Sam Smith
One of the reasons I still recall that Governor Paul A. Dever
was working on the Massachusetts Turnpike even before the federal highway program
was because the signs along the road told me so. As a boy I even imagined Dever
with a shovel helping the process.
The practice used to be common. But as we have gotten more prissy
about politics – such as banning the earmarks that used to help get bills
through Congress so you only had a bridge to nowhere instead of as, today, whole
budgets to nowhere – the signed signage has disappeared.
One of the prices you pay for this is that no one has a good
idea of who brought you the repairs to the bridge or highway you just drove over.
Instead of the president and a governor sharing the credit, nobody really knows
how it happened. Which is one reason Obama didn’t get more praise for his
stimulus package.And why we don't spend more on public works.
As our federal government has become more dominated by
gradocrats – lawyers, economists and MBAs – such basic political traditions are
being tossed aside. After all, who needs a sign when you’ve got 2,000 pages of
regulations to look at?
These, after all, were the same folks that brought us the term infrastructure to replace public works. Now the public not only doesn’t know who did it
but what the hell they’re talking about.
Add to this the fact that too many liberals these days think
that anything you let states or cities decide for themselves may just be the first
step towards their secession from the union.
But go back to the 1950s and you find quite a different story,
as I described a couple of years ago:
TheFederal Boating Act of 1958 was an early and benign example of what I came to
think of as federal greenmail as Washington increasingly began using the budget
as a means of getting states to give up their 10th Amendment authority over
matters "not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor
prohibited by it to the States."
The
boating act was quite mild by today's standards. A Coast Guard history said of
it: "Among other benefits, this act made states essential partners in this
cooperative effort. Most of the states quickly enacted boating safety laws
involving boat numbering, equipment, and operation. These laws were typically
uniform, making it easier for boaters to be in compliance when traveling from
one state to the next. Further, many states initiated boating safety programs
to implement their new laws, increasing the number of officers on the water for
enforcement and rescue."
Under
today's rules the options given the states would have been early eliminated in
favor of hundreds of pages of federal regulations. Over the following decades
the use of greenmail would explode - reaching a recent pinnacle not in the
healthcare bill mandate - which wrongly asserts its rights based on the
commerce clause - but in the massive interference with local schools found in
the No Child Left Behind program, an intrusion assisted by highly conditional
funding from private foundations who aren't even mentioned in the Constitution.
While
backing for this pecuniary assault on the Constitution has often been
bipartisan, it is the support of supposedly anti-authoritarian liberals that is
most discouraging, since if anyone was presumed willing to stand up for what
Jefferson called our "small republics," it was this wing of the
Democratic Party.
The 1954 bill authorized $175
million for the interstate system, to be used on a 60-40 matching ratio… During
the signing ceremony at the White House on May 6, 1954, [President Eisenhoweer]
said, "This legislation is one effective forward step in meeting the
accumulated needs." But he knew it was not a big enough step, and he
decided to do something about it. Eisenhower planned to address a conference of
state governors in Bolton Landing on Lake George, N.Y., July 12, 1954. Because
of the death of his sister-in-law, the president was unable to attend, and Vice
President Richard M. Nixon delivered the message from detailed notes the
president had prepared. Nixon told the governors that the increased funding
authorized earlier that year was "a good start" but "a $50
billion highway program in 10 years is a goal toward which we can - and we
should - look." Such a program, over and above the regular federal-aid
program, was needed because "... our highway network is inadequate
locally, and obsolete as a national system."
He wanted a cooperative alliance
between state and federal officials to accomplish the federal part of the grand
plan. And he wanted the federal government to cooperate with the states to
develop a modern state highway system.
Finally, the vice president read
the last sentence of the president's notes, in which he asked the governors to
study the matter and recommend the cooperative action needed to meet these
goals. The speech, according to a contemporary observer, had an
"electrifying effect" on the conference. It had come as a complete
surprise, without the advance work that usually precedes major presidential
statements. Furthermore, the speech was delivered at a time when the governors
were again debating how to convince the federal government to stop collecting
gas taxes so the states could pick up the revenue. Some governors even argued
that the federal government should get out of the highway business altogether….
DOT also notes:
As President Dwight D. Eisenhower
began to promote creation of a program to build the Interstate Construction
Program, the nation's governors made clear to him that they did not want to be
forced to increase state taxes to pay the additional matching funds for the
national program. Therefore, the President proposed to increase funds for the
Interstate System, while boosting the Federal share to 90 percent. Under his
proposal, the States would continue paying the same amount in matching funds
for the Interstate System that they had been paying under the 1954 Act.
Imagine if the Democrats of today had learned something from
Eisenhower when pushing for Obamacare.
But, from a political standpoint, it was the signs that were
the best. Note how everyone – state and feds – looked good. You knew what was
happening and who was paying for it.
