Friday, November 26, 2021

America Needs a Great Decentralization

By Michael Lucci

Friday, November 26, 2021

 

Two weeks ago, President Biden hit a legal wall when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit reaffirmed and extended its stay on his Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) vaccine mandate. The OSHA mandate would require employers to ensure that their employees are either vaccinated or masked and regularly tested for COVID-19. In its decision to stay the mandate, the court cited the likelihood that the mandate exceeds OSHA’s statutory authority and violates the constitutional separation of powers. The court further called the policy as “a one-size-fits-all sledgehammer,” a description that could just as easily apply to Biden’s domestic agenda as a whole.

 

Overarching, centralized control makes for frail and inflexible governance. Whether or not Biden’s vaccine mandate is reversed in the courts, the legal battle over it ought to catalyze a swing in the pendulum of power away from Washington, D.C., and toward state capitols. Fortunately, excessive centralization can be healed through the decentralization that is explicitly encouraged by our federalist constitutional order. Forward-looking congressional policymakers should capture the momentum of decentralization and advance an agenda to devolve powers and responsibilities to the states and the people. And state leaders should do their part by embracing the new opportunities and responsibilities that decentralization offers them.

 

Right now, the federal government isn’t making it easy for states. The past ten months have seen a policy assault on federalism and state authority. The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), signed into law on March 11, undermined fiscal federalism by flooding state and local governments and school districts with previously unimaginable amounts of cash. The law micromanaged how states could spend those and explicitly restricted state tax cuts, a provision that was found to be an unconstitutionally ambiguous “invasion of state sovereignty” by an Alabama district judge on November 15. It further incentivized joblessness by providing bonus unemployment benefits that often matched or exceeded workers’ lost wages, prompting 26 states to opt out of the federal unemployment-insurance program. Medicaid standards were altered and welfare was expanded, further tying states’ hands and undermining labor markets.

 

These failures have consequences. Inflation is soaring while the economic recovery is souring. Supply chains are broken, and labor markets are in a severe shortage, with workers quitting their jobs at record rates. There are currently more unfilled job openings (10.4 million) in the U.S. than there are officially unemployed workers (7.4 million), and job growth has been especially slow in states with excessive economic restrictions. The OSHA vaccine mandate risks another bout of labor-market upheaval, putting millions of jobs in limbo.

 

The stalled portions of Biden’s agenda would similarly target state prerogatives. The For the People Act would eviscerate state control over elections. The Build Back Better plan would double down on ARPA’s mistakes, saddling states with new child-care programs and spending mandates, restoring federal subsidies to high-tax, mismanaged states, and subsidizing expensive sources of energy.

 

Americans rightfully see Washington, D.C., as a source of more problems than solutions. Polls show that they trust the intent and competence of state and local governments far more than the intent and competence of the federal government. It makes sense, then, that state leaders are increasingly pushing back on federal mismanagement. In addition to the aforementioned opt-outs from the federal unemployment-insurance program, dozens of states have sued to strike down the federal “tax mandate,” Texas governor Greg Abbott is working to secure the southern border without Washington’s help, Kansas Governor Laura Kelly is pushing back on the vaccine mandate, and the Florida legislature is considering a bill that would create the state’s own OSHA in order to curtail federal overreach and protect Floridian jobs.

 

Decentralization is critical to restoring trust, competence, and effectiveness in government programs, and to making the nation more flexible and resilient. State leaders should continue to stand up against federal mismanagement, but doing so still constitutes more of a rear-guard action than a proactive strategy for taking back power from the federal government. Moreover, states can’t fix problems if state solutions are prohibited by federal fiat. Thus, what is needed is a federal effort to remove mandates on the states and devolve powers and domestic program authority back to them. Once that happens, Washington, D.C., will be free to focus on its core responsibilities, and states can start proactively creating solutions to America’s biggest policy problems.

No comments: