Читать книгу American Democracy in Context - Joseph A. Pika - Страница 118

The expansion of national power made possible by the “switch in time” led to a much more complex relationship between the national government and the states. The old dual federalist relationship has sometimes been described as “layer cake federalism,” with each layer of government having clearly defined responsibilities. With the federal government becoming more active in telling states and localities what to do, the cooperative federalist relationship looked more like a swirled marble cake. States now cooperated with the federal government (hence the term cooperative federalism) by implementing its rules and regulations rather than having independent control as they did under dual federalism.

As Congress’s power to regulate increased, it imposed more and more legal requirements on states (ranging from dictates to maintain the privacy of medical records to regulations designed to maintain clean air and drinking water). Money from the federal government to implement these requirements typically came in the form of categorical grants. These are grants for states to do very specific federally mandated things. Sometimes, in order to qualify for funds, states are required to match a portion of a grant with their own money. Categorical grants are used to pay for such things as Medicaid and food stamps, programs that were part of President Lyndon Johnson’s so-called Great Society in the 1960s—a federal expansion agenda that also included “War on Poverty” initiatives such as Head Start (which offers preschool education for poor children) and Upward Bound (which helps prepare poor high school students for college). The Great Society also expanded the federal government’s role in the arts, environmental protection, and motor vehicle safety.

categorical grants Funds from the national government to state and local governments that must be used to implement a specific federal regulation in a particular way, leaving recipients no flexibility regarding how to spend the money.

unfunded mandate A legal requirement imposed on states by Congress to administer a program that comes with no federal money to pay for it.

Such programs, of course, cost money. Not surprisingly, the federal budget steadily increased as the federal government took on more and more responsibilities. Sometimes Congress imposed a legal requirement on states to administer these programs but offered no money to pay for them. These requirements are called unfunded mandates. The 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a good example. This law mandates that public transportation be accessible to people with disabilities, but it does not pay states or localities to retrofit trains and buses to comply with the law. Paying for such unfunded mandates became a substantial portion of many states’ budgets.