You’ll have to pick up the dead-tree National Review to read Ramesh Ponnuru‘s excellent warning to those who want to see a return to government that relies more on the basic constitutional principle of federalism.
It’s not that Ponnuru disagrees. But he says plans to devolve power and programs to the states won’t do much good as long as states are entirely too dependent on the feds.
Today’s states are clients of the federal government, and therefore not natural allies in the fight to rein in its power. The challenge for conservatives is to change the relationships between and among these governments in order to foster healthier politics at both levels.
Among Ponnuru’s suggestions are an end of federal bailouts for bloated state government budgets (an idea readers of John Hood’s Daily Journal will recall), a cap on state- and local-tax deductions from federal taxable income, and a fix for Medicaid.
