Leubsdorf: Federal-state balancing act

The most obvious reason for this change is the persistent congressional gridlock preventing federal solutions to such controversial issues as voting rights, abortion, gun control and immigration.

Close national elections are one factor, since a Congress in which neither party enjoys a workable majority is a prescription for deadlock. So is today’s increased partisanship — and the relative paucity of centrist lawmakers.

But more significant has been the way the Senate’s innate imbalance has been exacerbated by the tendency of whichever party is in the minority to invoke the requirement of 60 votes to pass legislation; that makes it easier for a minority to keep the majority from acting.

The Supreme Court has also played an important role. Its failure to curb political gerrymandering has increased partisanship in the House of Representatives and state legislatures. And it has increasingly voted to restrict federal actions, including a 2013 decision curbing Justice Department enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.

Its conservative majority is increasingly invoking the originalist theory that the federal government only has the authority specifically granted in the Constitution.

It’s true that many recent cases concern issues that were not addressed when the Constitution was written in 1787, like abortion and same-sex marriage. Whether justified or not, the court seems likely to keep letting states decide policy in such areas and make federal actions harder to sustain.

The reaction to the abortion ruling graphically illustrates the inconsistent fallout. Predominantly Republican states are moving to ban all abortions; Democratic ones are expanding protection for women seeking them. Other controversial issues display a similar split.

Many conservatives have long argued that the Constitution’s framers wanted this by reserving all powers not specifically granted to the states.

But starting with Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s, presidents of both parties recognized that many problems extend beyond individual states and require national solutions. That led to Roosevelt’s groundbreaking New Deal federal regulatory measures, President Dwight Eisenhower’s interstate highway system, President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, and the civil rights laws Congress enacted during Democratic administrations with backing from both parties.

In theory, it’s sensible to tackle some problems on the state level and others nationally. But the latter often requires compromise, and the increase in partisanship and disappearance of centrist lawmakers have made that increasingly difficult. Besides, institutional factors on both levels are exaggerating the problem.

On the federal level, the combination of each state having two United States senators and the more rigid partisanship has allowed states representing a minority of the electorate to often out-vote ones representing the majority. Most smaller states are solidly Republican, most of the bigger ones tend to be Democratic.

On the state level, the failure of the courts to curb gerrymandering has enabled parties to convert election successes into permanent legislative majorities that don’t always reflect public attitudes.

One reason to transfer power from the federal to the state level was to bring it closer to the people. But malapportioned state legislatures and rigidly partisan state policies undercut that goal, creating the top-down rule at the state level its advocates opposed in Washington.