AGUA

The concept of dual citizenship is present in Barron v. Baltimore.10 _{John Barron}

owned a successful business: a wharf in Baltimore harbor. While making street and drainage improvements, the city of Baltimore caused changes to the flow of streams that caused the water to become shallower, thereby making Mr. Barron’s wharf less useful for shipping. Mr. Barron sued in the Maryland courts, claiming that his property had been illegally taken, without proper compensation, by the city of Baltimore, which was created by the state of Maryland. Mr. Barron repeatedly lost in state court, and appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the state was bound to respect his Fifth Amendment right under the federal constitution to be compensated when his property was taken from him. But the court disagreed, stating that the federal Bill of Rights did not apply to the actions of the states. Thus, if a state abridged a person’s rights of free speech, or assembly, or due process of law, or property ownership, that person had to appeal to the state courts, not the

Lochner v. New York.

Supreme Court case that held that state work hour laws were unconstitutional restraints on the right of workers to enter into labor contracts with their employers. The court relied on a concept called substantive due process. This decision made regulation of wages and hours very difficult for the federal government and the states. The decision was overturned in 1937. Barron v. Baltimore (1832). This decision held that people in the United States were both citizens of their states and of the nation, and that they therefore had to seek relief under their state constitutions, not the U.S. Constitu-

tion, if they felt their rights had been violated.

federal courts, for matters deemed to be solely state matters. One could bring a case in federal court if one’s federal rights were violated by the federal government.

It wasn’t until the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, which says that “no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdic- tion the equal protection of the laws,” was an avenue opened for the application of the national standard of the Bill of Rights against the states. That avenue was the “equal protection clause,” one of the most cited parts of the Constitution. But the idea that there are fundamental rights that states and the federal government must respect didn’t begin to take hold until the 1890s and gained momentum in the 1920s and 1930s. Even so, the incorporation doctrine—the idea of setting the national constitution’s rights and protections as the minimum standard for the states—does not mean that every provision of the Bill of Rights is “incorporated against” the states. In particular, the courts have never fully incorporated the Second or Seventh Amendments against the states; the Second Amendment is currently subject to litigation on the question. This is a fascinating aspect of our constitutional history, but it’s also an important feature of policy making, because the emergence of the incorporation doctrine plus major changes to occur in the 1930s led to historic levels of national power.

National Activism

The third era—national activism—ran from 1933 to 1961, and was triggered by the demands placed on the national government by the Great Depression. When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated in 1933, the Lochner doctrine continued to dominate thinking on the Supreme Court. The starkest example of the constraints on federal and state action created by the letter and spirit of Lochner is seen in the early years of President’s Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. Roosevelt called Congress into session and presented sweeping proposals to end the Depres- sion and to maintain confidence in business, industry, and finance. These ideas, most of which became law, included greater regulation of banking and securities, the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), and the Civilian Conservation Corps. The conservative Supreme Court, operating under the Lochner doctrine, struck down the NIRA.11

The Supreme Court’s restraining influence on policy was so great that, after his 1936 reelection, President Roosevelt attempted to break this constraint by propos- ing a new way of organizing the Supreme Court. Arguing that old age was making it difficult for some justices to do their jobs well, Roosevelt proposed to add one justice to the Court for every justice who was age seventy or older. This would have resulted in a fifteen-member court at the time, dominated by Roosevelt appointees, who presumably would be more favorable to the president’s plans. People across

incorporation doctrine.

The idea that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due process clause “incor- porates” all the provisions of the Constitution’s Bill of Rights against the states, mean- ing that states cannot violate the federal standard in these matters. New Deal. The program of policy changes and reforms associated with President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration that intended to alleviate the Great Depression.

the political spectrum reacted negatively to Roosevelt’s “court-packing” plan, and Roosevelt’s enthusiasm for the plan was further diminished after two justices seemed to change their philosophy in favor of New Deal legislation, in what became known as the “switch in time that saved nine.” As it turned out, a number of justices did retire, in part due to their age, during the Roosevelt administration, so that by 1940 the Supreme Court, consisting mostly of Roosevelt’s appointees, became more amenable to the president’s program.

The most important outcome of the New Deal history is its promotion of active federal involvement in national policy making. By 1937 the New Deal had created a vast system of governmental regulatory bodies, including but not limited to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Civil Aeronautics Administration (later the Civil Aeronautics Board, or CAB), the Securities and Exchange Com- mission (SEC), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and the Federal Home Administration (FHA). The government entered businesses that were tradi- tionally private, such as power generation, with the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and the Bonneville Power Authority (BPA). Indeed, the TVA had a broader goal of fostering economic development in the once-isolated Tennessee Valley, while the BPA provided cheap electricity to the factories that refined alumi- num, which was a key input in the West Coast’s aviation industry during and after World War II. These agencies continued to influence American policy and politics after the New Deal and World War II.

