One of every six federal taxpayer dollars goes to the states to subsidize programs that are either mandated or ultimately controlled by the U.S. government — an arrangement that must end if Americans hope to ever reclaim the power they have needlessly surrendered to Washington, says a federal appeals judge who has written about overcoming our dependency on Uncle Sam.
Step one is to "eliminate the 1,100 programs in which the federal government offers subsidies to the states to deal with problems that are the exclusive business of the states," James Buckley, a U.S. Court of Appeals judge for the D.C. Circuit and former U.S. Senator from New York, told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner on
Newsmax TV Monday.
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Those programs consume almost 17 percent of annual federal spending, dominate the congressional calendar and, above all, give decision-making authority over local matters to federal bureaucrats, said Buckley, author of
"Saving Congress from Itself: Emancipating the States and Empowering Their People".
Buckley called excessive federal control a "sleeper" issue because it has developed slowly and cumulatively over decades.
Washington does have important work to do, he said, and must learn to find consensus on issues where federal oversight is appropriate and compromise is an option, such as federal tax rates and immigration policy.
Congress and the White House must also recognize when compromise is not available, he said.
"We need to face that there are some terribly important issues on which there is very little middle ground," said Buckley. "An obvious example, of course, is abortion: Either a child in the womb is entitled to protection or it isn't."
He said the same holds true for healthcare: "The federal government will take over healthcare in the United States, or the government will honor the ability of individuals to find their own doctors and cut their own deals."
The new Congress, with both chambers under Republican control for the first time in eight years, has an opportunity to begin making these critical distinctions and passing meaningful laws, said Buckley.
"If you looked at the performance of the House of Representatives of the last four years, they have been trying to do what the people who elected them asked them to do, but they ran into a stone wall," he said, alluding to then-Majority Leader Harry Reid, who kept scores of completed House bills from proceeding in a Democrat-controlled Senate.
Buckley noted that Reid's successor, Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, "has declared that he will give the Democrats every opportunity to offer amendments, be engaged in debates, and so on — rights that were denied Republicans in the last six years."