*** Neg ***

1NC

Text: The fifty states should [insert plan mandates].

Only the states solve – the plan and permutation are ineffective and take too long

Holler 12 – Communications Director for Heritage Action for America (Dan, 04/04, “Thinking Outside the Beltway,” http://transportation.nationaljournal.com/2012/04/paying-for-it.php#2190872)

When it comes to the problem of how to pay for our nation’s transportation needs, the temptation in Washington is to view Washington as the solution. After tens of billions in Highway Trust Fund bailouts and nine short-term extensions, it is clear Washington does not hold the answer. The real answer is outside the beltway. Former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell recently scoffed at the idea of looking beyond Washington for transportation funding solutions, saying proponents of such a move “haven’t looked at any of the state budgets recently.” But the Governor misses the point. It is not that states are awash in cash (the federal government isn’t either), but rather that states are much more efficient. Last year, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels explained his state “can build in 1/2 the time at 2/3 the cost when we use our own money only and are free from the federal rulebook.” Literally just outside the Washington Beltway, a private company is adding four high-occupancy toll lanes for half the cost the government projected, and the lanes are better designed, too. Instead of looking for an innovative solution, too many in Congress prefer to debate various funding mechanisms for months on end knowing they will settle for a gimmick that ensures insolvency. There is a better way; lawmakers just need to know where to look.

The counterplan is key to spur broader federalism

McGuigan 11 – Editor of the Free Congress Family, Law & Democracy Report and the author of The Politics of Direct Democracy (Patrick B., 07/29, “CapitolBeakOK: Transportation Federalism -- and Flexibility -- Proposed in New Bill from Coburn, Lankford,” http://lankford.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=756&Itemid=100023)

In his statement, sent to CapitolBeatOK, Sen. Coburn said, “Washington’s addiction to spending has bankrupted the Highway Trust Fund. For years, lower-priority projects like earmarks have crowded out important priorities in our states, such as repairing crumbling roads and bridges. “Instead of burdening states and micromanaging local transportation decisions from Washington, states like Oklahoma should be free to choose how their transportation dollars are spent. I have no doubt that Oklahoma’s Transportation Director Gary Ridley will do a much better job deciding how Oklahoma’s transportation dollars are spent than bureaucrats and politicians in Washington.” Lankford applauded Coburn's leadership in the matter, observing, “This has been one of my top priorities since coming to Congress, and I’m happy to join Senator Coburn in this effort. This bill is a giant step for states by increasing transportation flexibility while improving efficiency. “By allowing states to opt-out of the federal bureaucracy, they will be able to take more control of their own resources. It will free Oklahoma to keep our own federal gas taxes and to fund new projects at our own discretion.” Joel Kintsel, executive vice president at OCPA, told CapitolBeatOK, "I am so proud of the leadership shown by Senator Coburn and Congressman Lankford. Hopefully, this is the beginning of a broader effort by Congress to return to federalism and withdraw from areas of activity rightfully belonging to the States.” Sen. McCain, the 2008 Republican nominee for president, said, “As a Federalist, I have long advocated that states should retain the right to keep the revenue from gas taxes paid by drivers in their own state. This bill would allow for this to happen and prevent Arizonans from returning their hard earned money to Washington. Arizonans have always received 95 cents or less for every dollar they pay federal gas taxes. This continues to be unacceptable, and for that reason I am a proud supported of the State Highway Flexibility Act.” Sen. Vitter asserted, “It’s very apparent how badly Congress can mismanage tax dollars, especially the Highway Trust fund which has needed to be bailed out three times since 2008. The states know their transportation needs better than Congress, so let’s put them in the driver’s seat to manage their own gas tax.” Hatch contended, “The federal government’s one-size-fits all transportation policies and mandates are wasting billions of taxpayer dollars and causing inexcusable delays in the construction of highways, bridges and roads in Utah and across the nation.

[insert specific link to the plan]

The impact is escalating warfare

Calabresi 95 – Assistant Professor, Northwestern University School of Law (Steven G., December, “Reflections on United States v. Lopez: ‘A GOVERNMENT OF LIMITED AND ENUMERATED POWERS’: IN DEFENSE OF UNITED STATES v. LOPEZ,” Lexis)

Small state federalism is a big part of what keeps the peace in countries like the United States and Switzerland. It is a big part of the reason why we do not have a Bosnia or a Northern Ireland or a Basque country or a Chechnya or a Corsica or a Quebec problem. 51 American federalism in the end is not a trivial matter or a quaint historical anachronism. American-style federalism is a thriving and vital institutional arrangement - partly planned by the Framers, partly the accident of history - and it prevents violence and war. It prevents religious warfare, it prevents secessionist warfare, and it prevents racial warfare. It is part of the reason why democratic majoritarianism in the United States has not produced violence or secession for 130 years, unlike the situation for example, in England, France, Germany, Russia, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Cyprus, or Spain. There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that is more important or that has done more to promote peace, prosperity, and freedom than the federal structure of that great document. There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that should absorb more completely the attention of the U.S. Supreme Court.

States CP

Solvency – General

The counterplan solves 100% of the case – extend Holler – the states are twice as efficient as the federal government in transportation investment, which means they solve even with a lack of funds – the plan doesn’t solve – Washington’s too inefficient and has no consistent funding mechanism

States can boost transportation infrastructure investments and keep them intact

Politico 12 (03/19, “GOP paves way for states to retake road funding,” http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/74196.html)

Congress may be on the road to re-upping the transportation bill, but there’s still a cadre of lawmakers who say it’s not too late to get the federal government out of the road-building and gas tax business. If anything, some Republicans say they are excited about finally getting some votes on what has long been a conservative dream. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) got a vote last week on his amendment to the Senate-passed bill that would send many transportation policy and funding decisions back to the states. The amendment was the first time in years senators got a serious chance to weigh in on the issue, and 30 senators (all Republicans) supported the long-shot attempt. A second devolution offering from Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) failed but also got 30 votes. In the House, GOP Reps. Tom Graves of Georgia, and Jeb Hensarling and Kevin Brady, both of Texas, hope to vote on a similar amendment whenever the House takes up a highway bill. “We’re going to continue the debate in the House,” Graves told POLITICO. “It’s going to be a new debate about how you fund transportation. Do you continue [a program] that adds to the deficit or do you do one that empowers the states? Conservatives see DeMint’s vote and Graves’s offering as good starting points, reminiscent of the long-fought battle over earmarks, now banned for the 112th Congress. Dan Holler, communications director of Heritage Action for America, said the conversation has been changed already. “A floor of 30 senators is a great place to start,” he said. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who took the lead on both selling and writing the two-year Senate bill, acknowledged, “That vote was too close for my liking.” DeMint says his amendment would cut government redundancy while keeping services intact and efficiently returning spending to the states. “Every time we have a bureaucracy and an administration [in Washington], every state duplicates that. Fifty state highway departments following federal rules and then their own,” DeMint said in an interview. “We can begin to downsize that. So the point is, if we ever want to balance our budget, the way to do it is not to just cut a little, but off every federal function.”

