Option Three (Block Grants). State politicians understandably want the maximum amount of freedom possible. They want to control their own destinies, not just carry out political deals made in Washington, and they want to please the coalitions of interests and voters that put them in power in the states. Their preferred policy tool, the block grant (first column, second row in The Big Picture), combines broad (rather than detailed) program requirements and regulations with funding from the federal treasury. Block grants give the states considerable freedom in using the funds in broad policy areas. State officials find support here from conservative politicians at the national level who, despite the electoral advantages to be gained from them, have long balked at the detailed, Washington-centered nature of categorical grants.Congress has generally resisted the block grant approach for both policy and political reasons. In policy terms, many members of Congress fear that the states will pursue their own agendas instead of what Congress intends. One member characterized the idea of putting federal money into block grants as “pouring money down a rat hole”23 because it is impossible to control how the states deal with particular problems under block grants. Congress also has political objections to block grants. When federal funds are not attached to specific programs, members of Congress can no longer take credit for the programs. From their standpoint, it does not make political sense to take the heat for taxing people’s income, only to return those funds to the states as block grants, leaving governors and mayors to get the credit for how the money is spent. In addition, interest groups contribute millions of dollars to congressional campaigns when members of Congress have control over program specifics. If Congress allows the states to assume that control, interest groups have less incentive to make congressional campaign contributions. As a result, the tendency in Congress has been to place more conditions on block grants with each annual appropriation.24 Categorical grants remain the predominant form of federal aid, amounting to about 80 percent of all aid to state and local governments.
Option Four (Unfunded Mandates). The politics of federalism yields one more strategy. When the federal government issues an unfunded mandate, it imposes specific policy requirements on the states but does not provide a way to pay for those activities. Rather, Congress forces states to comply by either threatening criminal or civil penalties or promising to cut off other, often unrelated, federal funds if the states do not follow its directions.Unfunded mandates are more attractive to members of Congress in periods of ballooning national deficits, when the national government has no money to spend.25 In large part due to complaints from the states, Congress passed the Unfunded Mandate Act of 1995, which promised to reimburse the states for expensive unfunded mandates or to pass a separate law acknowledging the cost of an unfunded mandate. This act has limited congressional efforts to pass “good laws” that cost the U.S. Treasury nothing. However, because Congress can define what the states see as an unfunded mandate in several different ways—classifying a directive as a simple “clarification of legislative intent,” for example—Congress has continued to push some policy costs onto the states.26 Fears of large unfunded mandates played a role in the debates leading up to health care reform. In 2008 a version of the reform that expanded Medicaid for low-income people prompted instant criticism from governors because significant portions of Medicaid (varying from about 25 to 50 percent) are paid for from the state treasuries.27 Congress later backed down and provided assistance to the states to fund the new policy, but that did not stop the states from challenging the act in court.
categorical grant federal funds provided for a specific purpose and restricted by detailed instructions, regulations, and compliance standards
block grants federal funds provided for a broad purpose and unrestricted by detailed requirements and regulations
unfunded mandate a federal order mandating that states operate and pay for a program created at the national level
The current status of federalism is a contradictory mix of narratives about returning power to the states and new national initiatives (and program requirements) in the areas of health, education, and the environment (see Don’t Be Fooled by . . . Political Rhetoric). Although many actors in the states and even the national government say they want the states to have more power, or simply that they want all levels of government to do less, the imperatives of effective policy solutions and congressional and presidential electoral calculations combine to create strong pressures for national solutions to our complex problems.
A 1949 Herblock Cartoon, © The Herb Block Foundation
Advocates for the national government and supporters of the states are engaged in a constant struggle for power, as they have been since the days of the Articles of Confederation. The power of the federal government is enhanced through the mechanisms of cooperative federalism, which gives the federal government an increasing role in domestic policy. As the federal government has used the restrictive rules of categorical grants and the economic threats that provide the muscle of unfunded mandates, critics have claimed that cooperative federalism has been transformed into “coercive federalism,” in which the states are pressured to adopt national solutions to their local problems with minimal state input.
It is worth remembering, however, that members of Congress who pass the laws are elected in the states and have their primary loyalties to their local constituencies, not to any national audience. Their states have traditionally been only too happy to accept federal funds to meet the needs of their residents (and voters) for everything from education to highways to welfare and health care for the poor. However, they also chafe under the rules and regulations that typically come with federal dollars. Especially since 2009, the powerful antigovernment rhetoric emerging from the Republican Party and its Tea Party wing strongly opposes the growth of the federal government. All of this opposition can override even the electoral incentives that members of Congress have for supporting policies that bring federal money to their states. For example, roughly one-third of the states have still not accepted federal funds to expand Medicaid to provide health care coverage to low-income citizens under the Affordable Care Act.
This tension is currently playing out in the aftermath of the slower growth that followed the country’s longest and worst economic recession since the Great Depression. The states were particularly hard hit as revenues from sales, income, and property taxes dropped dramatically. Federal stimulus funds helped the states deal with about 40 percent of their budget shortfalls, but many conservative governors and legislatures rejected the funds, seeing them as encroachments by a power-hungry federal government rather than as necessary short-term help in hard times.28 In any case, those funds began drying up in 2010, leaving the states with continuing insufficient funds and forcing them to lay off workers to make up the difference.29 The recovery of the states continued to lag behind that of the general economy, with the result that many citizens still faced substantially decreased services from the states in the areas of education, health, and public security.30
THE BIG PICTURE: How the National Government Influences the States