Abortion. Education. Controlled substances. Publicly funded media. Certain categories of environmental policy (polluted soil crosses state lines less than polluted air). Various subsidies for special interests. Labor issues like parental leave requirements. Housing issues.
Yes. Some of those are somewhat state issues now, but I'm talking about divisiveness in culture and discussion. People in political discussions should be OK with saying, "That's an important issue, but best solved at the state or local level."
Social safety nets is an interesting counterexample, but it seems like a hybrid approach should be doable in many cases, especially when it comes to funding externalities like retirees moving disproportionately to certain states.
Abortion is very tricky to push back to the states, because some states want to criminally prosecute the doctors and sometimes even the patients involved. Accepting a patient from a different state could lead to a doctor having committed a crime in that state and having in future to avoid traveling to that state or to any state that would extradite the doctor to that state. This would be a mess.
Education is already largely controlled below even the state level, by local school boards. The Federal government hands out a lot of money for the purpose, largely to even out the quality of education between wealthy and poor areas of the country, but it’s pretty hands-off.
Controlled substances is another place where criminal law differing state to state creates a legal mess. The more the law differs, the greater the mess. Delivery of drugs from states where they are legal to states where they are not has not yet blown up into a huge issue because the Federal government regulated interstate commerce and still considers the substances illegal. If the Federal government takes a hands-off approach and Amazon starts selling cocaine it’ll get messy fast. This sort of mess already exists due to patchwork laws about firearms, but in that case the problem is substantially mitigated by (a) the Federal department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and a constitutional right to at least have firearms in every state, even if the nuances differ.
Publicly funded media seems like a niche topic? Voice of America is a State Department effort aimed at influencing foreign policy. NPR gets most of its funding from donations. I can’t think of any other examples.
I could see certain classes of environmental issues being pushed back to the states, but it would be tricky and probably a mess. Polluted soil is likely to become an issue for other states if it’s in the drainage basin of the Mississippi, less so if it’s out on a salt flat somewhere in the desert west.
Labor issues, housing issues, and subsidies are already things that states have a lot of involvement in or control over. Housing activities by the Federal government mostly consist of welfare spending like subsidizing housing for the poor and underwriting mortgages for homebuyers. Another issue where the Federal government gets involved mostly for the purpose of shuffling money around between rich states and poor states.
You keep hand waving about messes. The current political climate seems to be heading toward more than just a mess.
If there were consensus about some issues not being national issues, your points about currently local issues would be stronger. But the fact is that it's still a minority, if not niche, view that all these issues should stay local indefinitely. I suspect the gridlock is protecting federalism more than principle or even court rulings are.
Yes. Some of those are somewhat state issues now, but I'm talking about divisiveness in culture and discussion. People in political discussions should be OK with saying, "That's an important issue, but best solved at the state or local level."
Social safety nets is an interesting counterexample, but it seems like a hybrid approach should be doable in many cases, especially when it comes to funding externalities like retirees moving disproportionately to certain states.