XT: States Solve Best

Most federal transportation spending is wasted

Wall Street Journal, 12 – editorial (“Why Your Highway Has Potholes,” 4/15,

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303815404577333631864470566.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

That makes too much sense for Washington. In a typical year only about 65 cents of every gas tax dollar is spent on roads and highways. The rest is intercepted by the public transit lobby and Congressional earmarkers. Then there are the union wages that pad the cost of all federal projects. The New York Times reported in 2010 that 8,074 Metropolitan Transportation Authority employees made $100,000 or more in 2009 even as the system loses money. Transit is the biggest drain. Only in New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. does public transit account for more than 5% of commuter trips. Even with a recent 2.3% gain in bus and rail use due to high gas prices, public transit still accounts for a mere 2% of all inner-city trips and closer to 1% outside of New York.

Politics and bureaucracy mean even if they fiat the aff – federal cutbacks in OTHER areas of transportation are inevitable – the states are a better forum

Strauss, 12 - associate director of Renewing America Publications at the Council on Foreign Relations (Rebecca, “Road to Nowhere: Federal Transportation Infrastructure Policy”, June, http://www.cfr.org/united-states/road-nowhere-federal-transportation-infrastructure-policy/p28419)

The federal government is poorly designed for a coordinated infrastructure policy. Responsibility for highway and transit policy alone is split among seven congressional committees. The closest the country has come to a coordinated national infrastructure plan was the National Transportation Plan in the 1970s, and the idea sank fast. Washington shoulders a minority share of the nation’s transportation costs, or about 25 percent of total transportation costs and 40 percent of capital transportation costs.11 Infrastructure in the United States has traditionally been a state and local affair. With national leaders framing infrastructure as a larger national problem, it would appear that the federal government is gearing up for a greater role. But those ambitions are hitting up against the wall of fiscal austerity. Given political realities, the best outcome could be a continuation of present transportation spending levels. Deep cuts in spending are a possibility with a Republican-controlled House opposed to either additional taxes or increased debt. Advocates of infrastructure investment are faced with squaring the circle, of doing more with less.

Devolving transportation to the states solves infrastructure upgrades better

Utt, 12 - Ph.D., is Herbert and Joyce Morgan Senior Research Fellow in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation (Robert, ““Turn Back” Transportation to the States”, 2/7,

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/02/turn-back-transportation-to-the-states)

With the latest dispute still unresolved, Congress and the President should try to escape this predictable money morass and instead craft a plan that benefits the motorists, bus operators, and truckers who pay the federal fuel tax that fills the trust fund and finances the system. To accomplish this, any new legislation should: Be limited to programs that enhance mobility and safety; Add capacity where needed on modes that people want to use; Relieve congestion; Upgrade existing infrastructure; and Devolve the resources and decision making to the states, which know their priorities better than Washington does. The government could accomplish these goals with a simple, efficient, and attractive option: Return the federal highway programs to the states, where much of the responsibility had been lodged until the Federal Aid Highway Act was enacted in 1956. Conflict and Deficiencies Inherent in a National Program While these debates over spending totals consume much of the conversation about transportation policy—as well as create much of the conflict—the spending totals themselves often do little to meet transportation objectives or improve mobility. Transportation spending totals are determined largely by the overall macroeconomic budgetary goals of either holding the line on budget deficits (2005) or stimulating the economy (2012) while preventing any increase in taxes, including the federal fuel tax that finances the trust fund. It is all about the money, not performance, and the traveling public suffers accordingly. Program Deficiency: Regional Inequity Chief among the ongoing sources of friction have been the pervasive regional spending inequities embodied in the federal program and maintained in all of its subsequent reauthorizations. Because of the current law’s flawed allocation formulas, about half of the states (called donors and located mostly in the South and Great Lakes region) pay proportionately more into the trust fund than they get back, and vice versa for the other half (called donees and located mostly in the Northeast). On a share-by-share basis, some donor states such as Texas, Florida, and South Carolina get less than an 85 percent share of the highway money they pay in, while New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts get more than 100 percent. As bad as this disparity is, the allocation of federal transit spending is even more inequitable.[1] Many highway donor states are also transit donor states, receiving much less for transit projects than they paid into the transit account, while many of the highway donee states are also transit donees. In response to growing complaints from donor states about the pervasive unfairness of the program, Congress has proposed a number of halfhearted efforts to accommodate the donor states. The current goal in draft legislation (S. 1813) is to achieve at least a 95 percent return, but that still leaves hundreds of millions of dollars on the table for the perennially shortchanged donor states. [2] The equity issue has since become more complicated as a consequence of the three general-fund bailouts of the trust fund, but the degree of inequity has not disappeared. Program Deficiency: Leaks and Diversions from the Trust Fund For the first several decades of the federal highway program’s existence, virtually all of its energy and resources were devoted to the task it was created to fulfill: building a 42,000-mile high-speed, limited-access interstate highway system from coast to coast and border to border, connecting all of the major cities in between. That task was largely completed by the early 1980s, and with no compelling and clear objective to guide the highway program in the aftermath of this accomplishment, successive Congresses began the process of diverting the trust fund’s resources to other purposes. While the diversions focused initially on non-road, transportation-related investments such as urban transit programs, non-transportation projects such as nature trails, museums, flower plantings, metropolitan planning organizations, bicycles, Appalachian regional development programs, parking lots, university research, thousands of earmarks, and historic renovation became eligible over time for financial support from the highway trust fund. As a consequence of this growing number of diversions, as much as 35 percent of federal fuel tax revenues paid by the motorists is spent on projects unrelated to general-purpose roads. The magnitude of these leakages also undermines assertions by many in Congress and the road-building industry that road conditions and congestion can be improved if fuel taxes are increased to allow for more highway spending. To the extent that the existing leakages maintain their share of total trust fund resources—as they traditionally do—a substantial portion of any increase in fuel tax revenues will be diverted to spending programs that offer little or no benefit to general motorists or to improvements in capacity, safety, or congestion mitigation. Under the allocations mandated by existing law, an additional dollar raised in tax revenues would provide only an extra 65 cents for roads because 35 percent would be siphoned off for other purposes.

Plan can’t solve without the counterplan

Puentes, 11- senior fellow with the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program where he also directs the Program's Metropolitan Infrastructure Initiative (Robert, “State Transportation Reform: Cut to Invest in Transportation to Deliver the Next Economy,”

http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2011/2/22%20infrastructure%20puentes/0222_infrastructure_puentes.pdf

The recent dust-up over high speed rail proves an important point: States and governors are still in the driver’s seat when it comes to transportation decisionmaking and project selection. So even with robust federal action, and a framework that puts transportation policy in the service of an American economy driven by exports, powered by low carbon, fuelled by innovation, an rich with opportunity, it is still incumbent upon the states to carry it out.