World War II–era programs further enhanced the influence of the federal gov- ernment. The GI Bill, which funded the postwar education of many servicemen and servicewomen; the FHA, which made mortgage loans easier to obtain; and the FDIC, which guaranteed the safety of bank deposits, laid the groundwork for the postwar economic boom. These and other programs, such as Social Security, became so entrenched in the national psyche that by the 1950s most Republicans realized that they could not resist their popularity and that efforts to repeal them would be unpopular and futile. The result was a bipartisan consensus on the politi- cal sanctity of Social Security that persists to this day, even as controversies over how the system is funded recur.

After World War II, U.S. foreign and defense policy establishments grew signifi- cantly, setting the tone for U.S. postwar foreign policy. The term national security first came into common use after the war, and the defense establishment of the United States was substantially reorganized in 1947. The North Atlantic Treaty Organiza- tion, or NATO, was formed in 1949 as an alliance intended to contain the threat of Soviet expansionism. Fears of communist subversion led to ethically questionable congressional actions to root out subversion, such as the creation of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and the crusade against communism led by Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin). At the same time, the expansion of the federal role in defense policy slowed under the Eisenhower administration because of Americans’ desire for a somewhat slower pace of change. Still, the seeds

national security.

The collection of policies, practices, and ideas that seek to protect the United States from foreign military or terrorist threats.

of important federal initiatives, such as the space program and the construction of the Interstate Highway System, were planted in the late 1950s.

National Standards

The final period in Robertson and Judd’s formulation, the era of “national standards,” runs from 1961 to the present, although, as I argue later, there was what appeared to be an era of “the end of big government” that started in about 1980. The 1960s were a fertile period for domestic policy making, akin to the New Deal era in the 1930s. Under President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society program, federal efforts to address policy problems again accelerated. Great Society programs addressed poverty, racial discrimination, educational problems, barriers to access to health care for the poor and elderly, mass transportation, urban renewal, environmental issues, and myriad other problems. It is not a coincidence that the 1960s also saw the birth of the scientific study of public policy and public problems, as researchers asked, first, what are the problems; second, what causes the problems; and third, do the policies we have to address the problems work? This scientific study, in large part, because the federal government was starting to set national standards for the states and other actors to follow in the pursuit of policy goals. At the same time, the states’ capacity to make and enforce policy grew rapidly, particularly in leading states such as New York and California.

Much of the research on these new national programs revealed mixed results. Efforts to foster a renewal of the urban core were not widely successful,12 _while

the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), and the Head Start program were considered moderately successful successes by some, while others found mixed results.13

Richard Nixon’s election in 1968 was viewed by some as a return to more con- servative federal policy making; indeed, many of Nixon’s proposals and programs were intended to cut back federal activities in various problem areas. The Nixon ad- ministration pursued a policy of “New Federalism,” in which discretion was returned to the states, and federal block grant programs were developed to replace the highly descriptive, top-down policies that characterized many Great Society programs.14 _But

the Nixon administration was not afraid to use federal power and policy making to address national programs. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was estab- lished and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was passed under the Nixon administration, although the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, built to transport oil from Alaska’s North Slope to the ice-free port of Valdez, was opposed by many environmentalists. The pipeline project was approved and explicitly exempted from NEPA requirements. Nixon attempted to stem inflation through wage and price freezes imposed at the fed- eral level, but the administration’s New Federalism and block grants programs were attempts to move power from the federal level to the state level.

From a policy-making perspective, the Nixon years were also important because

Great Society. The package of domestic pro- grams advanced by President Lyn- don Johnson to alleviate poverty, improve educa- tion, and foster civil rights during the 1960s.

this period witnessed major changes and reforms in Congress. President Nixon often angered Congress by not spending funds that were appropriated for particular uses, which is called “impoundment,” and the Congress prohibited the practice while reforming the budget process in the 1974 Budget and Impoundment Act. The presi- dent’s ability to commit troops to overseas actions was somewhat constrained by the 1973 War Powers Resolution. And the power and prestige of the executive branch in general were dulled by the Watergate scandal and Congress’s investigations into the activities of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). From a policy perspective, the important change here was the reas- sertion of congressional power in its relationship with the presidency.

The End of Big Government?

Perhaps the most important post–New Deal shift in government and attitudes toward policy was the 1980 election of President Ronald Reagan. Because he ran on a consistent program of cutting “big government,” his perceived mandate was to do just that. In some ways he aggressively did so, particularly in social welfare programs. His mandate to cut big government did not run, as it turned out, to the defense department. Nor were his policies strictly designed to reduce the federal budget deficit, a figure often used by small-government activists to highlight the problems with a large federal establishment.

