indiana’s legislative session, which ends in April.
“In the last 50 years, there has been a loss of autonomy to the
states,” Erin Tuttle said in an interview with The Daily Signal, adding:
Federal grants have become the preferred tool for the federal
government to regulate the states, with a two-part approach. One is
financial, because it is often politically unpalatable to get rid of a
program once it starts and the states have to step in with their own
funding to cover the costs once a federal grant runs out.
The other part impacts policy because federal agencies sometimes put in
conditions that may not be faithful to what Congress intended, and you
have a situation where the federal agencies are creating laws the
states must follow in exchange for receiving federal funding.
McGroarty and Tuttle crafted the proposals when they were policy
analysts with the American Principles Project Foundation. That
Washington-based nonprofit describes itself as a think tank devoted to
advancing the ideals of the American founding.
Members of the American Legislative Exchange Council adopted the
proposals as model legislation.
“I introduced these bills in South Carolina in order to give the state
some tools to push back against federal intrusion into citizens’ lives
and their control over state government,” South Carolina state Rep.
Alan Clemmons, a Republican who also serves as chairman of ALEC, said
in an email to The Daily Signal, adding:
These commonsense, bite-sized bills will help people realize that it’s
not just the president and Congress who have an obligation to bring
back constitutional order. There are measures we can, and must, fight
for in our statehouses.
For over a hundred years, in every corner of government, we’ve allowed
the erosion of the constitutional structure—the bulwark of our liberty.
Now, we have to fight for the return to constitutional order in the
statehouses, in Congress, and in the courts. Each victory, each fight
will embolden citizens with hope and inspire the next, necessary fight.
One example of eroded constitutional structures is where unelected
administrators at the federal and state level are able to set policies
without the approval of elected officials, Tuttle told The Daily Signal.
“This is why we have the requirement in the bill that says state
governors have to sign off on approving any grants,” she said. “Some of
the grant agreements are hundreds of pages long and are very legal with
lots of jargon, and they go beyond what say a school superintendent,
for example, should be permitted to agree to because they result in
adding more spending programs.”
Unless the states work successfully to wrest control from federal
bureaucrats, a real danger exists that Americans could suffer the same
fate as the citizens of countries that belong to the European Union,
McGroarty said.
“We as citizens, we have lost a tremendous amount of control over
policy development,” McGroarty told The Daily Signal, adding:
It’s the federal administrative state that is setting the narrative on
issue after issue, and until we wake up we are going to continue go
down that road. I would say we are in danger of becoming another
European Union, where policies are driven from the top down with the
government directing citizens, when it should be the other way around.
But McGroarty said he does see hope in the form of the model
legislation.
“These bills provide states with commonsense tools to manage their
regulatory and grants processes,” he said. “They will give legislators
information necessary for sound decision-making and for pushing back
against federal overreach. I hope they will spark a culture that
everyone—citizens and legislators—can and must do their part to restore
true constitutional governance.”
Public perception is that federal grants assist in funding state
programs, Tuttle said, but oftentimes states step in with “matching
funding” to support federal programs.
“There are short-term benefits for politicians who get involved with
federal grants but leave the long-term costs for someone else,” she
said. “It takes someone with backbone to stop this cycle. More often
than not, the grants cost more than what they are worth.”
McGroarty and Tuttle are co-authors of “Deconstructing the
Administrative State” with Jane Robbins, a senior fellow with the
foundation.
Read this and other articles at The Daily Signal
|
|
|
|