AT: No Solvency – $

States already have the money for the counterplan

Slone 8 – transportation policy analyst at The Council of State Governments (Sean, “TRANSPORTATION & INFRASTRUCTURE FINANCE,” PDF)

The commission points out that any funding mechanism is unlikely to score well on all the criteria, so the choice of an optimal approach will require value judgments to be made by policymakers on the goals they most want to advance.12 Ultimately, the most significant item in this list for many policymakers may be political viability. Regardless of how a funding mechanism may look on paper, decisions about how to enhance revenue to fund transportation are never made in a vacuum. Political considerations always play an important role in determining the direction a state ultimately takes. Nevertheless, drawing on important lessons learned over the years in many states, a consensus appears to have emerged about the steps necessary to successfully propose and enact new or enhanced revenue measures to fund transportation. As the Transportation Research Board’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program points out in a 2007 report, most funding initiatives come about either through legislative actions or through ballot initiatives and referenda. But regardless of how they are generated, the same steps are required to achieve success. They include: Developing a consensus on the scope of current and future transportation needs and on the importance of acting to address them; Developing a specific plan and program of investments for which additional funding is needed and demonstrating what benefits are expected from the proposed investments; Identifying clearly established roles, responsibilities and procedures for executing the plan and implementing the proposed improvements; Describing the revenue sources in detail and providing the rationales for their use; Designing and carrying out a public education and advocacy plan and campaign; Developing sustained leadership and demonstrable, sustained support; and Planning for and laying out a clear and reasonable timetable.23 Assessing the political landscape, researching the options, educating the electorate and implementing new revenue-enhancing measures will occupy a substantial amount of time for state governments in the next few years. The choices and the efforts they make will determine whether our nation’s transportation system ends up on the road to success.

The states are comparatively better at transportation investment – they can raise revenue

Horowitz 12 – Madison Project (Daniel, 05/03, “Devolution of Transportation Authority is Solution to Earmark Problem,” http://madisonproject.com/2012/05/devolution-of-transportation-authority-is-solution-to-earmark-problem/)

There is no doubt that many localities are in need of some infrastructure updates. But there is an obvious solution to this problem. Let’s stop pooling the gas tax revenue of all 50 states into one pile for the inane and inefficient process of federal transportation policy. Every state, due to diverse topography, population density, and economic orientation, has its own transportation needs. By sucking up all the money into one pile in Washington, every district is forced to beg with open arms at the federal trough. Moreover, a large portion of the transportation funds are consumed by federal mandates for wasteful projects, mass transit, Davis-Bacon union wages, and environmental regulations. This is why we need to devolve most authority for transportation projects to the states. That way every state can raise the requisite revenue needed to purvey its own infrastructure projects. The residents of the state, who are presumably acquainted with those projects, will easily be able to judge on the prudence of the projects and decide whether they are worth the higher taxes. If they want more airports, mass transit, or bike lanes, that’s fine – but let’s have that debate on a local level.

AT: No Solvency – Roads/Highways

States solve roads and highways

NCPA 11 – National Center for Policy Analysis (06/20, “Federal Government Should Leave Transportation Infrastructure to the States,” http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=20789)

These considerations do not apply to appropriations from the federal Highway Trust Fund, which receives dedicated revenues from road users, and has no claims on general revenues. Highway Trust Fund revenues could be increased by raising the dedicated federal fuel taxes but, because conditions vary from state to state, and because of the waste involved in the federal financing of state roads, it would be preferable to meet road funding shortages by raising state charges. States are in a better position than the federal government to reform the current systems of owning, funding and managing highways, says Roth. Abolition of federal financing is likely to encourage state and private sector funding, and successful reforms pioneered by some states could quickly be replicated in others.

Only the states solve highways

Kilcarr 12 – senior editor, Fleet Owner (Sean, 05/16, “Marking the “devolution” of highway funding,” http://fleetowner.com/regulations/marking-devolution-highway-funding)

Scriber said the members of the policy panel – Adrian Moore, Ph.D.,vp-policy with the Reason Foundation; Gabriel Roth, research fellow at the Independent Institute; and Randall O’Toole, senior fellow with the Cato Institute – largely agreed that the federal government should remove itself from the highway funding process and let states take over. “It’s inherently more efficient for the states to handle this rather than add in the extra step of the federal government collecting and then redistributing fuel taxes,” Scriber pointed out. “Also note that Congress has not increased federal fuel excise tax rates since 1993. Since then, inflation has eroded the buying power of those tax dollars by more than one-third. This has pushed the HTF to the brink of insolvency, yet none of the proposals pending before Congress address this imminent threat to our nation’s surface transportation infrastructure.”

AT: 50 State Fiat Bad

The counterplan is legitimate –

1. Reciprocity – affs can fiat a plethora of actors within the federal government like the Department of Transportation

2. It’s real world – the National Governors Association and National Conference of State Legislatures prove the 50 states work together

3. Neg ground – the states counterplan is a core neg generic on domestic topics – it’s a key check against aff innovation

4. Limits – requiring a fed key warrant is key to determine which affs can be run strategically

5. DAs don’t solve our offense – the counterplan is key impact defense against a multiplicity of advantages and add-ons

6. Reject the argument, not the team – community norms mean negs will never be deterred from running the states counterplan

AT: Links To Politics

1. There’s no reason Obama would be blamed for state policies

2. The counterplan doesn’t link – states operate below the federal political radar

Celli 1 – Chief of the Civil Rights Bureau, New York State Attorney General's Office (Andrew, 64 Alb. L. Rev. 1091, Lexis)

I also saw that state enforcement officers, like me and like Peter Lehner, with our small and agile offices operating below the national political radar, that we can use these federal laws in creative and aggressive ways and perhaps in a way that is insulated from the kinds of political pressure that, say, the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department faces.

