Federalism
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The reciprocal relationship between social welfare policy and the political economy of states has never been so apparent as this election season of 1994. In a virtual "sea change" of Republican Party victories, political strategists from both sides of the aisle have come to realize that they must confront a very distinct evolution of the electorate's social ideology. A key element of that change is the "new federalism" endorsed by the conservative-leaning electorate. "Federalism" is the new term for what was previously labelled "states' rights." Previously labelled - and libelled. States' rights were what the Confederacy stood for when it seceded from the Union prior to the Civil War. States' rights were what Southern governors George Wallace and Lester Maddox invoked as their justification for resisting federal civil rights legislation enacted in the 1960s. States' rights is that grey area in the U.S. Constitution where Messrs. Hamilton and Madison, after granting the lion's share of governing power to the federal government, threw a bone of compromise to the individual states by deliberating keeping certain areas of future development undefined.Although states rights, or federalism, was overwhelmed by Northern victory in the Civil War, it was not obliterated. The Reconstruction legislation of the Radical Republicans was punitive to the South, but not to the cause of states' rights per se. The Republican governors and state legislatures that had swept into power o
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vernment was also footing the majority of the bill, federalists were not in a position to complain very loudly. Civil rights concern was almost totally given over to Washington's control. Health care, at least for the elderly in the Medicare program, was also deigned a federal matter.
Attitudes began to change in the early 1970s, when the great economic boom of the post-World War II era began to slide into a Vietnam war-inspired economic slowdown. Republican Richard Nixon was president by then, and he proposed a novel resolution to the conundrum of a conservatively-oriented Executive Branch: "revenue-sharing." Under the provisions of revenue-sharing, as passed by an agreeable Congress in 1972, the federal government pulled back from the responsibility (and political tightrope) of designating certain budget allocations in the social welfare arena of public policy. Instead, it was legislated, chunks of funding would be delivered to the individual states, to be allocated as each state deemed necessary within a federally-mandated sphere of social welfare responsibilities. Richard Nixon was forced out of office by the time the actual plan was implemented, but his Republican successor, former Vice President Gerald Ford (1974-76)
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Approximate Word count = 2717
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)
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