Reforming Federalism

Christopher T. Barner

1. Scene setting: The Problem

We find ourselves today, as Americans, in a position where the federal government has become
so large that it is by far the largest factor in the life of our nation.
In terms of size alone, the government is a massive organization. It employs at least 2.8 million
civilian workers – a total of 0.8% of all Americans of any age. These workers make up 1.8% of all
employed persons in the country. The average federal worker now makes over $78,000 per year plus
benefits.
In terms of spending as well the government is second to none. It spent $6.3 trillion in 2022 and
took in $4.9 trillion, leaving it with a deficit of $1.4 trillion – meaning that it racked up $8,800 in debt for
every single employed person in the nation in a single year. The current total national debt is over $31
trillion, or nearly $200,000 in debt for every employed person in the country. For comparison, the 2021
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the United States – the total value of all of the goods and services
produced in the nation in that year – was $23 trillion.
The employment and financial figures are sobering, but at least they’re easy to measure. Harder
to measure is the social impact of the government. The top leadership of the federal government (and
approximately 15% of all federal employees) work in the Washington, D.C. area. Americans have real
concerns that when people move to Washington, they join an insular group that is dramatically out of
touch with the rest of the country. The federal government has so much power centralized into its
hands that it guides much of the thinking of the country. For proof, one only needs to see how much of
the news on any given day is focused on the government and its actions.
Even more concerning are the growing indications that the government is trying to do too much,
and not doing much of it very well. A central group of people making all of the decisions with little or no
input from those outside of their bubble is not a recipe for successful policy. As we saw dramatically
illustrated by COVID-19, the government’s response to a challenge is flawed to say the least. Despite a
program of planning in advance for a serious epidemic or pandemic, the government agencies
responsible for responding to these events underreacted to the initial appearance of the disease, and
then overreacted. The FDA originally prevented researchers from creating tests for COVID-19. The CDC
then created and released its own test, which didn’t work – possibly due to such poor laboratory
procedures that an official in the FDA told them that if they had been a commercial business, the FDA
would have been required to shut them down. The national basis of the decisions made by the
bureaucracy also prevented state and local governments from adopting policies better suited to their
particular situations.
Such problems may not be surprising in an emergency situation, but the frequency with which
they appear in all parts of the government tell us that this is not a one-off issue. The federal government
as it exists right now is poorly organized, poorly run, and does not provide good solutions for the
problems facing Americans.
There are many reasons for these failures. One of the problems is the structure of the federal
bureaucracy itself. There are rarely penalties for failure within the bureaucracy. Employment rules make
it difficult to get rid of people who don’t do their jobs. Even with political pressure, it is hard to hold
those at the upper levels of the bureaucracy accountable – as was recently illustrated when the U.S.
Customs and Border Protection Commissioner was accused of skipping meetings, sleeping in meetings,
and being unprofessional. It took nearly a month for him to finally be given the option of resigning or
being fired.
Besides the problems within the bureaucracy, there are also failures in the mechanisms meant
to oversee the bureaucracy. Unelected bureaucrats are allowed to make decisions essentially
unsupervised by the legislature. It is only when someone complains that problems are likely to draw the
attention of legislators – and in many cases, those who are being affected by problems or wrongdoing
are outside of the bureaucracy and are unaware of what exactly is going on inside of it.
The bureaucracy is affected as well by the political system. There is often a great deal of chaos
that occurs when a new party is elected and changes the political leadership of the various departments
and agencies. New policies, new priorities, and new rules – all are created or changed overnight. The
increasing political polarization in the country has made all of this worse. Now both sides rush to use the
power of the bureaucracy while they have it, undoing the changes of their predecessors while making
changes that will be themselves undone by the next person to hold office.
With gridlock in the narrowly divided legislature, presidents have turned to executive orders to
take the place of legislation. The great power that the bureaucracy has makes it very tempting for a
president to attempt to use that power while bypassing Congress. Increasingly, the executive orders are
claiming powers for the bureaucracy that Congress never granted it. With each move in this direction,
the government becomes more powerful, and less controlled by the people’s representatives. In the
worst cases parts of the bureaucracy become nakedly partisan, using their power to further the ends of
political parties rather than working for the good of the people as a whole.
In the end, we find ourselves in a situation where the federal government tries to do it all, and
does it all poorly.
2. Historical Summary: How We Got Here
The original federal bureaucracy was quite a lot smaller than today, even in proportion to the
smaller population at the time. Figures for the early bureaucracy are scarce, but there were nearly 4,000
federal employees by 1802; a figure which climbed to over 10,000 by 1826. By the outbreak of the Civil
War in 1861, the federal government employed over 35,000 people (of whom about 30,000 worked for
the postal service). The needs of the government in fighting this war would see non-postal federal
employment expand to over 15,000 people by the war’s end.
The original method of choosing federal employees was also different than the method used
today. The patronage system allowed the President to appoint even low-level government employees.
This was also sometimes known as the “spoils system”, from the phrase “to the victor go the spoils.”
With a change of administration, thousands of jobs would become available to be handed out to
supporters of the newly-elected President. Not all of these appointees were well qualified. As the
government became larger, the appointment process became more and more time-consuming for the
President, and less effective as the appointments went more to the politically useful than to those suited
to the jobs.
The spoils system would come to an end in 1883 with the passage of the Pendleton Civil Service
Reform Act. President Garfield had been assassinated by a mentally ill office seeker in 1881, and the Act
was intended to reform the system and award jobs based on merit rather than political connections.
Higher-level federal employees were still appointed by the President, but much of the workforce would
now be regular employees not subject to political appointment or removal.
The progressive movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century sought to expand
government to address the changes that were occurring due to the rapid industrialization occurring at
that time. This was not purely an American phenomenon – industrializing countries throughout the
world were attempting to centralize and expand their governments. New federal agencies were created
to regulate in areas that had previously been left to the states or entirely unregulated. The Sixteenth
Amendment to the Constitution permitted a federal income tax, and the Seventeenth took the power of
selection of United States senators from the states and provided for their selection by popular election.
With the entry of America into the First World War, government power skyrocketed. Before the
war, the government employed just over 400,000 people (including postal workers). The measures
taken by the government during the war included not only the draft and a massive expansion of the
military, but also nationalized transportation and communication networks and put pressures on
workers, employers, industry, and commerce to bring them under more direct government supervision.
Rationing and censorship were instituted, and the Espionage and Sedition Acts limited free speech.
Some (but not all) of these changes were reversed once the war came to an end. Government in the
1920s returned to the same size as before the war, albeit with a few new powers.