AT: Perm – Do Both

1. This links to the Federalism net benefit because it includes the Usfg

2. The perm fails – federal investment guts solvency – the states must act independently

Roth 10 – civil engineer and transportation economist. He is currently a research fellow at the Independent Institute. During his 20 years with the World Bank, he was involved with transportation projects on five continents (Gabriel, June, “Federal Highway Funding,” http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/transportation/highway-funding)

Today, the interstate highway system is long complete and federal financing has become an increasingly inefficient way to modernize America's highways. Federal spending is often misallocated to low-value activities, and the regulations that go hand-in-hand with federal aid stifle innovation and boost highway costs. The Department of Transportation's Federal Highway Administration will spend about $52 billion in fiscal 2010, of which about $11 billion is from the 2009 economic stimulus bill.1 FHWA's budget mainly consists of grants to state governments, and FHWA programs are primarily funded from taxes on gasoline and other fuels.2 Congress implements highway policy through multi-year authorization bills. The last of these was passed in 2005 as the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU). Congress will likely be reauthorizing highway programs in 2011, and it is currently pursuing many misguided policy directions in designing that legislation. One damaging policy direction involves efforts to reduce individual automobile travel, which will harm the economy and undermine mobility choice. Another damaging policy direction is the imposition of federal "livability" standards in transportation planning. Such standards would federalize land-use planning and pose a serious threat to civil liberties and the autonomy of local communities. Finally, ongoing federal mandates to reduce fuel consumption have the serious side effect of making road travel more dangerous. The federal government pursues these misguided goals by use of its fiscal powers and regulatory controls, and by diverting dedicated vehicle fuel taxes into less efficient forms of transportation. This essay reviews the history of federal involvement in highways, describing the evolution from simple highway funding to today's attempts to centrally plan the transportation sector. It describes why federal intervention reduces innovation, creates inefficiencies in state highway systems, and damages society by reducing individual freedom and increasing highway fatalities. Taxpayers and transportation users would be better off if federal highway spending, fuel taxes, and related regulations were eliminated. State and local governments can tackle transportation without federal intervention. They should move toward market pricing for transportation usage and expand the private sector's role in the funding and operation of highways.

AT: Perm – Do The CP

The perm severs the Usfg, which is the government in Washington D.C.

Encarta 2k – Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia (http://encarta.msn.com)

“The federal government of the United States is centered in Washington DC.”

Severance is a reason to reject the perm – it makes the aff a moving target, skewing negative ground

States Solve- Uniformity

The NCCUSL exists to coordinate uniform laws among all states, DC, and the territories, its easier for states to adapt than federal law

Carter & Miller, 1- *attorney and **Professor at the University of Oklahoma College of Law and Chair of the Executive Committee of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL)

(Truman Carter and Fred H. Miller, American Indian Law Review, “Uniform Laws and tribal legislation; one tribe’s perspective,” 2001/2002, Lexis-Nexis Academic)

One hundred and ten years ago, what was to become the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL or Conference) held its first meeting in Saratoga Springs, New York. Today, NCCUSL has representatives from every state, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. It is responsible for hundreds of statutes that have been enacted by the jurisdictions that comprise it, including the Uniform Commercial Code and other equally important statutes in the areas of business law, family law, trust and estates law, civil procedure, and other legal areas. NCCUSL is an organization peculiar to the federal system of government, and is unique in American law. "American law" of course actually consists of fifty separate, and potentially differing, bodies of state law, co-existing with, and overlaid by, federal law. The federal Constitution reserves to the states "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states." Because of this limitation, nearly all private law - contracts, negotiable instruments, business organizations, marriage and divorce, for example - and most areas of criminal law, are left for definition and regulation by the legislatures and courts of the several states. As the United States developed a modern economy national in scope, the need for a common, predictable, nationwide legal system became crucial. There were at least two methods for unifying the legal systems of the states. First, state law could be preempted by the Federal Government through repeal of the Tenth Amendment, or by an expansive interpretation of the commerce clause and other express powers delegated to Congress (which, of course, was what ultimately happened to a degree). Alternatively, the states could create a forum and a vehicle by which they could voluntarily agree to develop, and then separately adopt, uniform legislation on important subjects of common concern. That was the path chosen in 1891 when NCCUSL was conceived; [*90] it remains a viable approach even today notwithstanding the expansion of federal authority because uniform acts, like Congressional acts, must fit into the overall body of American law, and that body of law for the most part is state law. Thus uniform state law is more easily adapted than uniform federal law.

The NCCUSL has long drafted uniform state policies that meet the unique needs of all states

NCCUSL 5 (“UNIFORM DEBT-MANAGEMENT SERVICES ACT”, The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, July 21-28, 2005, http://www.law.upenn.edu/bll/archives/ulc/ucdc/2005Final.htm)

The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL), now in its 114th year, provides states with non-partisan, well-conceived and well-drafted legislation that brings clarity and stability to critical areas of state statutory law.

Conference members must be lawyers, qualified to practice law. They are practicing lawyers, judges, legislators and legislative staff and law professors, who have been appointed by state governments as well as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands to research, draft and promote enactment of uniform state laws in areas of state law where uniformity is desirable and practical.

• NCCUSL strengthens the federal system by providing rules and procedures that are consistent from state to state but that also reflect the diverse experience of the states.

• NCCUSL statutes are representative of state experience, because the organization is made up of representatives from each state, appointed by state government.

• NCCUSL keeps state law up-to-date by addressing important and timely legal issues.

• NCCUSL’s efforts reduce the need for individuals and businesses to deal with different laws as they move and do business in different states.

• NCCUSL’s work facilitates economic development and provides a legal platform for foreign entities to deal with U.S. citizens and businesses.

• NCCUSL Commissioners donate thousands of hours of their time and legal and drafting expertise every year as a public service, and receive no salary or compensation for their work.

• NCCUSL’s deliberative and uniquely open drafting process draws on the expertise of commissioners, but also utilizes input from legal experts, and advisors and observers representing the views of other legal organizations or interests that will be subject to the proposed laws.

• NCCUSL is a state-supported organization that represents true value for the states, providing services that most states could not otherwise afford or duplicate.

States Solve- Modeling

The act of state cooperation in the counterplan makes it visible internationally – their evidence doesn’t assume all 50 acting collectively

Chi 90, (Keon S., Expert on Federalism and State Government, Council of State Governments National Center for State Governance Director, Former Government/Polisci Professor at Georgetown, “Resurgence of Multistate Regionalism,” Council of State Governments, July 1990 http://www.csg.org/programs/ncic/documents/ResurgenceofMultistateRegionalism-KeonChi-Spectrum-July1990.pdf)

States gain several advantages when taking a regional approach as compared to working alone. First, a regional approach allows state officials to pool their expertise and experience. Second, a regional approach raises policy issues more effectively and, as a result, has a greater impact. Third, such an approach helps states better deal with crisis situations by sharing resources and facilities. Fourth, a regional approach can exert more influence and enhance state visibility in Washington and overseas. And, fifth, it is cost effective.

State government actions now have foreign policy implications because of increasing globalization and internalization of formally domestic issues

Robinson 7 - Yale Law School, J.D. 2006. Currently Fox Fellow at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (Nick Robinson 2007 Akron Law Review “Citizens Not Subjects: U.S. Foreign Relations Law and the Decentralization of Foreign Policy” Lexis)

And yet, state and local governments today have become deeply enmeshed in international affairs as globalization has decentralized foreign relations. On the one hand, localities have become more autonomous international actors than they ever were or could have been before. In pursuing interests with international implications, they tread in a sphere traditionally monopolized by the federal government. On the other hand, the internationalization of many formerly domestic issues means that an increasing number of traditional state and local government actions now have foreign policy implications.

