Such claims of autonomy notwithstanding, each of these states depends on federal agencies for over 40 percent of its annual revenue. Louisiana, so freshly drawn to the sovereignty clause, leads the pack at a whopping 52 percent dependency on federal funds. According to the latest Census Bureau data, Louisiana, along with 22 other states, is more reliant on federal dollars now than during the height of COVID-19 lockdowns.
There’s little space in other state capitols for gloating: The federal share of the average state’s revenue has doubled since 1990 and stands now at 37 percent. Given that those dollars come with strings and strictures, many of which have less to do with prudent program administration than with the ideological agendas of federal officials, it’s hard to believe that any citizenry substantially dependent on federal money maintains the “exclusive right of governing themselves as a free and sovereign state.”
We need look no further than the administration of public schools to see the threat federal funding poses to democratic self-governance. The federal government provides less than 14 percent of total spending on primary and secondary public education, yet thousands of school districts complied with Biden-era federal guidance on everything from transgender bathrooms to race-based school discipline practices. Some did so because they are run by administrators who share the ideology of Biden’s policymakers. But many complied — as they will with the directives of current and future administrations — for fear of losing funds, altering the school environments for hundreds of thousands of children. All this without a single vote by Congress or state legislatures, and with neither the consent nor even awareness of most parents.
They say he who pays the piper calls the tune, but federal agencies call the tune even when they barely cover the gratuity. “Self-government in all local matters”? It might be time for a revision, Rhode Island.
Between DOGE, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and a federal shutdown, state and local budgets are in upheaval. The looming expenses for state participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program alone will run into the hundreds of millions for many states — driven in part by rising error rates caused by federal policies that have made it harder to confirm participants' eligibility.
And the thing is, the lawmakers and governors who allowed their states to drift into this peril knew exactly what kind of beast they were dealing with. The average person walking down the street knows that their government in Washington, D.C., is a locus of dysfunction and corruption. Our state leaders know federal funds are subject to interruption and reversal, that they entail fiat directives that run counter to the interests of average citizens, that they drive up long-term state costs by stoking state payrolls and shackling state programs with strictures that discourage measurement, efficiency and innovation.
Our elected state leaders know all these things, and yet they’ve made our communities more vulnerable than ever to D.C.’s pathologies. In many states they did so even as they cut taxes, fashioning themselves as small-government conservatives. Thankfully there are some bright lights: Tennessee had begun to practice legislative scrutiny of federal grant proposals, and Utah, Nebraska and Ohio now require state agencies to prepare contingency plans in the event of federal funding interruption. If you think that’s simply common sense, you’d be surprised at how many states fail to do it.
Some lawmakers and governors are working to safeguard their communities from federal chaos, but too many have looked the other way while services that should be fully under the authority of communities, from firefighter training to domestic violence shelters, became vulnerable to the D.C. whipsaw. They looked the other way, and now the people who elected them face the consequences. I wonder, will our state leaders face some political consequences as well? Perhaps it’s time they did.
Governing’s opinion columns reflect the views of their authors and not necessarily those of Governing’s editors or management.
