In 2015 speech, Buckley offered an Rx for Congress

SALISBURY — James L. Buckley said the solution to congressional dysfunction requires ending the grants-in-aid approach to federal spending, and restoring the proper balance of responsibilities (as specified in the 10th Amendment to the federal Constitution) between the federal and state governments.

Buckley spoke at Salisbury School on Friday, Oct.2 (2015), as part of the Salisbury Forum series of talks.

The former United States senator and senior federal appellate judge has a book on the subject, “Saving Congress from Itself,” and delivered a snappy and amusing half hour to the nearly full house.

He said that few Americans realize the extent to which the federal government reaches into state and local matters.

In the first 145 years of the republic, the United States code — the whole of federal law — was contained in one volume.

By 1970, when Buckley entered the Senate, it was 11 volumes, and today it is 34 volumes, with 235 additional supplements containing 175,000 pages of regulations “that have the force of law.”

He said the federal government has become  “an all-encompassing administrative state.”

This complexity “undermines legislators’ ability to function effectively.”

Rather than bringing “informed judgment” to bills, members of Congress make decisions based on “divisive political reflex, rather than thought.”

Today Congress has “little meaningful floor debate,” and bills “are thousands of pages long, and nobody has time to read them.”

So responsibility has devolved from Congress to federal agencies, and the ability of Congress to exercise appropriate and effective oversight has been compromised.

He continued with the litany of woes, in a disarmingly cheerful tone.

The federal administrative state “too often exceeds its authority,” he continued, and the executive branch, “whether out of frustration or imperial impulse,” increasingly governs by edict.

So what is Buckley’s goal?

It is to reduce the federal government to a size Congress can handle.

“I have the temerity to suggest Congress abandon grants-in-aid,” which he defined as subsidies to states for programs acknowledged to be the responsibility of the states.

He said he became aware of the problem when he saw a list of federal grants for “purely local purposes.”

They included a sidewalk to a school in Plymouth, the Union Station in North Canaan and, most tellingly, the Amesville bridge in Salisbury and Falls Village.

He said federal grants, funneled through state governments, add layers of state administration; promote “one-size-fits-all” solutions; trigger unfunded mandates (such as prevailing wage requirements); result in a lack of accountability because state officials, questioned about cost overruns or project failures, can always blame the strings attached to the federal grants; reduce the ability of citizens to have any voice in a given project.

And, finally, doing anything via the federal grant route takes forever.

“Witness the four years on the Amesville bridge — all to get a fancier bridge than the one they wanted.”

But the political culture is such that money from Washington is regarded as “free money.”

“You don’t turn down Santa Claus.”

And Santa’s been busy. During the Johnson administration, and the start of the Great Society, there were 132 federal programs that sent money to states in the form of grants-in-aid.

Today there are more than 1,100.

Buckley said the practice adds administrative costs, as much as $1 for every $10 spent.

The grants are supposed to be voluntary, but state governments are loath to turn down “free money,” especially in the knowledge that a rejected grant will go elsewhere.

And because members of Congress are focused on obtaining the grants — “scratching constituent backs,” in Buckley’s phrase — they are not spending time on those matters that are the proper job of the national legislature.

He said advocates for the status quo maintain that the federal government is able to attract more experts, but that assumes that “academic expertise trumps local knowledge.”

And he said that if redistribution of funds from rich states to poor ones is a legitimate goal, it would be better achieved by providing poor states with block grants, “without imposing the web of federal regulations.”

“The only solution is to terminate all of them,” Buckley said.

He said that federal grants account for 30 percent of all state revenues, so any reform cannot be accomplished overnight.

Instead, he proposed moving to single block grants for states, with no strings attached, phased in over a six-year period.

Doing so would reduce federal spending by one-sixth, rid Congress of distraction and restore citizens’ ability to control what is happening in their states.

“This is a propitious time” for such a proposal, Buckley said, with highly visible scandals at the Internal Revenue Service and the Veterans Administration, to name just two, “undermining the myth that Washington knows best.”

And it shouldn’t be a hard sell, at least not with the public. Buckley said that Americans still believe that state and local governments are better equipped than the federal government to handle housing (82 percent), transportation (78 percent), education (75 percent) and welfare (69 percent).

But nothing will happen until enough Americans learn of the extent of the grants-in-aid programs and their cost.

Buckley was sanguine about this prospect, noting that Congress did abolish the practice of earmarks (under pressure).

“A roused electorate can accomplish miracles.”

During the question period, he was asked about term limits.

Buckley said that prior to the passage of the 17th Amendment in 1913, members of the U.S. Senate were appointed by state legislatures and very few senators served more than two terms.

“It was not viewed as a career.”

But the expansion of the federal government has made being in Congress a career.

And for the member, “the natural instinct is to do whatever you can to protect it.”

The grants-in-aid system is a way to keep getting reelected.

“Term limits would eliminate careerism as the objective of entering Congress,” Buckley said. He added that it was unlikely Congress would vote to impose term limits on itself, so the most feasible method of getting term limits would be by a proposed constitutional amendment from the states (not Congress).

Buckley nimbly avoided touching on current political events, but someone did ask about the so-called “outsider” candidates running for president — Ben Carson, Sen. Bernie Sanders. (The questioner did not mention Donald Trump, nor did Buckley.)

Buckley said that despite a long career in the Senate, Sanders had made “zero impression, and is thus regarded as an outsider.”

He said Carson is a “genuine outsider,” and that such candidates are “all appealing to an extraordinary frustration with what is regarded as unacceptable dysfunction.”