The 1920s saw the federal government stay fairly constant in size. With the stock market crash
of 1929 and the slide into the Great Depression, however, President Hoover increased federal
expenditures immensely in an effort to improve the economy. The implementation of the New Deal on
the inauguration of President Roosevelt in 1933 further boosted the size of the government. Many new
government bureaus were created, and the federal government’s role in daily life increased. By the end
of the 1930s, there were nearly a million federal workers.
The Second World War vastly increased federal employment just as the First World War had.
Federal civilian employment during the war topped out at over three million workers. Many of the same
powers were given to the government during this war as in the previous one; and like the previous one,
many (though again, not all) of these powers were surrendered at the end of the war. The federal
workforce shrunk somewhat to around two million employees. The tensions of the Cold War caused the
drop after the Second World War to be substantially smaller than after the First, and (after another
temporary expansion during the Korean War) the government stabilized during the 1950s and early
1960s at somewhat below 2.5 million employees.
The mid-1960s saw the creation of President Johnson’s Great Society program. This was a large
expansion of social services including spending on healthcare, education, and declaring a “War on
Poverty.” By the late 1960s, federal employment was averaging about 2.8 million workers, and has
stayed mostly constant since (as has poverty). The reorganization of security agencies after the
September 11th attacks and the additional social programs under President Obama made minor changes
in the number of federal employees, but the size of the government has stayed relatively stable for the
past fifty years.
We have seen through the years a significant expansion of not only government size, but of
governmental power. Many of the jobs done by the federal government today are ones that it was
originally never designed to do. The fact that it is able to function at all is nearly miraculous. However, as
with any machinery that is expanded and pushed beyond its limits, there is a real risk of a catastrophic
failure. The current hyper-partisan political environment in the country is putting further strain on the
machine. As both sides pull and push whatever levers of power they can find, there is a real danger that
the system may break down entirely.
3. The Seventeenth Amendment – A Failed Reform
A closer look at one of the major changes to the Constitutional system that has occurred over
the course of our national history may be helpful in illustrating the functioning of the federal
government, and the way that an incautious attempt at reform can destabilize a balanced system.
When the Constitutional Convention was determining how the legislative branch would be
structured, there were considerable tensions between the large and the small states. The large states
wanted a system in which representation would be based on population, and the smaller states wanted
a system where each state had equal representation. The smaller states argued that having
representation by population would give disproportionate power to the larger states, while the larger
states maintained that equal representation to all states would disadvantage the larger number of
people who were their citizens.
With the convention stalled over this issue, the delegates arrived at a compromise: the House of
Representatives would have each state’s number of members appointed by population, while the
Senate would allow each state only two senators.
This system was designed so that the House would be the voice of the people. Being directly
elected would allow them to convey the people’s voices to the federal government, and the frequent
election (every two years) would mean that as the situation of the nation changed, the voters could
quickly bring attention to the issues that mattered to them. The Senate, on the other hand, was to be of
two members selected by the state legislatures. These were supposed to be experienced statesmen
capable of calm and careful deliberation, and expected to represent the interests of their state. While
their primary duty was to the state, they were appointed by the legislature which was in turn elected by
the people of their state. Their position was thus indirectly granted by the voters. This insulation of the
senators from direct public opinion allowed them to deliberate the issues more independently than the
members of the House. The six-year term of a senator allowed them to gain more experience than a
member of the House would have, and let them serve as a stabilizing force within the government.
The division of the legislature into two bodies – bicameralism – gave both bodies a say in any
laws to be passed, as both had to vote in favor of the same bill. The House could quickly represent the
interests of the people and push for needed changes, while the Senate would represent the interests of
the states and act as a brake against poorly-planned popular actions. The House was required to
originate any bill involving taxation, allowing the people to have a say in how their money was spent.
The Senate was given the authority to approve treaties as well as confirming the President’s
appointments for government offices – tasks considered by the founders to require more experience
and thoughtful consideration, as well as being of potentially greater interest to the states and needing
their approval.
This system functioned for over a century before calls for reform led to the Seventeenth
Amendment. The complaints about the selection of senators mostly centered around accusations of
corruption in the state legislatures (although in that time there were only ten cases of contested
appointments), as well as the difficulty that the state legislatures sometimes had in choosing the
senators. In some cases, deadlocks within the legislatures meant that no senator was selected to fill
vacancies – occasionally for years.
In the rush of the Progressive Era with its focus on centralization and government expansion,
the solution chosen was to allow for direct election of the members of the Senate by the population of
each state. When the Seventeenth Amendment was introduced in 1912, public support for it was high,
and it became part of the Constitution in 1913. It seemed like a minor change at the time, but the effects
that it would have on the balance of political power in the federal government would be significant.
With this change, the states no longer had representation in the federal government. This
meant that, increasingly, decisions were made without their input. The inevitable tendency of political
power is to centralize and consolidate, and this happened with the federal government. The movements
through the twentieth century toward expanding the federal government went unchecked by the states,
and we have now arrived at a point where the states have been greatly overshadowed. With the federal
government taking the lead and increasingly making laws in areas originally in control of the states, local
and state issues are frequently ignored. States have no direct political power at the federal level to have
their needs addressed.
The federal government has also expanded its taxation, meaning that in order to raise revenue
states need to add onto citizens’ (already high) federal tax burdens. With the size and attention that the
federal government receives in culture, it can be hard for states to explain that the things that the state
pays for are often of considerably more local importance than federal spending. The federal government
also takes advantage of this by providing federal tax monies to the states – with the condition that the
states have to follow the rules the national government sets. This led to actions like the federal
government requiring states to change the drinking age to 21 in 1984, or they would not receive federal
highway funds. Highway funds had already been used as leverage a decade earlier when Congress under
President Nixon set the national speed limit to 55 miles per hour – a law reversed in 1995 when states
were permitted to set their own maximum speed limits again.
There have been cultural changes surrounding the direct election of senators as well. Since
Senate seats put the senators in a relatively select group with lots of national attention, the Senate has
frequently been seen by ambitious politicians as a jumping-off point for a national career – particularly
the Presidency. Seventeen presidents had previously served as a senator, and many more senators and
former senators have run for the office. Now that Senate seats are filled by direct election, tremendous
amounts of money are spent on campaigns to give politicians these advantages – the most hotly
contested Senate campaigns now regularly see spending by candidates and outside groups of over a
quarter of a billion dollars each.
In order to please their voters, senators have to avoid making unpopular decisions – particularly
when reelection campaigns are approaching. Instead of serving as the more mature deliberative body
willing to represent the interests of their states to the federal government and acting as a brake on the
sudden swings of public opinion, they find themselves in the same position as members of the House of
Representatives. If anything, the pressure on them from voters to do whatever is currently popular is
even greater, as they are frequently more concerned about their reputation with an eye to future
political advancement. The expansion of the federal deficit and national debt are proof that neither of
the branches of the legislature are willing to make difficult decisions for the good of the nation, if it
comes at the expense of their own political careers.
