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A Wave of Activism in States May Signal a Surge Nationwide
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Dec 05, 2005 12:54pm |
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| Category | News |
| Media | Newspaper - Los Angeles Times |
| News Date | Monday, December 5, 2005 06:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | It's not a news bulletin that this has been a decade of conservative dominance in Washington. Since 2001, the top domestic priority for President Bush and the Republican Congress has been cutting taxes. With a few exceptions (led by the Medicare prescription drug benefit approved during Bush's first term), the GOP majority has focused on limiting, not expanding, the federal government's size and scope.
But a counter-cyclical trend toward government activism is thriving in the states governed by Democrats and moderate Republicans. This isn't a new pattern. In earlier periods when conservatives controlled Washington, such as the 1890s, 1920s and 1980s, state-level activism flourished, notes Richard P. Nathan, director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government at the State University of New York. And these state initiatives, Nathan argues, usually provided the foundation for the next surge in federal activism.
"When conservative coalitions controlled national offices, programs that were incubated, tested and debugged in liberal states became the basis for later national action," Nathan, a former aide to President Nixon, writes in a paper to be released this month.
Nathan has a strong case. State-level innovations such as child labor laws and public health reforms during the late 19th century helped inspire the Progressive Era outpouring of federal initiatives under presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal built on state experiments in the 1920s that established minimum labor standards and public relief for the destitute.
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Today, conservative ideas focused on limiting government and cutting taxes are as powerful in most Republican-leaning states as they are in Washington. But in Democratic-leaning and swing states, experiments are developing that may headline the domestic agenda for the next president (either a Democrat or centrist Republican) committed to a more activist federal government. |
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