State responsibilities and irresponsibilities
It’s not exactly that he wants them to be cut - it’s that he believes that it’s the states’ responsibility to be doing many of the things the Federal government is doing.
And it’s not that I don’t want to take out the trash, it’s just that I believe it’s the dog’s job to do many of my chores. If the dog drops the ball on that one, it’s not my fault.
.1 A lot of the things Paul wants to cut won’t be done by the state governments—and Paul knows it. Some of the states don’t have the money (either because they lack economies of scale or because they’re impoverished). Other state’s aren’t able to acquire the money necessary through a (modestly) progressive income tax. None of the states can get a system up and running without a lot of advanced preparation. Finally, in many cases (such as consumer protection), there is likely to be a race to the bottom by states looking to attract national business at the expense of other states.
In cases where the states can actually do something better, there’s no reason not to put a floor thresh hold in place that allows the states to opt out of a federal program where they can demonstrate that they can do it better. Of course, that leads to patchwork regulation that requires anybody engaging in interstate commerce to know fifty different sets of rules—which is why businesses frequently lobby for standardized, federal standards.
Ultimately, we had a choice a while back on whether to do some things at a state level or a federal level. In many cases, we chose to do it at a federal level. Switching it back to a state level is wildly inefficient, requires setting up fifty new bureaucracies, and would lead to a miserably rough transition period for everybody.
Let’s call a spade a spade. The stuff Paul doesn’t want done at a Federal level is stuff the libertarians don’t want the government to do at all. If that’s somebody’s position, fine. Defend it if you can. But don’t pretend that the states rights fairy will magically solve all the problems created by gutting critical federal programs.
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Upon reading the remainder of my post after I dropped this tag, particularly the last paragraph, it occurs to me that my browser doesn’t support the tag. ↩
(Source: fungazi)