Instead of a counterbalance to the House and representation of their states, we now have the
Senate as we see it today.
4. Federal Bloat and Decrease of Local Control
Simply looking at a list of federal agencies provides an eye-opening glimpse into the size of the
federal government, as well as the scope of the areas that it is involved in. The Federal Register
currently lists a total of 434 government agencies, though some seem to no longer be active. Some of
these are agencies that have a long history as part of the federal government, but many of them were
created relatively recently as the government expanded. Article One of the Constitution, which creates
the legislative branch, lists the specific powers granted to Congress. Comparing this list with the list of
government agencies, one is struck by how little justification there is in the Constitution for many of the
agencies involved.
The justification for some of these agencies is the Interstate Commerce Clause, which gives
Congress the authority to regulate commerce between the states – preventing states from restricting
trade within the country as a whole. Other agencies are based on the authority of Congress to make
laws providing for the “general Welfare” of the nation. Congress has expanded their interpretation of
these clauses over time to justify greater power for themselves and the federal government.
However, the necessity of federal intervention in these areas is challenged by the fact that the
states maintain their own agencies, largely duplicating the efforts of the federal agencies. There can be
conflict because of these differing sets of rules – often the only way that a state can override the federal
government in the direction of less regulation on these matters is by arguing that a particular good is
sold only within its state of origin, making it ineligible for regulation under the Commerce Clause. By
nationalizing regulations in many areas, the federal government frequently prevents states from making
laws more closely tailored to their needs. In many cases the state regulations can be more restrictive
than those at the federal level, but not less. Even in that case, challenges will sometimes still override
such rules, making it more difficult for states to determine what types of regulations they are able to
make for themselves.
With the tremendous expansion of the federal government, it has become harder and harder
for Congress to oversee the various agencies. The number of government agencies in the Federal
Register is almost exactly equal to the number of members in the House of Representatives, and greatly
exceeds the number of senators. In fact, if you divide the more than 2.8 million federal workers by the
535 combined members of the legislature, you will find that each Representative and Senator would be
responsible for overseeing the actions of over 5,000 federal civilian employees. It’s simply not feasible
for Congress to oversee all of this activity.
The solution used to get around this is the use of administrative law. Congress essentially
deputizes agencies in the executive branch to make rules in its place – Congress gives the agency a task,
and the agency determines how to go about completing it. These rules created by the agency then act as
laws. There are laws put in place by Congress such as the Administrative Procedure Act that require
notice and consultation with the public about proposed rules, but the sheer scale of government
rulemaking means that few in the public are aware of these notices and able to provide feedback to the
agency on any given rule.
The scale of this rulemaking is breathtaking – particularly when keeping in mind that all of these
rules carry the force of law. The Trump administration made the fewest final rules of any administration
in recent history, with only about 3,000 new rules each year – amounting to about 20,000 pages, all with
the force of law. The Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles rule amounted to 1,105 pages by
itself. There is no way today for one person to know all of the laws and rules in effect at a given time –
much less understand how they function in the real world and how they interact with one another.
 When unelected bureaucrats are making laws, particularly when there is so little oversight from
Congress, there is a real danger to the nation. Only one group is assigned by the Constitution to make
law and oversee its implementation, and that is Congress. Having laws made by hundreds of unelected
bureaucrats with little or no coordination between them is a recipe for a mess. Having laws made by
bureaucrats who are ultimately not responsible to the voters in the same way as members of Congress
is a recipe for a disaster. Bureaucrats sitting in an office in Washington are tremendously disconnected
from the realities on the ground in the states. The greater the distance – physically, socially, and
mentally – between the regulators and those regulated, the worse the system will run.
Having the members of Congress making laws allows their constituents not only greater say in
what the laws are, but allows for more coordination between the laws operating in different
government agencies. If the laws don’t work, the voters have a very direct way to make their voices
heard. To the extent that semi-autonomous bureaucrats must exist, they need to be carefully supervised
by the legislature. This may work to some degree in state governments, but the sheer scale of the
federal government as it currently exists makes this close supervision impossible at the federal level.
Greater democratic control of the bureaucracy will lead to better results. When a voter can talk
directly to (and vote for or against) the representatives actually making the laws that they must follow,
there is much more confidence in the system and greater willingness to follow laws. In order to achieve
this, however, our elected representatives need to be more engaged in the making of the law – and the
government has to be of such a size that they can actually do so. As the federal government is currently
constituted, the people’s say in the tens of thousands of pages of laws that they must follow is minimal.
5. The Nature of Bureaucracy
It is obvious to everyone that some sort of bureaucracy is needed to implement law.
Bureaucracies, though, have certain inherent limitations and tendencies that must be accounted for
when structuring the system that they are a part of. Even in a world where the bureaucrats were
perfect, some of the same limitations would still exist. In the real world where bureaucrats are flawed
humans like the rest of us, there should be even more awareness of problems with bureaucratic systems
– and efforts must be made to minimize these problems and reduce the likelihood of maladministration.
Sociologist Max Weber studied bureaucracy, and described the ideal as an impersonal system
where labor is divided into specialties for maximum efficiency, an official hierarchy exists for authority,
and all actions are based on a thorough set of rules and regulations. Taking this system and placing it in
the real world – even with perfectly moral bureaucrats in charge of it – the possible points of failure are
legion. The rule-based nature of the system (particularly paired with the legal authority that a
government bureaucracy carries) means that there is little flexibility for responding to changes. Any
situation that arises which does not fit neatly into the rules as they currently exist will stall the system.
The impersonal nature of the organization can make it harder for people dealing with situations that
don’t fit within the established rules. This leads to hostility from the public. Allowing the bureaucracy to
change its own rules may be seen as a solution to this. However, changing these rules takes considerable
time, and as we have seen, the public has little political control over these rules.
In the real world with its flawed people, the number of possible failings of bureaucracy are even
greater. Considerable criticism has been made in recent years of federal bureaucrats (particularly those
at high levels) moving into and out of the industries they regulate. This happens particularly when
political appointees from one administration lose their jobs when a new administration takes office.
Having significant experience in the industry being regulated is a good qualification for a political
position regulating that industry, but those in such positions find themselves regulating their former or
future employers. This provides considerable motivation to cut deals and make rules advantageous to
those companies who could benefit these workers in the future.
