The mainstream media has tried to turn the Trump Administration’s focus on federal grants into just another squabble between the two political tribes. It’s actually part of a much more fundamental dispute over whether Americans should adhere to the Tenth Amendment.
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people,” states that part of the Bill of Rights.
As Madison wrote in Federalist 45, those powers delegated to the federal government are supposed to be “few and far between,” those remaining with the states “numerous and indefinite.”
It has been a long, long time since anyone in Washington took that seriously.
The Badger Institute wrote a whole book, Grant$tanding, about how federal grants rob the states of local control, impose counterproductive mandates, undermine federalism, waste money and fall into a never-never land where almost no one in either Washington or Madison feels accountable or, until now, seemed to much care.
Most of the media attention has been on President Trump’s use of a flurry of executive actions to target DEI mandates, so-called environmental justice programs and equity-related grants. An Office of Management and Budget memo that paused a wide array of spending and that was rescinded caused widespread confusion or consternation. But the truth is there are lots of areas deserving of scrutiny. Our book focused on what are known as grants-in-aid — money that flows from federal coffers to state and local governments.
More specifically, beginning in 2021, before COVID subsided, the Badger Institute began asking local, county and state governments to identify and explain their spending of billions of dollars in CARES Act and ARPA, two of the biggest federal grant programs in American history.
We found, time and time again, governments unwilling or unable to explain the how or the why. Maybe more disconcerting, some of the state’s key elected officials were also in the dark because in Wisconsin, the governor has unilateral control of how major federal grants are dispersed.
Voters last summer had the chance to change that and give the Legislature some say in how those federal grants would be spent but — after an all-out Democrat-led effort to preserve the status quo — voted down a proposed constitutional amendment that would have helped.
So, it was no surprise to us who lost their marbles when it appeared the federal funding fire hose might be turned off for a while. Within hours, federal Judge Loren AliKhan in the District of Columbia issued an injunction, temporarily halting the Trump Administration’s temporary halting. She scheduled a hearing on Monday to revisit the case.
AliKhan based her ruling on a lawsuit brought by 22 states and the District of Columbia asking for a temporary restraining order against Trump. Not coincidentally, all but one of the states with a Democratic governor, including Tony Evers, signed on.
Although the White House said Social Security, Medicare, food stamps and other individual welfare programs were not part of the review, there was plenty of panic to go around. Of particular concern on the left was any possible impact on Medicaid. As we have reported for years, if ever a federal or state program needed review and reform, it’s Medicaid.
According to the national Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which publishes an annual report, the annual amount of improper or illegal payments made by Medicaid over the past decade has fluctuated between $50 billion and $100 billion.
Medicaid now represents 30% of all state spending in Wisconsin. Just try finding out how much of that is wasted, lost or stolen. Last June we reported that despite what the federal government called a national “unwinding” of the Medicaid rolls, there were more than 163,000 people more on the rolls than before COVID, at a taxpayer cost of more than $50 million a year.
Lost in all this is the fact that states should take much more responsibility for Medicaid decisions and spending — and innumerable other things that were never meant to be the province of the federal government: everything from school vans to bike paths to streetcars.
As Madison wrote in Federalist 45, the powers reserved to the states should “extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State.”
Government, the Founding Fathers knew, is more responsive, accountable and efficient when it is closer to the people.
There was a lot of confusion this week about which specific programs and grants might be on the cutting block of the Trump Administration and where the lines will be drawn.
One easy way to decide: read the Tenth Amendment.
Mark Lisheron is the Managing Editor of the Badger Institute, Mike Nichols its President.
Any use or reproduction of Badger Institute articles or photographs requires prior written permission. To request permission to post articles on a website or print copies for distribution, contact Badger Institute President Mike Nichols at mike@badgerinstitute.org or 262-389-8239.
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