The emergence of localities as actors in American foreign policy creates new possibilities for creating more participatory and democratic international relations. It also merely reflects a world where increased interconnectivity across borders and the global regulation of markets and values has collapsed local and international concerns. This article will argue that U.S. foreign relations law has failed to address this new reality. The Supreme Court has largely clung either explicitly or implicitly to a jurisprudence that holds that the country should speak [*649] with "one voice" in foreign relations. Such a position is not only naive, but it also weakens American democracy. With globalization's commingling of the local and the international, a strong judicial bias towards federalizing issues with a bearing on foreign relations will lead to a hollowing out of the decision-making power of localities. States and municipalities will risk becoming largely units of administrative governance.

The growing intersection of state and foreign governments creates influential relationships between governors and international officials, resulting in collaboration on policies and reforms

Fry, Earl. Feb 15, 2009 "The Evolving Role of US State Governments in the International Economy" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the ISA's 50th ANNUAL CONVENTION "EXPLORING THE PAST, ANTICIPATING THE FUTURE", http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p310932_index.html

Globalization involves the growing intersection of the local with the global and helps explain why state and even local governments are involved in what John Kincaid calls “constituent diplomacy,” even when they are simply fulfilling their traditional role of protecting and enhancing the interests of the people whom they represent.24 During the 2001-2002 legislative years, 886 bills and resolutions linked to some aspect of foreign relations were introduced in state legislatures, and 306 were adopted. This type of activity is up dramatically from the beginning of the 1990s.25 Governors may also be actively engaged abroad, not only meeting with their counterparts in other countries, but even occasionally with leaders of national governments.26 In May 2006, President Vicente Fox came to the United States for formal visits with governors in California, Washington, and Utah. His visit with Governor Jon Huntsman, Jr. in sparsely populated Utah was prompted by Huntsman’s meeting with Fox in Mexico City a year earlier, and Huntsman’s willingness to sponsor a resolution passed by the Western Governors’ Association which supports a guest-worker program with Mexico. Utah’s government is also one of several states which allow undocumented residents to attend public colleges and universities at in-state tuition rates and have issued special permits authorizing them to drive motor vehicles. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California expressed reservations about Washington’s proposal to beef up U.S. security along the southern border by deploying National Guard troops, echoing Fox’s own line of thinking. Mexico’s national government also recognizes that some state governments are potential allies in convincing Washington to endorse more pro-Mexico policies, especially in the area of immigration and guest workers. This rationale helps explain why Mexico operates 47 consulates which are spread around the United States, far more than any other nation. These consular officials serve not only the needs of the more than 10 million Mexican citizens who live in the United States and send over $20 billion in remittances back to their home country annually, but also lobby U.S. state and local government officials in behalf of the Mexican national government. In a similar vein, other foreign governments have almost 1,500 consular offices or honorary consuls to represent their interests outside of Washington, D.C., and their duties include maintaining close contacts with state and local governments.27

AT: Federal leadership Key

Federal leadership is irrelevant to transportation policy

Puentes, 11 - senior fellow with the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program where he also directs the Program's Metropolitan Infrastructure Initiative (Robert, “Transportation Reform of 1991 Remains Relevant,” 12/19, http://www.brookings.edu/up-front/posts/2011/12/19-transportation-reform-puentes)

In the absence of federal leadership, metropolitan areas around the country are acting on their own to envision, design, and finance the next generation transportation system in America. Places as diverse as Charlotte, Denver, St. Louis, Oklahoma City, Seattle, Phoenix, and Milwaukee—are taxing themselves, dedicating substantial local money, and effectively contributing to the construction of the nation’s critical infrastructure system. The federal government needs to follow and align its resources to help those that help themselves. Metros like Sacramento, Salt Lake City, Chicago, and Minneapolis-St. Paul are examples of places working to move regional planning away from simply aggregating lists of local projects, and instead specifically connect metropolitan growth with transportation investments. This approach examines land use patterns, density, and urban form to find innovative solutions to challenges like housing, carbon emissions, agricultural preservation, economic development, and job access. Others like San Francisco are applying rigorous analytical criteria and performance assessments to how they plan to spend taxpayer dollars. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission there ranked their local members’ projects with a combination of qualitative assessment from an advisory board and quantitative modeling of cost-benefit analysis for a select number of projects. The idea is prioritize those projects that score the highest, not just those with the greatest political support. These kinds of innovations and self-help epitomize a new 21st century approach to strengthening metropolitan economies that Washington should explicitly embrace. Recognition might include: more direct funding to certain MPOs, more flexible “mode neutral funding,” more streamlined planning processes, more direct reporting to federal agencies, and reduced bureaucracy. Other examples abound and great potential exists to build on the gains of ISTEA in order to strengthen the economic vitality of metropolitan areas and, therefore the nation. The overall vision is not that different from what visionary Congressional leaders laid out two decades ago. The difference is that, unlike 1991, it is clear the innovation today is going to come from the bottom-up and not the top-down.

Federal Government Models States

State action is modeled by the federal government

Halberstam and Hills, 1- *assistant professor law at the University of Michigan Law School specializing in U.S. constitutional law and **professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School, specializing in U.S. constitutional law, local government law, the law of federalism and intergovernmental relations

(Daniel Halberstam and Roderick M. Hills, Jr., The American Academy of Political and Social Science, “State Autonomy in Germany and the United States,” 03-2001, Leixs-Nexis Academic)

The states may exploit this power to initiate programs as a practical means to counteract Congress's constitutional authority to federalize policy areas. For example, before Congress generates enough political will to legislate in any given area, states may step into the field with their own policy proposals. One result is that state policy initiatives may be quite influential in the federal lawmaking process by providing the initial impetus and sometimes even blueprint for federal action (Elliot, Ackerman, and Millian 1985). To bypass or overrule the states, not only must Congress often demonstrate that its proposed regulatory scheme is politically desirable, but it must do so by arguing specifically against the continued existence of active state regulation.

Federalism DA

Uniqueness

The counterplan provides uniqueness for the DA – extend McGuigan – allowing states to invest in their own transportation infrastructure will spur a broader Congressional effort to return power to the states

Transportation power is shifting to the states now

Kilcarr 5/16 – senior editor, Fleet Owner (Sean, “Marking the “devolution” of highway funding,” http://fleetowner.com/regulations/marking-devolution-highway-funding)

As Congress continues to debate a variety of surface transportation funding bills – most notably the two-year Senate sponsored Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21) – several groups believe such federal-directed efforts are almost becoming moot as highway funding issues are increasingly “devolving” to the states. At a briefing on Capitol Hill this week, a panel of experts led by Marc Scriber, land-use and transportation policy analyst with the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), argued that near-default status of the Highway Trust Fund (HTF) due to inadequate fuel tax revenues and policy gridlock at the federal level is increasingly pushing states and localities to figure out ways to generate the funds required to build and maintain U.S. bridges and roads. “We’ve argued in the past that responsibility for generating highway funds should ‘devolve’ to the states, but now that’s a largely ‘defacto reality’ as declining HTF revenues are forcing the states to look for new ways to generate the monies they need,” Scriber told Fleet Owner.

