How Biden Can Bypass Republican Government
After the enactment of Joe Biden’s COVID-19 aid and stimulus law — which distributed $ 1.9 trillion to various individuals, businesses and state and local governments — it has not gone unnoticed that some beneficiaries are more grateful than others. In particular, several Republican state leaders opposed Biden’s government and all of its work following the 2020 elections and January 6 uprising in Washington, D.C.
As Ron Brownstein observes, the situation could tempt the Biden administration to bypass the recalcitrant state government and work directly with Democrat-run urban and suburban local governments or at least more agree with the active role the federal government is clearly going to take in the field. economic, social. , and environmental challenges if the new administration has anything to say about it:
Their inner cities and suburbs need direct help from Washington to stabilize their finances after the devastation caused by the pandemic. But once the community regains its balance, they can become important allies for Biden. By working with major metros, the president will align federal policy with strong economic, social, and electoral trends — and empower local officials who are deeply sympathetic to its core goals. If Biden can forge such a partnership, he could spark a new wave of local innovation and cement the Democratic Party’s lead in the fast-growing, diverse and educated metro area that has become the foundation of his electoral coalition.
Metropolitan area governments need as much Washington as Washington needs, as pointed out by Brownstein. And if Biden really tries to forge direct fiscal and programmatic links to cities and counties, he will revive the strategy that Lyndon Johnson implemented most prominently during the Greater Society and War on Poverty initiative, working directly with local governments — and in some cases the case with community organizations he created for that purpose — in lieu of the often reactionary state governors, especially in the white racist South.
Although LBJ was a pioneer in building direct federal-local relationships, the practice reached its peak under his successor, Richard Nixon, who embraced what he called New Federalism to distribute money and power from Washington to state and local governments. At the heart of the Nixon initiative is General Revenue Sharing, which distributes selfless assistance at a very high rate, with about two-thirds going to cities and counties and one-third to states. This period led to the creation of the Community Development Block Grants Program, which is currently the largest existing federal program with a component that funnels dollars directly to local governments.
At the time Ronald Reagan took office, conservative thinking on Federalism was focused on devolving government responsibilities to states, rather than sharing revenues with states and localities. The GRS was frequently the target of Reagan era budget cuts. Even before Reagan took office, Congress eliminated the state’s share of the program; he was finally killed altogether in 1986. Moments later, the vestiges of the era of direct federal-local assistance, the Urban Development Action Grants, gnawed at him.
Perhaps this setback for federal-local relations was not as definitive as it seemed at the time. As Brownstein observes, Biden’s first elected office was on the New Castle County Council in Delaware, and he frequently worked with mayors on the Obama administration’s economic initiatives. More importantly, in key areas such as climate change policy, urban and suburban governments looking to take action to improve energy efficiency and reduce dependence on cars can be the only partners available to their governments. The growing political alignment of cities and their inner suburbs makes regional policy solutions more feasible than ever with help from Washington:
“What I see is a coalition of business, civic and philanthropic leaders across the country committed to a set of national goals through local action,” Liu [Brookings Institution Amy] told me. “I can imagine a circle of CEOs with mayors in different parts of the state committed to pushing those goals in the region, and the federal government being able to easily align their resources to help the territories achieve their goals.”
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If Biden really moved in this direction, it would violate many political traditions and even constitutional arrangements. The state clearly had a central role in the Founding conception of Federalism, and, technically, cities and counties are creatures of the constitution and laws of the state. They also play a large role in a country’s domestic governance where the central government provides few services directly outside of national defense (for example, in the large federal state program Medicaid, where the Supreme Court ruled states cannot be forced to undertake expansion. as referred to in the Affordable Care Act).
But the political logic Brownstein wrote to revive direct federal-local relations is appealing, especially when big states like Florida and Texas are ruled by Republicans who would rather resign than do whatever it takes to help make Biden’s presidency a success. Imitating Biden not only FDR but LBJ is a development that shouldn’t surprise anyone.