The cozy relationship between interest groups, Congress, and the bureaucracy is sometimes
described as the “iron triangle.” Industries and businesses work closely with the federal bureaucracy
that regulates them – many large companies even welcome strict regulations when they have the
financial resources to comply with them and their competitors do not. For example, Facebook founder
Mark Zuckerberg said in 2020 that he wanted more regulation from governments on ‘harmful’ speech
online. Facebook is a large enough company to afford the personnel needed to comply with such new
laws. Its competitors, unable to come up with the resources to comply with them, might well fail under
the strain and leave Facebook unchallenged in its industry.
Personnel difficulties are also a challenge for the federal bureaucracy. As difficult as removing
political appointees has proven – the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner who was able
to hold onto his job for a month despite allegations of egregious misbehavior has already been
mentioned – getting rid of lower-level bureaucrats can be even more difficult and time-consuming. As
long as there are no illegal actions committed by bad federal employees, it might take months or years
of effort on the part of their supervisors to get rid of them. The inefficiency and bloated costs caused by
this are notorious – virtually all government employees have personal stories of waste, fraud, and abuse
that they have seen during their careers. Investigation of members of the bureaucracy by other
members of the same agency catches some of these, but by no means all.
 In fact, the nature of a bureaucracy is for it to develop as its own political interest. Publicly
exposing massive problems within an agency may be viewed as something to be avoided – making the
agency look bad and potentially bringing down scrutiny from Congress. The tendency of a bureaucracy
to become self-defending was expressed by political scientist and writer Jerry Pournelle in his “Iron Law
of Bureaucracy:” “In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always
get in control and those dedicated to the goals that the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less
and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.” The bureaucracy, when unsupervised, tends
to become a rule unto itself.
Another concept related to this is the centralization of power expressed in the “Iron Law of
Oligarchy” of sociologist Robert Michels. This states that any complex organization, no matter how
democratic, will eventually develop into an oligarchy – a system ruled by a small number of people who
have gathered power to themselves. This concept can be applied to any group – the interests of political
and economic elites in the country are a fine example – but for our purposes we will focus on agencies
in the federal bureaucracy. This undemocratic tendency toward personal power for the few at the top is
often related to those who Pournelle saw as putting the interests of the bureaucracy itself over those of
the people it is supposed to serve. Those who have power want to gather more power, and pursue their
own interests with it.
To avoid this kind of runaway political system, it is vitally important that agencies be overseen
by those with the ability to stop unnecessary centralization of power, and to force the energies of the
agency into doing the tasks assigned to it. Congress has this authority, but with the size and complexity
of the federal bureaucracy, the oversight needed is difficult if not impossible. The Congress has not even
managed to pass a budget on time in many recent years, instead passing ‘continuing resolutions’ to keep
the government running until they can finish their work.
The bureaucracy also has political pull with Congress. The federal government has become so
large that federal workers make up a considerable constituency, particularly in the area around
Washington. Industries and interests lobby and donate campaign funds in order to have political pull
with members of Congress, and they often find it advantageous to have the bureaucracy on their side.
The three parties in the iron triangle often all have an interest in the expansion of the bureaucracy. This
results over time in budgetary bloat – once a department expands, it is almost impossible politically to
shrink it again. The ratchet only turns one way.
A study by Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page in 2014 looked at the ability of different groups
within American society to get their way politically. According to their analysis, the “economic elite” and
organized political groups representing business interests had significant abilities to have their policy
preferences implemented – while the average voter and popularly-based interest groups had little to no
abilities to do the same. Their study indicated that the wealthy and the business interests wield an
alarming amount of power to shape government in this country. The Iron Law of Oligarchy seems to
have been clearly established in this case.
But these interests are not always economic. Partisans of various ideas and beliefs all attempt to
gain favor with Congress and the bureaucracy in attempts to get their policies implemented. Ideally, the
bureaucracy would be uninvolved in purely policy issues. The importance of administrative law and the
rulemaking abilities of the agencies themselves, however, mean that there is considerable interaction
between these interest groups and the bureaucracy. Interest groups are often the only ones able to
follow the actions of the bureaucracy closely enough to be aware of proposed rules, and can flood
agencies with feedback favorable to their own side. Even more concerning, partisans of particular ideas
or of political parties may take power within an agency, and use that agency for their own ends. The
actions of the FBI regarding the 2016 election and the revelations that came about as a result of the
investigation of it show just this type of political capture of the institution.
We find ourselves in a position where Congress is in charge of a bureaucracy that is too large for
it to oversee, as part of a new system of machine politics. Interest groups, the bureaucracy, and
Congress thrive in a symbiotic system of money and political power. The sheer size of the federal
government means that the actions of members of Congress are largely opaque to the voters, who must
rely on interest groups – of which the mass-media is one – to tell them if their elected representative
should be reelected or not. Our representatives just keep turning the ratchet – spending more and more
money that they don’t have in order to avoid angering either the voters who rely on money or programs
by the government, or the interest groups that fund their campaigns.
In the end, however, will be a reckoning. The tremendous amounts of regulation, the exorbitant
federal spending, the debt – at some point the system will fail, and the suffering of society then will
vastly overshadow the more minor corrective pains we can take now to avoid such a fate.
6. What is to be done?
What our nation faces at the moment is no simple problem, and thus we should not look for a
simple solution – as H. L. Mencken wrote, “there is always a well-known solution to every human
problem – neat, plausible, and wrong.” It is up to us to work out our own salvation, and this will take
time and effort. We face simultaneously a structural problem, an economic problem, a political problem,
and a cultural problem. We may look at each of these in turn.

Structural
The structural problem, as we have seen previously, involves a government unable to regulate
itself. Restructuring the government so that it can run effectively will not solve all of the issues facing
the country, but will make the others easier to solve. The only truly viable way to make the government
fully self-governing again must be to shrink it. There are several alternatives that may be proposed to
avoid this, but none will be effective enough to meet the need.
One option that may be suggested is to expand the number of members of the House of
Representatives and possibly the Senate as well. However, increasing the number of members of
Congress will merely dilute the power of the individual members to address problems that they may find
while overseeing the functioning of the bureaucracy. It would also raise the cost of the government
even higher than at present.
Reorganizing the bureaucracy in an attempt to make it more efficient is also unlikely to be
successful. The reorganization of the public security agencies within the federal government into the
Department of Homeland Security in 2002 was the largest government reorganization since the
beginning of the Cold War. While the reorganization helped with information sharing between agencies,
there was no change achieved as vast as what would be needed to reform the government.
The only real solution, then, is to shrink the bureaucracy. This cannot be done in a meaningful
way without decreasing the number or effectiveness of services that the federal government supplies.
Fortunately, the federal system that is the basis of the Constitution provides an obvious solution – states
should take care of the tasks that most directly relate to their citizens’ everyday lives, leaving truly
national tasks to the federal government. In order to sustain the important tasks handled by the
government during such a transition, the decisions as to how the power is to be turned over to the
states and exactly which functions of governance belong to the national government are issues that
must be worked out in advance.
