American Democracy in Context. Joseph A. Pika
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Название: American Democracy in Context

Автор: Joseph A. Pika

Издательство: Ingram

Жанр: Зарубежная публицистика

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isbn: 9781544345208

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СКАЧАТЬ created vast regulatory structures in the form of the National Recovery Administration and the Public Works Administration. Congress claimed that it had the authority to do this by embracing a broad cooperative federalist interpretation of its commerce clause powers. The Supreme Court, however, was still controlled by dual federalists, and it struck down the NIRA as unconstitutional in Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States (1935).37

      The Supreme Court struck down other major pieces of New Deal legislation, including legislation that gave the federal government the authority to regulate wages, working hours, and production standards in the coal industry. Continuing to embrace dual federalism, the Court again concluded that Congress did not have authority under the commerce clause to regulate production.38

      President Roosevelt was furious about the string of defeats handed to him by the Supreme Court. After the Supreme Court invalidated the NIRA in Schechter, FDR held a press conference in which he criticized the decision by equating it with the Court’s infamous ruling in Dred Scott.39 The press dubbed the four members of the Court who most consistently voted against the New Deal the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”40 In the battle between the Four Horsemen and Roosevelt, the electorate seemed to come down squarely on the side of Roosevelt. While the Court continued to hand the New Deal more defeats, the president and his New Deal allies won landslide victories in the 1936 elections.

Party supporters cheer on as Roosevelt cuts a cake.

      By 1936, the repudiation of the Republican Party was clear: Democrats won a 333–89 majority in the House and a 75–17 majority in the Senate, and FDR was reelected in a landslide (523 electoral votes to Republican Alf Landon’s 8).

      Bettmann / Getty Images

      Emboldened, the newly reelected Roosevelt asked Congress to increase the size of the Supreme Court from nine to fifteen members. Several of the rulings against the New Deal had been by 5–4 or 6–3 votes, with dual federalists controlling the majority. Expanding the size of the Court would allow Roosevelt to appoint six new justices with a cooperative federalist perspective who would presumably uphold Congress’s power to enact New Deal legislation.

      The Supreme Court Embraces Cooperative Federalism

      In opposition to the dual federalist “Four Horsemen” of the Supreme Court were three cooperative federalist justices who usually voted to uphold New Deal legislation. The press dubbed them the “Three Musketeers.”41 In addition, there were two decisive “swing” justices on the nine-member Court.42 In 1937, these two centrist justices joined the Three Musketeers to form a new 5–4 cooperative federalist majority.

      Even though the two centrist votes that prompted this shift to cooperative federalism took place before FDR announced his Supreme Court–packing plan, they have sometimes been called “the switch in time that saved nine” because the shift they precipitated undercut the justification for expanding the size of the Court. Cooperative federalists won another victory at the end of the 1937 Supreme Court term when one of the Four Horsemen retired and Roosevelt had the opportunity to replace him. The remaining Horsemen soon retired as well. By the time President Roosevelt died in office in 1945, he had appointed all nine justices on the Court—the result of natural attrition and a presidency unhindered by term limits.43

A poster for the Works Progress Administration shows two farmers standing on an outline of the United States holding a stalk of wheat between them, labelled Prosperity. The caption says: Work Pays America.

      Between 1935 and 1943, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) created almost 8 million jobs.

      The results of these membership changes were striking. In case after case, the Court went on to overturn dual federalist precedents. In April 1937, the Court upheld the National Labor Relations Act in a broad cooperative federalist ruling that rejected the rigid interpretation of the direct–indirect test it had used the year before. Now Congress could use its commerce clause power to regulate the production of goods as well as the transportation of goods across state lines. The vote in that case was still 5–4.44 But only four years later, the transformation was complete. The Court unanimously overturned Hammer v. Dagenhart, a landmark 1918 dual federalist ruling that had held that Congress could not use its commerce clause power to regulate child labor by stopping the shipment of goods produced by children across state lines. In its new embrace of cooperative federalism, the Court dismissed the Tenth Amendment as merely a “truism.”45

      Implementing Cooperative Federalism

      The expansion of national power made possible by the “switch in time” led to a much more complex relationship between the national government and the states. The old dual federalist relationship has sometimes been described as “layer cake federalism,” with each layer of government having clearly defined responsibilities. With the federal government becoming more active in telling states and localities what to do, the cooperative federalist relationship looked more like a swirled marble cake. States now cooperated with the federal government (hence the term cooperative federalism) by implementing its rules and regulations rather than having independent control as they did under dual federalism.

      As Congress’s power to regulate increased, it imposed more and more legal requirements on states (ranging from dictates to maintain the privacy of medical records to regulations designed to maintain clean air and drinking water). Money from the federal government to implement these requirements typically came in the form of categorical grants. These are grants for states to do very specific federally mandated things. Sometimes, in order to qualify for funds, states are required to match a portion of a grant with their own money. Categorical grants are used to pay for such things as Medicaid and food stamps, programs that were part of President Lyndon Johnson’s so-called Great Society in the 1960s—a federal expansion agenda that also included “War on Poverty” initiatives such as Head Start (which offers preschool education for poor children) and Upward Bound (which helps prepare poor high school students for college). The Great Society also expanded the federal government’s role in the arts, environmental protection, and motor vehicle safety.

      categorical grants Funds from the national government to state and local governments that must be used to implement a specific federal regulation in a particular way, leaving recipients no flexibility regarding how to spend the money.

      unfunded mandate A legal requirement imposed on states by Congress to administer a program that comes with no federal money to pay for it.

      Such programs, of course, cost money. Not surprisingly, the federal budget steadily increased as the federal government took on more and more responsibilities. Sometimes Congress imposed a legal requirement on states to administer these programs but offered no money to pay for them. These requirements are called unfunded mandates. The 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a good example. This law mandates that public transportation be accessible to people with disabilities, but it does not pay states or localities to retrofit trains and buses to comply with the law. Paying for such unfunded mandates became a substantial portion of many states’ budgets.

      Picture Yourself …

      Amidst California’s “Anti-Okie” Panic of the 1930s