Peter Harkness, founder of Governing, writes that the fight over Obamacare is only one part of a broader battle about the meaning of federalism:
Federal boots may not be on the ground—there haven’t been riots and no one has been hurt—but the level of resistance by a number of states in the South and Midwest to federal policy on a wide range of issues has not been this pronounced in almost a half century.
The central issue is Obamacare, but there are plenty of other issues to oppose: rules for who is allowed to vote or immigrate, rules for environmental emissions from power plants, rules for common education standards and rules for a wide array of social issues like guns, gay marriage, abortion, pot and so on. But health care is the centerpiece, and the resistance in some states is as strident as it is in the U.S. Congress.
At last count, 21 states have refused to expand their Medicaid systems to accommodate new enrollees even though the feds are paying all of the costs for the first three years, and 34 have refused to operate their own online insurance exchanges. A number of states have even enacted rules inhibiting so-called “navigators” from helping to enroll people in insurance plans or banning their city and county officials from helping in any way to phase in the new program.
Paul Posner, a federalism scholar at George Mason University, agrees that the current tension between the states and the feds mirrors the 1960s, but this time, he notes, it’s “to the states’ fiscal detriment. Money is overshadowed by ideology and the need for state leaders to make a statement about their positions.” While “passive resistance is not unprecedented,” he says, “several states have gone beyond that to become active resisters to the health reform law.”
That’s the key difference. Fifty years ago, some of the Southern governors were active resisters on the issue of desegregation, but on most others they were more mainstream. Now on a broad array of issues, the states’ rights movement is highly organized, heavily funded and uncompromising. In some cases, its tactics verge on sabotage of federal efforts. This isn’t so much a policy disagreement about health care as it is a no-holds-barred war for the future direction of domestic policy in the country.