Handing power back to the states, however, brings up an issue – the fact that meaningful
methods of political feedback from the states to the federal government no longer exist. Establishing a
method that gives states a say in the functioning of the government at a national level will likely require
a Constitutional amendment repealing the 17th Amendment and reestablishing state appointment of
Senators. No other feedback mechanism is likely to be so effective, and without such a mechanism the
imbalance between state and federal power is likely to rise to the surface again in the future.
Addressing the structural problems afflicting the federal government are probably the most
frightening to the average citizen. It may seem like such changes are shaking the very foundations of the
nation. However, the changes that are being considered are simply a return to a system that functioned
well for many years. Looking at the whole of our history, it is the current way of doing things that is
strange and new. As any country must, we tried a change we thought would be beneficial. It has become
clear that these changes have not worked. It would be foolish to keep something broken instead of
returning to what worked before it.
 Economic
The second problem we face is economic. We have already seen the massive size of the federal
budget, deficit, and national debt. One thing we have not discussed is the cost of servicing the national
debt. In order to keep borrowing and spending money, the government must pay the interest each year
on the money it has borrowed. As of 2022, the government is paying $724 billion on these interest
payments per year. This is a part of federal spending that cannot be cut – failure to pay interest on loans
means that the government has defaulted, and would make it harder to borrow more money in the
future. Additionally, more than two-thirds of this debt is held by the public, meaning that nonpayment
would be harming regular people. Moreover, a default – even a partial one – on America’s $31 trillion in
debt would likely crash the world economy.
The more money the government must pay in interest on its debt, the less it is able to pay for
the duties it is supposed to be performing. Without raising taxes to do this, it must borrow even more
money – increasing its interest payments further. At some point the debt will become unsustainable,
and the government will be forced to default. Unfortunately, experts believe that there is no way to tell
in advance when the debt will become unsustainable: economist Raymond Hill has said, “We will only
know how much is too much when it is too late.”
Besides this potential debt bomb, however, there are other economic issues at play. Federal
regulations are expensive – companies and individuals must spend considerable time, effort, and money
complying with them. While it is difficult (if not impossible) to determine how much this amounts to,
many estimates put the figure in the range of $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion per year. It is likely that these
regulations further depress the economy by tens or hundreds of billions of dollars per year by distorting
the choices that investors make when driving innovation.
Scaling back the federal government will not make our debt go away, though it may make it
easier for us to deal with it. As the states take over taxing for tasks previously handled by the federal
government, they can customize these programs to their own needs. The gains in efficiency that should
be possible in this way will free up money to start paying back the debt that we have run up. As state
taxes rise, it should be possible to decrease federal taxes by an even greater amount. Even just scaling
the federal government back to the point where it no longer has to borrow money to keep operating
will stop the increase of the debt, and allow us more time to deal with it. The new regulations that the
states make when they take over duties previously handled at the national level also have the
opportunity to cut regulatory costs imposed on individuals and businesses – large and small alike –
spurring economic growth.

Political
The changes in the political sphere that will be needed will be numerous as well. First, it will be
necessary to pass federal regulation allowing previously federal duties to be devolved to the states. In a
hyper-partisan environment like the one that has grown up over the last few decades, getting everyone
to agree will be no small feat. All parties must engage with one another in a fair-minded attempt to
decide what will work best for everyone, as well as what tasks should go to the states and which must
remain centralized. What can serve as a motivation for both sides, however, is the fact their policy
preferences may have more of a place in a reestablished federal system than they do in the current
system.
Under a state-centric system, each state will need to determine how to perform its new duties,
and each may choose differently. What works for one state is unlikely to work perfectly for all other
states. Some states will doubtless expand government’s role in some areas, and others will decrease it.
If a state tries a system and it doesn’t work, they can change it and try again. If a state finds a system
that works particularly well, other states can adopt it and adapt it to their own needs. Instead of having
a single poorly-coordinated laboratory of governance, the nation will have fifty government in slightly
different situations – all serving as laboratories of democracy to determine how best to serve their
people. In such a system, differences in policies and ideas are more welcome and are more likely to get a
fair try than might be the case in a single, nationwide system. Those with new ideas would then have the
opportunity that they would never have under a central federal system to prove that they work.
Once the details of the transfer of power back to the states can be worked out, a major political
change will have to occur. The central government will no longer be dominant over the states – instead
it will operate on a different plane. Separating state tasks from federal means that experts in some fields
(for instance military policy) will gather at the federal level, while experts in other fields (social services,
for example) will work at the state level. Politicians at the federal level will find their area of supervision
smaller, but they will have greater ability to guide and oversee the actions of the bureaucracy. At the
state level, politicians will find themselves with wider areas of responsibility. For this they will be
compensated by less interference from the federal government, more ability to control taxation and
spending, and the fact that the bureaucracies they will be overseeing will be of a much more
manageable size than the federal bureaucracies have been.
Distributing the power more evenly among the states instead of having it centralized at the
federal level will also decrease the power of business interests and economic and social elites to sway
policy. The need to lobby in fifty states rather than in a single city will substantially dilute their power,
making the voices of the people more important in their representatives’ decision-making. Politicians
who put more of their efforts into lining their own pockets and hobnobbing with the rich and powerful
are the only ones likely to object to this change. The priority will move back to representing their
constituents.

Social
The final area where change will be needed will be in the social sphere. It may seem odd to say
that in order to change the government we must also change our ways of thinking and behaving, but it is
a fundamental truth. In many ways, a representative or democratic government is a direct creation of
the minds of the individuals within its boundaries.
We hand over to government the tasks that we are unable or unwilling to do ourselves. Tasks
that we are unable to do with our own strength are good things for governments to do. However, when
we are unwilling to make our own difficult decisions and instead hand our free will over to the
government, we create a monster. Government is created by people to serve them, not to rule them. As
the federal government has grown in power, we as free individuals have shrunk. We must see
government for what it really is, instead of as a distant and mystical creature that acts for its own
inscrutable reasons. Demanding that government be responsive to “We the People” is not only a right –
it is an obligation.
We need to live our own lives, and make our own difficult choices. Fortunately, as power shifts
to the states, the states will need help from their citizens to reshape themselves. Not all of the choices
will be easy, but when they happen closer to home and with more input from us, they will be more truly
our choices.
7. Constitutional Amendment
The Constitution, being the fundamental law of United States, creates the structure of the
federal system. Any changes to this structure – as opposed to changes to the laws implemented within
the structure – need to be made by amending the Constitution. Before we discuss any proposed changes
to the Constitution, we should look at the amendment process. There are two ways in which
Constitutional amendments may be proposed, and two ways in which they may be ratified.