Federalism is strengthening – the states are stepping up

Katz 12 – Vice President and Director, Metropolitan Policy Program, Global Cities Initiative (Bruce, 03/18, “Will the Next President Remake Federalism?” http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2012/03/18-federalism-katz)

The genius of American federalism is that it diffuses power among different layers of government and across disparate sectors of society. States are the key constitutional partners, because they have broad powers over such market-shaping policy areas as infrastructure, innovation, energy, education and skills training. But other sub-national units - particularly major cities and metropolitan areas - also are critical, because they concentrate and agglomerate the assets that drive prosperity and share leadership with actors in the corporate, civic, university and other spheres. When the federal government becomes polarized and fails to act on critical issues of national importance, states and metros can step in to take on larger roles. With Washington mired in partisan gridlock, the states and metropolitan areas are doing just that. With federal innovation funding at risk, metros like New York City and states like Ohio and Tennessee are making sizable commitments to attract innovative research institutions, commercialize leading-edge research and grow innovation-intensive firms. With the future of federal trade policy unclear, metro areas like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Minneapolis/St. Paul and states like Colorado and New York are reorienting their economic development strategies toward exports and the attraction of innovative foreign companies and skilled immigrants. With federal energy policy in shambles, metro areas like Seattle and Philadelphia are cementing their niches in energy-efficient technologies, and states like Connecticut are experimenting with green banks to help deploy clean technologies at scale. State green banks can play a crucial role in financing clean energy projects by combining scarce public resources with private investment, and then leveraging the funds to make each public $1 support $5 or $10 or even more dollars of investment. With federal transportation policy in limbo, metro areas like Jacksonville and Savannah and states like Michigan are modernizing their air, rail and sea freight hubs to position themselves for an expansion of global trade. What unites these disparate efforts is intent. After decades of pursuing fanciful illusions (e.g., becoming the next Silicon Valley) or engaging in copycat strategies, states and metros are deliberately building on their special assets, attributes and advantages using business-planning techniques honed in the private sector. The bubbling of state and metro innovation offers an affirmative and practical counterpoint to a Washington that has become increasingly hyper-partisan and overly ideological and gives the next president an opportunity to engage states and metropolitan areas as true working partners in a focused campaign for national economic renewal.

Federalism high – internet

Dean 12 – served six terms as the 79th Governor of Vermont, former chairman of the Democratic National Committe (Howard, 05/10, “Decentralization in the 21st century: the internet gives power to the people,” http://www.montrealgazette.com/health/Decentralization+21st+century+internet+gives+power+people/6601105/story.html)

The plain truth is that there is no real future for the decentralization of government in the United States. There is too much to undo, and the price tag would be prohibitive, even in better economic times. But there will be a massive decentralization anyway. Young people on the Internet have now achieved an extraordinary influence on public policy, vastly exceeding the influence of Congress on issues they care about. In 2011, the largest bank in the U.S., Bank of America, announced that it would impose a $5-a-month fee on those who used debit cards. In the old days there would have been a public uproar but eventually it would have faded and the fee structure would have remained. But within three days of the 2011 fee announcement, over a million people, organized by various online groups, had pledged to remove their deposits from Bank of America and put them in credit unions instead. On the fourth day, Bank of America rescinded the new fees. More impressive was the collapse of the intellectual-property bill that had made it out of committee in the Senate with bipartisan support, a rare occurrence in today’s political environment in the U.S. The entertainment industry, which had lobbied for the bill, knew well how to move the process in Washington, while the Googles of the world knew little. (The bill favoured the creative industry at the expense of the internet providers.) But Google and its friends did know how to reach almost all of the Americans who have contempt for Congress – about 90 per cent of them, if the polls are to be believed. After a campaign that involved the voluntary shutdown of major websites, and notices explaining what Americans could do to get their views known by public officials, both the White House and congressional email services stopped working because of the enormous outpouring of messages from outraged users of the net. After a fruitless day of bluster trying to explain the reason for the bill, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that the bill would not be voted on, and two years of work was washed away. The future of decentralization is alive and well in America and elsewhere, but it is not the federal or central governments that will effect the change. That will be done by the public, newly empowered by the increasing penetration of the preferred weapon of democracy advocates everywhere: the World Wide Web.

Generic Links

Responsibility for transportation infrastructure has shifted to the states

Dilger 11 – Senior Specialist in American National Government (Robert Jay, 01/05, “Federalism Issues in Surface Transportation Policy: Past and Present,” www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R40431.pdf)

American federalism, which shapes the roles, responsibilities, and interactions among and between the federal government, the states, and local governments, is continuously evolving, adapting to changes in American society and American political institutions. The nature of federalism relationships in surface transportation policy has also evolved over time, with the federal government’s role becoming increasingly influential, especially since the Federal-Aid to Highway Act of 1956 which authorized the interstate highway system. In recent years, state and local government officials, through their public interest groups (especially the National Governors Association, National Conference of State Legislatures, National Association of Counties, National League of Cities, U.S. Conference of Mayors, and American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials) have lobbied for increased federal assistance for surface transportation grants and increased flexibility in the use of those funds. They contend that they are better able to identify surface transportation needs in their states than federal officials and are capable of administering federal grant funds with relatively minimal federal oversight. They also argue that states have a long history of learning from one another. In their view, providing states flexibility in the use of federal funds results in better surface transportation policy because it enables states to experiment with innovative solutions to surface transportation problems and then share their experiences with other states.

Federal transportation infrastructure investment wrecks state autonomy

Kendalls 8 – Helium (Christopher, 01/06, “Should the federal government make transportation infrastructure a funding priority,” http://www.helium.com/debates/97882-should-the-federal-government-make-transportation-infrastructure-a-funding/side_by_side)

Yet none of this is really the burden or responsibility of the federal government. There are times when the federal government may have a vested interest in doing so, depending on how the metropolitan area lies in importance to the rest of the countries economic interest, but quite honestly, transportation infrastructure is something that cities can and often do address by themselves without the help of the federal government. Too often the federal government gets involved in the business of rescuing or attempting to jump start economic progress in an metropolitan area with little if any return on their investment. Cities become codependent on the federal government and loose their autonomy. Also, individuals wouldn't really like the way the federal government addresses transportation infrastructure to begin with, particularly when it is the government that is responsible for building that infrastructure. The quirks and character that go along with streets in many neighborhoods would be put aside for a standardized, almost homogeneous methodology for road building.

