Heaven knows there are a lot of things to complain about in what President Trump says and does or fails to say or do. IMO the lamest complaint is about the lack of a national plan for dealing with COVID-19. What earthly good would such a plan be other than to be something else for journalists to complain about and something else for state and local authorities to ignore? The reality is that under our system the federal government has precious little way of compelling the states to do anything and the primary responsibility for domestic matters resides in state governments which in turn supervise local governments which are generally strictly subordinate to them.
Whenever I hear such complaints I always think the same thing. “Complete the following sentence. President Trump should declare nationwide martial law because…” That’s what a national plan would take.
Those who think the federal government should be running everything in the country are betraying their blissful ignorance of how governments in the U. S. actually work. States are responsible for practically everything. The federal government is responsible for relatively little other than the military and foreign policy. As Pete Fisher aptly put it 20 years ago the federal government is an insurance company with an army.
C’mon, Dave. You know the drill. This allows partisan hacks to claim “a failure of leadership” by Trump while ignoring the horrid governance of governors etc.
Funny thing, NY, NJ, MA, IL……should I go on? Bluest of the blue, have fallen flat on their faces. FL, GA, SC, TX, NC (eh), The non-IL Midwest and so on……..so much better. Note I didn’t mention an elephant – CA. I think that’s worthy of investigation. But I bet its herd immunity just because they didn’t know they had it for such a long period.
You have asked this several times. I have answered several times. You have set up obvious straw man arguments now. “Those who think the federal government should be running everything in the country”
Neither I nor anyone else has suggested the federal govt should run everything. There are a half dozen or maybe a few more things that would be better off, probably much better off if the feds ran it. Of course that would require competence at a level that has been displayed in the past and the Trump admin cannot provide that, so maybe you are right.
Steve
steve, can you provide one example of a national plan for anything that was implemented in our lifetimes?
Vaccinations. H1N1 response. Ebola response. Anti-pollution standards (Superfund). Safety standards for cars (first seat belt law). Federal Aid Highway Act (Intestates). Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Steve
If the POTUS had instituted a national plan he would been accused of being a Nazi.
Strategic Petroleum Reserve – A law. 42 U.S. Code § 6234
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/6234
Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 – A law. Public Law 84-627
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Aid_Highway_Act_of_1956
Superfund – A law. Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfund
Anti-pollution standards. Various laws. One of them being the Clean Air Act.
https://archive.epa.gov/epa/aboutepa/epa-history-clean-air-act-1970.html
Vaccinations – Various Laws.
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/imz-managers/laws/index.html
H1N1 response and Ebola were as far as I can tell (hard to cut through the opinionated BS about them on-line) were handled (if belatedly in the H1N1 epidemic) by executive order. By Obama. I don’t think using his actions are a good precedent for future presidents considering the other emergency responses you mentioned past administrations were able to deal with through normal legislative means (passing laws and creating agencies under law).
Not one of those is a national plan. All are initiated and implemented by state and local governments. Start with smallpox vaccinations. When you dig into the details of what happened it’s obvious. You will search in vain for the federal law that required them. Those were state laws in every state.
No interstate highway was ever built without the consent and cooperation of the state within whose borders it was being built. Basically a state plan using state and federal money.
Nope. Flu vaccinations are manufactured by private companies but aided by CDC and FDA who plan which version of the flu we are likely to see. The interstate highway system was planned (you asked for plans) by the federal govt and was initially funded by the feds. It was planned as part of our national defense system. You are confusing execution with planning.
The Petroleum reserve was put into law. It is part of a plan to address national shortages of petroleum when foreign suppliers try to squeeze us with sudden cut offs. The Superfund was money set aside as part of a plan to address areas with extremely toxic pollution in areas where local governments did not have the funds to handle it. It might be executed at the local level, but the federal government planned this. The Clean Air Act is a law as part of a plan to address the national problem of air pollution. I makes it harder for one state to dump its externalities onto another state, while the first state enjoys the economic benefits.
It is blindingly obvious that we have national level problems that the federal govt plans for. Sometimes it even pays for those plans. The fact that those plans are sometimes varied out by the states doesn’t mean that it wasn’t planned by the federal government. I just stopped with a few in 30 seconds. There are lots more. Medicaid. Planned by the federal govt, carried out by the states. FEMA. A plan to help out overwhelmed state and local governments. FBI. An institution planned to handle crime that goes across state boundaries which individual states have trouble handling.
So we have national plans to help with emergencies and national plans to address problems that occur on a national level. Paying the states to carry out those plans does not obviate the federal planning. (Actually, our larger problem is the federal govt planning and imposing stuff for which they do not pay.)
Steve
The strategic oil reserve is just the federal government buying and storing oil. It’s a federal plan not a national one.
It doesn’t actually work that way. It was only planned nationally at the “from 50,000 feet” level.
So, what you’re saying is that you would be satisfied with a plan that nobody followed? Done! That happened back in January. I don’t think that’s what people mean when they say “we need a national plan”. They can establish goals but they cannot compel the states to meet those goals.
Again it just doesn’t work that way. The federal government lacks the authority to induce the states to do most things. They can lure them with cash but they can’t compel them.
steve, I think your view is highly colored by your experience—the military and medicine. The White House has near unlimited authority on what it can do with the military outside the U. S. borders but greatly limited within them. The federal government looms large in medicine by virtue of the large volume of federal spending for medical care—approaching two-thirds. But in most sectors of the economy and for most purposes the states are much, much more important than the federal government.
The instrumentality by which the federal government acts is the Congress. There are serious limitations over what can be accomplished while the members of Congress cower at home. The Congress should have acted following 9/11 to enable it to continue operations. It didn’t.
1) The original question was about plans for dealing with Covid and as you note the federal govt is involved in planning health care at many levels. You also keep ignoring the fact that the federal govt is heavily involved in plans for emergency aid. When states are overwhelmed the feds step in.
“They can establish goals but they cannot compel the states to meet those goals.”
They can also fund them. That was done with the highway plan and what got it started.
So back to the beginning, and I am not going to go through an exhaustive list again, the federal govt could hav and should have developed testing ability. They should have then deployed that to the areas where we first had people returning from overseas in big numbers, testing people returning and testing people in the areas where we first had diagnoses. We should have increased PPE production much sooner with inducements/payments from the fed govt.
Steve