The first method of proposal for a Constitutional amendment is for two-thirds of both houses of
Congress to pass the text of the proposed amendment. This often (but not always) includes a sunset
provision, meaning that it expires if it is not ratified before that date. The two-thirds proportion of both
houses is a significant hurdle to clear, particularly in recent years when control of both chambers has
been fairly evenly divided. However, this has been the only method of proposal used since the creation
of the Constitution.
The second method of proposal is for two-thirds of the states (currently 34) to apply to Congress
for a convention to deliberate on amending the Constitution. This method has never been used, and so
it is unclear exactly how such a convention would work. The ability of the convention to propose
amendments may be nearly unlimited. While the states and Congress could theoretically put limits onto
the convention regarding the areas to be amended, there is no guarantee that the convention would
have to comply. After all, the most similar event in our political history was the convention called in
1787 to revise the Articles of Confederation. Instead of revising them, the group (which was to become
known to history as the Constitutional Convention) created an entirely new governmental framework –
the United States Constitution.
When proposals have been made by either method, they must be ratified by the states in one of
two ways. The ratification process does not allow the text of the proposed amendment to be changed,
only ratified or rejected. The first method of ratification is the simplest, and the one that has been used
for all but one of the 27 amendments to the Constitution that have been adopted so far. This method is
for the state legislatures of three-fourths of the states (currently 38) to vote to ratify the amendment.
This is the simpler method because the legislatures already function, and they must simply debate the
text of the amendment and vote.
The second method of ratification is for ratifying conventions in three-fourths of the states to
vote to approve the amendment – thus bypassing the state legislatures. This is somewhat more
complicated, because the rules for these differ from state to state. Some states have standing laws
regulating how conventions are to be convened, while others would need to pass a law specifically for a
proposed convention. The states differ also in their methods of selecting a convention. Some permit the
citizens to vote for delegates to the convention in a special election, while others do not. This method
has only been used once – to pass the 21 st Amendment. This amendment nullified the 18 th Amendment,
which had created Prohibition only 14 years earlier.
While the methods for adopting amendments vary, the amendments themselves must have a
few characteristics. First of all, they must be worded very carefully. The Constitution is extremely
difficult to amend, and doing so to fix a mistake or a poorly-planned change is a major waste of effort
and time. The importance of the Constitution as the fundamental law of the United States and its role in
structuring the government also make it important that an amendment does exactly what it intends,
without any unforeseen problems.
Amendments to the Constitution should also be limited to fundamental issues. There are
numerous examples around the world of constitutions that are extremely long, overly-complicated, and
which lead to unnecessarily complex interpretive and enforcement systems. The United States
Constitution was originally 4,500 words long; with amendments it is just shy of 7,600 words long. The
average length of a state constitution is about 39,000 words, reflecting the broader duties intended to
be performed by the states compared to the national government. However, some states and nations
have constitutions that run into the hundreds of thousands of words, making them extraordinarily
complex.
There are a number of structural issues that have been pointed out in our previous discussions
that would be difficult to correct without the use of the amendment process. Care must be taken when
amending the Constitution, however, and such action should be thoroughly considered in advance so
that it does not create new problems while providing a remedy for the old. With an understanding of
the amendment process, we can now look at some potential amendments, as well as the considerations
that must be taken when creating them.

Repeal of the 17th Amendment

As previously discussed, the 17th Amendment to the United States Constitution was made for
good reasons, but it ultimately unbalanced the functioning of the federal system. The direct election of
senators simplified the selection process, but at the expense of removing the ability of the states to
influence the decisions of the federal government. Restoring the feedback system and reestablishing the
balance between the federal government and the states should be a top priority in any effort to reform
the federal system.
An amendment repealing the 17th Amendment should specify that senators should be appointed
on the decision of state legislatures rather than by direct election. The exact mechanism for selection
could be included in the amendment – simple majority vote of the legislature, or nomination by the
governor and majority approval by the legislature would be two possible methods for this – or the
method could be left to the states to determine. Specifying the method of selection has the advantage
of being more uniform throughout the country, while leaving the exact process up to the states would
allow each of them to fine-tune their procedures to their needs.

Balanced Budget Amendment

Balanced budget amendments are frequently discussed as a method of getting federal spending
under control. There are serious arguments on both sides of the issue. Most of the concerns surround
the ability of a government bound by such rules to respond to situations involving expenses as they
arise.
One concern surrounds economic variability. Variation of the economy from year to year means
that tax revenue changes constantly. In the case of a sudden economic downturn, the money coming in
would dry up just as the government might be considering spending more money to support those in
economic trouble. The difficulties that this might pose to the federal government would be significantly
lessened by scaling back its field of action and handing such social spending responsibilities to the states.
The states, retaining their ability to borrow money, would be able to deal with the increase of social
spending that makes up the majority of expense to government involved in an economic downturn. The
maintenance of a healthy federal surplus in a rainy-day fund could help to buffer out the fluctuations of
the economy as well.
More dramatically, the government has to be able to respond to the spending increases needed
in case of war. Government debt skyrocketed during our nation’s largest wars – the Civil War and the
First and Second World Wars. By the end of the Second World War, national debt had climbed from an
already significant 40% of GDP to nearly 113% of GDP – meaning that the government owed an amount
equivalent to 113% of the value of all goods and services produced in the country. (For comparison, as
of 2021, national debt was over 137% of GDP – having increased more in the years from 2008 to 2021
than the increase from 1940 to 1945 as a result of a world war.) It would be difficult if not impossible for
a government to save enough money in advance just in case a serious war was to break out. Some
method of raising money in an emergency would be a necessary part of a successful balanced budget
amendment.
There are a variety of ways that such an amendment could allow for this. One would be to allow
borrowing to occur in the case of a declared war, as long as there was consent of a supermajority of
both houses of Congress and approval by the President. To allow for other situations requiring massive
emergency spending, another method would be to have the President declare a state of emergency and
follow the same procedure of supermajority approval to allow the assumption of debt by Congress. Such
a supermajority requirement would make it difficult for Congress to take on debt without true necessity.
Limitations could also be set on the duration of such debt – preventing debt from being taken on and
then kept on indefinitely.
One method of limiting debt taken on in emergency situations might be to require the
government to supply collateral that would be forfeited if the debt is not paid within a set period of
time. The federal government owns about 640 million acres of land – more than a quarter of the total in
the country. A citizen could lend the government an amount of money, with the requirement that if the
government does not pay this amount back with the required interest in the required period of time, the
citizen would acquire title to a specified piece of land. This would not only encourage the government to
repay its debt on time, but more importantly prevent the risk of government defaulting on its loan. It
would also limit the ability of the government to use new debts to pay for old ones.