Federal involvement in transportation infrastructure is unwarranted – hurts federalism

Yglesias 12 – Slate Magazine (Matthew, “Rebooting American Federalism,” http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/02/16/rebooting_american_federalism.html)

Bruce Katz has a thoughtful paper on the role of federalism in economic strategy, and while calling for further study is rarely the most exciting policy suggestion I think this is a good idea: Finally, the federal government, in conjunction with the states and localities, could create a National Laboratory on Federalism and Competitiveness. The laboratory would have three separate missions: (a) capture and disseminate the best economy-shaping innovations under way in states and metropolitan areas, to speed replication and improvement; (b) capture and disseminate the best innovations under way in other nations, particularly countries where key powers are shared among different levels of government; and (c) report periodically to the federal, state and local governments on ways in which policies at all levels could be refined to enable or scale up the most promising innovations. A biennial Federalist Forum could be held to debate the recommendations, bringing together, for the first time in decades, key representatives of each level of government and key corporate, civic and academic institutions. It's striking that the particular division of responsibilities between federal, state, and local government in the United States is largely a product of contingency and path dependence rather than specific thinking about what should be done by whom and why. The federal government, for example, is very involved in the financing of local transportation infrastructure in a way that seems unwarranted. At the same time, given that people move a fair amount we seem to me to be under-centralized in terms of curriculum design. Medicaid and Medicare treat the state/federal division of responsibility for health care in a totally inconsistent way. DC politics seems like crazytown nine days out of ten so it's difficult to imagine a calm rethink of the division of labor and careful study of how other federal countries split these things up, but it would be nice to take a look at.

Transportation power is shifting to the states

McGuigan 11 – Editor of the Free Congress Family, Law & Democracy Report and the author of The Politics of Direct Democracy (Patrick B., 07/29, “CapitolBeakOK: Transportation Federalism -- and Flexibility -- Proposed in New Bill from Coburn, Lankford,” http://lankford.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=756&Itemid=100023)

In his statement, sent to CapitolBeatOK, Sen. Coburn said, “Washington’s addiction to spending has bankrupted the Highway Trust Fund. For years, lower-priority projects like earmarks have crowded out important priorities in our states, such as repairing crumbling roads and bridges. “Instead of burdening states and micromanaging local transportation decisions from Washington, states like Oklahoma should be free to choose how their transportation dollars are spent. I have no doubt that Oklahoma’s Transportation Director Gary Ridley will do a much better job deciding how Oklahoma’s transportation dollars are spent than bureaucrats and politicians in Washington.” Lankford applauded Coburn's leadership in the matter, observing, “This has been one of my top priorities since coming to Congress, and I’m happy to join Senator Coburn in this effort. This bill is a giant step for states by increasing transportation flexibility while improving efficiency. “By allowing states to opt-out of the federal bureaucracy, they will be able to take more control of their own resources. It will free Oklahoma to keep our own federal gas taxes and to fund new projects at our own discretion.” Joel Kintsel, executive vice president at OCPA, told CapitolBeatOK, "I am so proud of the leadership shown by Senator Coburn and Congressman Lankford. Hopefully, this is the beginning of a broader effort by Congress to return to federalism and withdraw from areas of activity rightfully belonging to the States.” Sen. McCain, the 2008 Republican nominee for president, said, “As a Federalist, I have long advocated that states should retain the right to keep the revenue from gas taxes paid by drivers in their own state. This bill would allow for this to happen and prevent Arizonans from returning their hard earned money to Washington. Arizonans have always received 95 cents or less for every dollar they pay federal gas taxes. This continues to be unacceptable, and for that reason I am a proud supported of the State Highway Flexibility Act.” Sen. Vitter asserted, “It’s very apparent how badly Congress can mismanage tax dollars, especially the Highway Trust fund which has needed to be bailed out three times since 2008. The states know their transportation needs better than Congress, so let’s put them in the driver’s seat to manage their own gas tax.” Hatch contended, “The federal government’s one-size-fits all transportation policies and mandates are wasting billions of taxpayer dollars and causing inexcusable delays in the construction of highways, bridges and roads in Utah and across the nation.

Economy Impact

Federalism is key to the economy

McGinnis 96 – Professor of Law at Yeshiva University (December, “THE DECLINE OF THE NATION STATE AND ITS EFFECT ON CONSTITUTIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC LAW: CONTRIBUTION: THE DECLINE OF THE WESTERN NATION STATE AND THE RISE OF THE REGIME OF INTERNATIONAL FEDERALISM,” Lexis)

Economists today have explained that the original Constitutional design of a federalist free trading system was at the heart of the United States' steady rise in becoming an economic superpower by the beginning of the twentieth century. 47 However, federalism was more than just a political engine of economic expansion; it was perhaps the Framers' most important contribution to solving the greatest dilemma of political theory: although a government needs to be powerful enough to protect property rights, a government sufficiently powerful to accomplish this end is also powerful enough to expropriate the wealth of its citizens. 48 As both Professors Barry Weingast and Friedrich von Hayek have suggested, federalism provides a structural solution to this dilemma. 49 Forcing state governments to compete for the capital and skills of a national citizenry imposes substantial limits on a state government's ability to expropriate. [*916] Like the federal government in the original constitutional order, the international structures arising from GATT and Bretton Woods perform the important but essentially limited function of maintaining a free trade zone. The resulting competition for trade and capital among nation states imposes limitations on their regulatory power not unlike the limitations imposed on the power of states in nineteenth-century America. Government's ability to redistribute wealth and hamper enterprise is again restrained--this time on a global scale. Viewed as a new political order, the regime of international federalism is an important impetus behind the program of regulatory relief and the dismantling of government agencies occurring in the West, particularly in the United States. 50 Over the last several decades, the free trade regime has silently strengthened antiregulatory interest groups because businesses in the global marketplace have become acutely aware of regulations that disadvantage them at home and of the greater opportunities that they now have to exit if they do not receive relief. 51 Free trade and open markets simultaneously raise the cost of producer group inaction with respect to burdensome regulations, and give such groups more leverage to force changes in the regime's rules.

The impact is extinction

Weekly Press 8 Philadelphia Community Newspaper (10/22, “What to do when the economy crashes: Thoughts from KATHY CHANGE,” http://weeklypress.com/what-to-do-when-the-economy-crashes-thoughts-from-kathy-change-p941-1.htm)

Soon the economy will collapse. As you know, America relies upon Japan and other foreign investors to prop up its dollar. We are a bankrupt nation. Much profit could be made from the collapse of the U.S. economy. U.S. land and industries will be up for sale at bargain basement prices for foreign capital. At this point Americans will lose control of their whole country and the U.S. will become like a third world nation, with its starving and homeless population standing by watching its wealth being shipped abroad for the benefit of its foreign investors. Our political system and economic system are all figments of the collective imagination. We can dissolve them instantly with just a moment of unanimous disbelief... Our deadline, the last possible chance to do it before we are swept away inexorably to our doom, is when the economy collapses. At that time there will be skyrocketing inflation, and quite possibly the flow of food to the cities could be disrupted. Large-scale rioting and civil war would be likely to break out. Martial law would be declared and then the military would be in total control of our society. Our democratic civil rights would be suspended and we would be powerless to stop the government from launching into that final global nuclear war which would obliterate our country and much of the rest of the world.

