States' rights for brats

The GOP's new doctrine: Help yourself to federal bailout money but nullify any conditions Congress places on its expenditure as a violation of state sovereignty.

Remember when Republicans were saying the states didn’t need Congress’s stupid aid to address the Covid crisis? “Republicans see no need to send huge sums of money to state and local governments whose tax revenues have actually gone up,” said Republican leader Mitch McConnell on Dec. 9. “Blue state bailout, is basically what it is,” said Sen. Rick Scott (R.-Fla.) earlier this month. “We can’t waste the money.” Not a single Republican in the House or Senate voted for the Covid bill that contained the dread blue state bailout.

Now Republicans are sputtering that this bailout is so very necessary to red states that the conditions Congress placed on accepting the money violate state sovereignty. Twenty-one Republican state attorneys general wrote Treasury secretary Janet Yellen this week to complain that it’s unconstitutional for the federal government to condition states’ acceptance of Covid aid on not using it to offset tax cuts. A 22nd state attorney general, Ohio’s Dave Yost, filed suit. Also, 39 House Republicans wrote Janet Yellen a pissy letter about this. I repeat: not a single one of these House Republicans voted for the state aid that they now say is as necessary as the air we breathe.

You think I’m exaggerating. I am not.

“Although some states have weathered the crisis better than others,” the attorneys general wrote,

it is difficult to envision many, if any, turning down this support for their citizens. For example, Arizona has an annual budget of around $12.4 billion from its general fund, and the moneys from the State Recovery Fund are anticipated to be $4.8 billion—40 percent of one year’s general fund budget. As another example, West Virginia’s share represents over 25 percent of one year’s budget. Many states put to the Hobson’s choice of taking this financial support or maintaining their sovereign independence to set their own tax policy will be hard pressed to decline the federal funds.

Ohio, Arizona, and West Virginia aren’t feckless blue states. They’re fiscally responsible red states. Yet they need a bailout. Quick, somebody tell McConnell and Scott!

The GOP’s hypocrisy in this instance is consistent with a bratty new strain in states’ rights conservatism that says states should be free to take federal dollars and ignore whatever conditions the federal government places on their use. My latest New Republic column explains the evolution of this doctrine. Conservative Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Associate Justice Antonin Scalia rejected it firmly in 1987, but Chief Justice John Roberts opened the door to it in 2012.

(Anthony E. Wolf’s hilariously-titled book, pictured above, is invoked.)