But it is important to remember that the move to shrink government and decentral- ize it was also undertaken by President Nixon and President Jimmy Carter. Carter foreshadowed his desire to make the federal government smaller and more efficient in his inauguration speech, in which he declared, “We have learned that ‘more’ is not necessarily ‘better,’ that even our great nation has its recognized limits, and that we can neither answer all questions nor solve all problems. We cannot afford to do everything, nor can we afford to lack boldness as we meet the future.” And in his 1979 State of the Union speech, after listing the challenges faced by the nation, Carter said, “At home, we are recognizing ever more clearly that government alone cannot solve these problems.” Later in his speech, Carter, in language sounding very familiar to that of Reagan supporters, claimed:

We must begin to scrutinize the overall effect of regulation in our economy. Through deregulation of the airline industry we’ve increased profits, cut prices for all Ameri- cans, and begun—for one of the few times in the history of our nation—to actually dismantle a major federal bureaucracy. This year we must begin the effort to reform our regulatory processes for the railroad, bus, and the trucking industries.

America has the greatest economic system in the world. Let’s reduce government interference and give it a chance to work.

The deregulation of the airline industry is perhaps the most-remembered regula- tory action taken by the Carter administration; it opened airlines to price competi-

tion and allowed people of modest means to fly, although some have argued that deregulation was not a complete success.15 _{President Carter’s efforts to shrink the}

federal government were similar, although perhaps not as aggressive as Reagan’s efforts. Reagan’s rhetoric was also much more antigovernment than Carter’s. In his first inaugural address, Reagan stated that, “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” But by the mid-1980s, an aroused Congress was tempering the Reagan program, and Reagan suffered a major setback in his prestige during the so-called Iran-Contra scandal. Before then, however, Reagan had substantially increased American military spending, which signaled a return to American willingness to project military power overseas, in places such as Grenada, Panama, and the Middle East. This tendency continued in the Bush and Clinton administrations, which used the military in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Bosnia- Herzegovina, and Kosovo, with varying degrees of real or perceived success.

The post-Nixon legacy of distrust in government—a sentiment that presidents Carter and Reagan both appealed to, although on different ideological grounds— continues to influence policy making and government action. Indeed, a 2008 Rasmussen poll found that “59% agree with Ronald Reagan—government is the problem.”16 _{The “Reagan Revolution” may have laid the groundwork for the}

Republican takeover of the Congress in 1994, and its basic ideological underpin- nings were restored to national policy when George W. Bush became president in 2001. More significantly, the rhetoric and the actual policies created by Rea- gan spawned an America in which Bill Clinton could remark in his 1996 State of the Union speech, driven possibly by his party’s stinging defeat in the 1994 congressional elections and his failure to pass major health care reform, that “the era of big government is over.” This sentiment may have changed during the Clinton administration when the federal budget deficit became a budget surplus, as discussed in chapter 2. Still, we continue to live in an era in which the federal government is mistrusted and in which the state governments, while for the most part not able to develop vast new programs, are perceived as better positioned to address local needs and appear to be more responsive to citizens’ needs, even as they come under significant fiscal stress.17

The drive for smaller government continued in earnest through both George W. Bush administrations. The major legislative achievement of the Bush administration before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks was a significant and controversial tax cut. This tax cut, coupled with the economic downturn that began before the September 11 attacks (but that was likely accelerated by the attack) and the costs of fighting the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, caused an increase in the federal budget deficit. It did not, however, lead to a major increase in the size of the deficit com- pared with the gross domestic product, as discussed in chapter 2.

The idea of smaller, less expansive, and therefore less intrusive government en- joys broad popular support. However, there is no discernible trend toward “smaller government.” Rather, administrations may claim to pursue smaller government

except in domains where they deem it important. The September 11 terrorist at- tacks introduced the term “homeland security” to the national lexicon, and greatly increased federal government power in the broad range of activities that pass for “homeland security,” so much so that there is now something of a retreat from the most extreme expressions of this power.

Weeks after September 11, Congress enacted the USA Patriot Act, which gives the government greater powers to investigate terrorism and other crimes, at some potential cost to individual rights and liberties. And while new government depart- ments are often anathema to small-government proponents, the Bush administration created an entirely new department, the Department of Homeland Security, which handles a relatively small part of the homeland security issue. To be fair, it is im- portant to remember that it was congressional Democrats—in particular, Senator Joseph Lieberman (then D-CT)—who pressured the administration to create this department. It is hard to say whether the department constitutes growth in govern- ment, or merely a reorganization of existing government programs and agencies. But regardless of ideological commitments to “smaller government,” government will grow if policy makers perceive the need for greater government activity, such as in counterterrorism.

The election of Barack Obama has thrown the small-government idea into even greater doubt. And, if nothing else, there’s apparently no conflict between the ideas of “national standards” and “smaller government,” at least rhetorically.