Repeal or Reform of the 16th Amendment

th
The 16 Amendment to the Constitution made the income tax a legal method of taxation for the
federal government. Its repeal is sometimes discussed as a means of forcing the government to
decrease taxation and spending. A difficulty with this is that as the inherent functions of the federal
government – the ones that cannot be returned to the states – have gotten more expensive, it has
become harder to raise sufficient funds through other sources. National sales taxes, value-added taxes,
and direct taxes come with complications that may make them undesirable as an alternative to the
income tax. Without a viable alternative to the income tax, the simple repeal of the 16 th Amendment is
probably unrealistic.
Ordinary simplification and reform of the tax code can be achieved through legislation. Only a
structural change to the system would require an actual amendment. A case can be made for placing a
hard cap on the amount of income tax levied – for instance, requiring that an individual can only be
taxed up to 15% of their income. This would make it harder for Congress to increase taxation past that
point in the future. On the other hand, if the costs of the inherent functions of the federal government
increase in the future, the limitation would require that the Constitution be amended again to deal with
the change. Reform of the tax code through legislation may be the best method for addressing concerns
with the 16th Amendment.
 Ban on Administrative Law
The possibility of banning administrative law – laws created by the executive branch using
powers delegated to them by Congress – seems far-fetched in our current political state. The federal
government is simply too large for Congress to oversee all of its policies. Thousands of new
administrative rules are made every year, some of them over a thousand pages long. As we have
discussed before, the existence of administrative rules means that Congress is unable – or unwilling – to
do the job assigned to it of representing their constituents and passing laws through the normal
procedure. These rules are instead made by unelected bureaucrats with no responsibility to the voters.
If reforms to the federal system are enacted and the federal government shrunk, an amendment
such as this could become a real possibility. Even having a formal system where Congress is required to
pass proposed administrative rules as bills in the regular manner would be a great improvement on the
current system. While certainly impracticable now, having a federal system capable of being overseen
by Congress in the way intended by the Constitution should be a goal for reforms of the federal
government. When the government is small enough for Congress to oversee, an amendment such as
this would help to keep it that way.
Action in amending the Constitution should be taken in coordination with reforms in the laws.
While these processes – particularly the amendment process – take time, they can take place at the
same time as other reforms. It will be important for legislators at the state and federal level to look at
the way things are and the way we want them to be, and to plot their courses accordingly.
8. Scaling Back the Federal Government
We have been discussing scaling back the federal government and returning duties to the states.
In order to do that, we need to be able to determine which tasks are more proper to each. The
Constitution provides guidance on this topic by specifying the powers that Congress has to make laws in
Article 1, Section 8. Section 9 following it gives specific limitations to Congress’ power to make laws.
Section 10 limits the authority of states, particularly in areas more properly considered the responsibility
of the federal government. Finally, the 10 th Amendment to the Constitution reserves all powers not
specifically given to the national government (and not prohibited under the Constitution) to the states
and to the people.
Looking at these parts of the Constitution, we see a number of tasks specifically assigned to the
federal government. These include defense and regulation of the military, regulation of commerce with
other nations and between states, establishing rules on citizenship and bankruptcy, creation and
regulation of money, providing postal services, and protecting intellectual property rights, among
others. These are fairly straightforward, and show us certain tasks of government that are clearly the
responsibility of the federal government. We can be confident, for example, that the Department of
Defense is properly a part of the government at the federal level. Homeland Security, the Department of
Veterans Affairs, and the Department of the Treasury likewise are clearly federal, as is the Department
of State under the President’s foreign policy powers in Article 2 of the Constitution.
Other roles of the government, on the other hand, are less clear. Clause 1 in Article 1, Section 8
reads in part that Congress has the power to “provide for… the general Welfare of the United States.”
This can be interpreted as a broad grant of power, which would then put it in tension with the 10 th
Amendment’s reservation of all powers unspecified in the Constitution to the states and the people. The
historical understanding of the “general Welfare” clause has shifted over time – the federal government
as originally constituted made extremely limited use of it, while today it serves as justification for many
roles that the founders would never have imagined.
Another contested clause in section 8 is the third, which gives Congress the power “To regulate
Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.” Originally
the federal government focused on legislating mostly on the first part of this clause by regulating
imports and exports. The portion regarding regulating trade among the states was viewed as serving
more as a limit to the power of states to interfere with interstate commerce than as a mandate for
federal involvement in domestic trade. With the expansion of government in the past century, however,
this clause has been used to justify federal intervention in commerce in general – with mass
transportation and a national economy, it can be assumed that virtually any good has the potential to be
sold across state lines.
The most efficient method of dividing duties is to assign to the federal government those roles
that are specifically their job under the constitution, as well as any tasks that would be impossible for
the states to implement on their own. Many of the federal agencies that are already duplicated in all or
in part by the states should be have their jobs turned over to the states. This would include much of the
Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Labor, the Department of Health
and Human Services, the Department of Education, and the Department of Agriculture. These tasks deal
with more of the social aspects of government, and as such are more suited to having the rules tailored
to each state’s individual needs, rather than having blanket rules that are supposed to apply everywhere
from the Arctic Circle in Alaska to the jungles of Hawaii to the deserts of Arizona. Social spending would
not go away under a restoration of the federal system – rather, greater efficiency and local control over
these policies will provide better results at a lower cost.
There are some government departments and agencies that do not clearly fall into either the
federal or state categories, and some of these must be considered on an individual basis to determine
where they fit the best. Looking at some examples of these agencies may clarify the way we should think
about dealing with them.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, for example, deals with federal crimes – a necessary task.
However, there are currently well over 5,000 things that are currently categorized as federal crimes. This
is a considerably greater number than would be necessary, as some crimes are both federal as well as
state crimes. (Such overlaps create situations where the double jeopardy protection preventing
someone from being tried twice for the same crime do not apply – a somewhat concerning state of
affairs.) The FBI also provides specialized expert crime lab assistance for state and local jurisdictions that
don’t have the resources to employ their own, as well as coordinating investigation of criminal cases
that occur in multiple states, and even handling espionage cases. There is, however, concern in the
public about the tendency of the FBI to interfere in political events, from the notorious examples under
its first Director, J. Edgar Hoover, to its actions surrounding the 2016 presidential election. The best
solution in the case of the FBI would be to reform the federal statutes to eliminate overlap of federal
and state crimes, leaving the agents to focus on those that are more truly federal in nature. As part of its
new role, it would be beneficial to retain agents to coordinate multi-state investigations, as well as to
assist state and local police in finding criminalists able to do specialized analysis.
Another agency that spans the federal-state divide is the Environmental Protection Agency.
