VOTE BETTER

Getting the Blues (PETER SCHRAG, August 4, 2003, The Nation)

Bush-era unfunded mandates and impositions, like expenses for homeland security, however, have been particularly hard on the so-called blue states. In part that's because they tend to be the states with the poorer people, the larger welfare and Medicaid loads, and, not coincidentally, the tougher environmental regulations, none of them beloved by this Administration.

But of course these are also the states that voted for Gore and thus, with the exception of the states that may be in play in 2004, find no
particular hospitality in the Bush Administration. According to Representative Bob Matsui, a Democrat, and others in the California delegation, even staunch California Republicans, like Representative David Dreier, head of California's GOP caucus, have a hard time getting access to the White House. "Dreier's staff," said a staff member for another Californian, "feel like stepchildren. The White House pays attention to swing states like Pennsylvania and Illinois, but California"--where Bush was trounced in 2000 and where Gray Davis won re-election as governor in 2002 despite a major White House effort to beat him--"has been humiliating for Rove. He ended with egg on his face.... They're not going to do a damn thing for us." [...]

Through the past two and a half years, the Administration, often flying the flag of the terrorism war, has altered federal policy in ways that couldn't have been imagined before the 2000 election--in its radical aggrandizement of the power to investigate, wiretap and detain suspects; in the concomitant rollback of civil liberties; in its tolerance for polluters and offshore tax dodges; in its multitrillion-dollar tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans; in its rollback of countless social programs.

But the attempt, often successful, to extend those efforts into the states, to use local cops to search out undocumented immigrants for detention, to go after liberal state laws--auto emission controls, medical marijuana, doctor-assisted suicide, welfare and childcare--is unprecedented. Without fanfare or discussion, the Administration appears to be putting the screws to liberal state programs with the same determination it is applying to things like tax cuts (which, of course, are the key to all other domestic policy).

Consistent with that effort, in March the White House decided no longer to publish a key document called Budget Information for States, which reported annually how much states receive under each federal program, and thus made it easy for local officials and advocacy groups to keep track of how their programs were treated. Eliminating the book, said a spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, will eliminate the cost of the paper and production of the volume. How frugal. Who would have thought that it would be a Republican--and an ex-governor to boot--who'd bring federalism to its knees?

At the point where the Left is demanding states rights, we're making real progress. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 1, 2003 9:31 AM