With over 14,000 employees, the EPA regulates on environmental issues, trying to maintain a clean
environment. However, it has also been widely criticized for overreach in interpreting its regulations and
damaging the economy by imposing costs with excessive rules. All states have their own departments
responsible for environmental protection, so many of the efforts of the EPA are already being
duplicated. Turning all control of environmental protection over to the states could cause problems,
however. Pollution does not respect political boundaries, so some coordination between states is
necessary to ensure that emissions one state considers acceptable are not causing issues for other
states. Retaining the EPA as an agency able to coordinate action between the state departments of
environmental protection seems like a reasonable solution to this. If states regain meaningful input into
federal decision-making as we have discussed with repealing the 17 th Amendment, it could even work to
have a set of federal guidelines and minimum/maximum emissions laws voted on by Congress that
would be binding upon the states.
A final example of returning power to the states comes not from a department of the
government, but from Congress’ way of handling highway funding. The federal government collects
taxes at the federal level, and redistributes it to the states to pay for highway maintenance. This may
well be justified under Article 1, Section 8, Clause 7, which gives Congress the authority “To establish
Post Offices and post Roads”. Having the federal government provide the money and the state or local
governments directing the project is a reasonable way to control these efforts. However, as we
discussed previously, the federal government has used this money in the past to coerce states into
making laws they did not want to make. Letting states collect their own taxes for highways removes this
opportunity for federal dominance over concerns of the states.
A careful examination of the different tasks of government, in the way we have seen, should
allow us to determine the proper way to divide powers between the state and federal governments.
Having more opportunity for local control and customization is ultimately a goal worth achieving. It
provides us the ability to try new ways of doing things, and allows us to find new methods of solving the
problems that we face.
9. The Rate of Change
In practical politics, there is no “right answer,” just answers that work with varying degrees of
effectiveness. Ideas that work in one time and place might fail miserably in another. Likewise, in a world
that is always changing, government has to be able to adapt. We have seen what happens when a
sclerotic government is unable to change to meet new needs.
When changing something in government, one can move too quickly as well as too slowly. The
French Revolution arose to topple a government that had been unwilling to change for too long. When
the Revolution came, too much changed too quickly, and things fell apart. The government lost control,
and cycled back and forth between groups vying for power. Ultimately, the most powerful seized
control. The same thing happened in Russia a century later – delayed reform led to the collapse of the
government under the strain of the First World War. A power struggle arose between factions, and the
most powerful seized control and brutally suppressed their opponents.
The American Revolution was a rare success story, begun in 1775 and led by thinkers who were
not afraid to change things decisively, but who were also not willing to betray their core values and their
humanity in order to reach an idealistic end. The Revolutionary War ended in 1783, but in a political
sense the American Revolution was not complete until 1788 when the Constitution was adopted and the
structure of the American political system became clear. It was a long road, carefully navigated.
It is vital that significant action be taken toward reform quickly, but after mature deliberation.
When this deliberation is carried on in public – like the discussions inspired by The Federalist Papers
leading up to the adoption of the Constitution – the people will be able to vote for the changes they
wish to see. A party running for election on a platform of reform should be ready to begin
implementation of their ideas when they take office. By working with other parties in government to
create change, a reforming system can work for the benefit of all, rather than just a single group.
At the same time, it is important that there is not too much change too quickly. With significant
changes, time will be needed for them to be implemented. Disassembling a federal department and
handing some of its functions over to states and restructuring the rest is not a simple task. It should not
be done in a week – but neither should it take five years to achieve. The degree of change that is being
implemented should determine the time that the process should take.
Attempting to change only one thing at a time would doom a serious reform project to failure.
Seeing an endless chain of slow and relatively minor changes is discouraging to those seeking real
reform. While better than nothing, it gives the public the sense that there is no real urgency, and
possibly that the party of reform doesn’t actually want the reform platform that they were elected on.
A pace as frantic as that of President Roosevelt’s famed “first 100 days” is not necessary, but a steady
momentum of change should be maintained.
Most importantly, a party with a platform of reform should be able to stay the course through
teething problems. Changes may be slower than expected; efforts in some areas may fail; plans may not
work as intended. The party making the reforms must be willing to work through difficulties, but must
also remember the need to candidly admit error and try a new method when something has truly failed.
Making these changes will be hard work – the task at hand is nothing less than the removal of haphazard
structures tacked onto the nation’s government over the better part of a century.
10. Conclusion
The situation that we see the government in – corruption, deficit, debt, incompetence,
infighting, inflation, partisanship – it is obvious that something needs to be done. In a way, it is
miraculous that the government has managed to function in its current state for as long as it has. It is
unclear how much time we have to reform the government before the situation spins out of control. The
interest payments on the national debt will become unsustainable, but when? Failure of the
population’s confidence in the government to fairly represent their interests is a destabilizing factor that
is terribly corrosive to the ability of a government to function. Partisan division inside and outside of the
government is threatening to tear the country apart in ways we have not seen since the Civil War.
Reform must come, or there will be disaster – of one type or another.
Increasingly, there is public discussion of permanent division of the country by secession. Even
the possibility of a new Civil War has been considered in some circles as groups with dramatically
different views struggle for the levers of power in Washington. Restoring the federal system as it was
originally constituted provides an alternative to this dark vision. Allowing people in each state to make
their own decisions instead of having ill-fitting national rules forced on them nationwide by unelected
bureaucrats solves this problem. By allowing California to have one set of rules, Alaska to operate by
another, and Florida to use a third, all of them will have what they want. They will function together
with a federal government more concerned with coordinating cooperation between them, and ensuring
that all are defended. Above all, they will be united in their enjoyment of the rights enshrined in the
Constitution.
A restoration of the structure of federalism and a return to more local control will provide the
ability for the people to make things better for themselves and their children. Restoring the feedback
mechanism of state-appointed senators will allow the states to resume a productive role as the federal
government’s partner, instead of its subordinate. Returning the social tasks of governance to the states
will give the citizens of those states more ability to meet their own particular needs, while also providing
laboratories of governance to try new ideas and work out new solutions to the problems that they face.
Limiting the power of the federal government to its proper duties will break up the oligarchic grasp of
economic interests on the nation’s governance and restore government spending to rational levels.
Cutting wasteful spending and unnecessary regulation will free the economy to expand and provide
wealth for everyone – not just those who have the power or money to get the government to take their
side.
What we are discussing is not a utopia. It will require real work to make the necessary reforms
to government, and even then our job will not be done. Any political system must be maintained,
adjusted, cared for, and fixed when it inevitably breaks down. A government is not something created
by the people to do things for them, but a method that people can use to do things for themselves. We
as Americans have inherited a great gift passed down to us from our ancestors. It is our duty to maintain
the gift so that we can pass it down, with interest, to those who come after us.