Free Trade Impact

Federalism sustains free trade

Calabresi 95 – Assistant Professor, Northwestern University School of Law (Steven G., December, “Reflections on United States v. Lopez: ‘A GOVERNMENT OF LIMITED AND ENUMERATED POWERS’: IN DEFENSE OF UNITED STATES v. LOPEZ,” Lexis)

A fourth and vital advantage to international federations is that they can promote the free movement of goods and labor both among the components of the federation by reducing internal transaction costs and internationally by providing a unified front that reduces the costs of collective action when bargaining with other federations and nations. This reduces the barriers to an enormous range of utility-maximizing transactions thereby producing an enormous increase in social wealth. Many federations have been formed in part for this reason, including the United States, the European Union, and the British Commonwealth, as well as all the trade-specific "federations" like the GATT and NAFTA.

That solves multiple scenarios for extinction

Panzner 8 – faculty at the New York Institute of Finance, 25-year veteran of the global stock, bond, and currency markets who has worked in New York and London for HSBC, Soros Funds, ABN Amro, Dresdner Bank, and JPMorgan Chase (Michael, “Financial Armageddon: Protect Your Future from Economic Collapse,” p. 136-138)

Continuing calls for curbs on the flow of finance and trade will inspire the United States and other nations to spew forth protectionist legislation like the notorious Smoot-Hawley bill. Introduced at the start of the Great Depression, it triggered a series of tit-for-tat economic responses, which many commentators believe helped turn a serious economic downturn into a prolonged and devastating global disaster. But if history is any guide, those lessons will have been long forgotten during the next collapse. Eventually, fed by a mood of desperation and growing public anger, restrictions on trade, finance, investment, and immigration will almost certainly intensify. Authorities and ordinary citizens will likely scrutinize the cross-border movement of Americans and outsiders alike, and lawmakers may even call for a general crackdown on nonessential travel. Meanwhile, many nations will make transporting or sending funds to other countries exceedingly difficult. As desperate officials try to limit the fallout from decades of ill-conceived, corrupt, and reckless policies, they will introduce controls on foreign exchange. Foreign individuals and companies seeking to acquire certain American infrastructure assets, or trying to buy property and other assets on the cheap thanks to a rapidly depreciating dollar, will be stymied by limits on investment by noncitizens. Those efforts will cause spasms to ripple across economies and markets, disrupting global payment, settlement, and clearing mechanisms. All of this will, of course, continue to undermine business confidence and consumer spending. In a world of lockouts and lockdowns, any link that transmits systemic financial pressures across markets through arbitrage or portfolio-based risk management, or that allows diseases to be easily spread from one country to the next by tourists and wildlife, or that otherwise facilitates unwelcome exchanges of any kind will be viewed with suspicion and dealt with accordingly. The rise in isolationism and protectionism will bring about ever more heated arguments and dangerous confrontations over shared sources of oil, gas, and other key commodities as well as factors of production that must, out of necessity, be acquired from less-than-friendly nations. Whether involving raw materials used in strategic industries or basic necessities such as food, water, and energy, efforts to secure adequate supplies will take increasing precedence in a world where demand seems constantly out of kilter with supply. Disputes over the misuse, overuse, and pollution of the environment and natural resources will become more commonplace. Around the world, such tensions will give rise to full-scale military encounters, often with minimal provocation. In some instances, economic conditions will serve as a convenient pretext for conflicts that stem from cultural and religious differences. Alternatively, nations may look to divert attention away from domestic problems by channeling frustration and populist sentiment toward other countries and cultures. Enabled by cheap technology and the waning threat of American retribution, terrorist groups will likely boost the frequency and scale of their horrifying attacks, bringing the threat of random violence to a whole new level. Turbulent conditions will encourage aggressive saber rattling and interdictions by rogue nations running amok. Age-old clashes will also take on a new, more heated sense of urgency. China will likely assume an increasingly belligerent posture toward Taiwan, while Iran may embark on overt colonization of its neighbors in the Mideast. Israel, for its part, may look to draw a dwindling list of allies from around the world into a growing number of conflicts. Some observers, like John Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, have even speculated that an “intense confrontation” between the United States and China is “inevitable” at some point. More than a few disputes will turn out to be almost wholly ideological. Growing cultural and religious differences will be transformed from wars of words to battles soaked in blood. Long-simmering resentments could also degenerate quickly, spurring the basest of human instincts and triggering genocidal acts. Terrorists employing biological or nuclear weapons will vie with conventional forces using jets, cruise missiles, and bunker-busting bombs to cause widespread destruction. Many will interpret stepped-up conflicts between Muslims and Western societies as the beginnings of a new world war.

Hegemony Impact

Federalism is key to heg

Rivlin 92 – Brookings Institution (Alice, Reviving the American Dream: The Economy, The States, and the Federal Government)

The inexorably rising frequency and complexity of U.S. interaction with the rest of the world add to the stress on federal decisionmaking processes and underline the need for making those processes simpler and more effective. If the United States is to be an effective world leader, it cannot afford a cumbersome national government overlapping responsibilities between the federal government and the states, and confusion over which level is in charge of specific domestic government functions. As the world shrinks, international concerns will continue threatening to crowd out domestic policy on the federal agenda. Paradoxically, however, effective domestic policy is now more crucial than ever precisely because it is essential to U.S. leadership in world affairs. Unless we have a strong productive economy, a healthy, well-educated population, and a responsive democratic government, we will not be among the major shapers of the future of this interdependent world. If the American standard of living is falling behind that of other countries and its government structure is paralyzed, the United States will find its credibility in world councils eroding. International considerations provide additional rationale, if more were needed, for the United States to have a strong effective domestic policy. One answer to this paradox is to rediscover the strengths of our federal system, the division of labor between the states and the national government. Washington not only has too much to do, it has taken on domestic responsibilities that would be handled better by the states. Revitalizing the economy may depend on restoring a cleaner division of responsibility between the states and the national government.

That solves multiple scenarios for extinction

Brzezinski 12 – Professor of American Foreign Policy at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a member of various boards and councils, national security advisor under Jimmy Carter, (Zbigniew, 01/11, “After America”, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/03/after_america?page=full)

For if America falters, the world is unlikely to be dominated by a single preeminent successor -- not even China. International uncertainty, increased tension among global competitors, and even outright chaos would be far more likely outcomes.

While a sudden, massive crisis of the American system -- for instance, another financial crisis -- would produce a fast-moving chain reaction leading to global political and economic disorder, a steady drift by America into increasingly pervasive decay or endlessly widening warfare with Islam would be unlikely to produce, even by 2025, an effective global successor. No single power will be ready by then to exercise the role that the world, upon the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, expected the United States to play: the leader of a new, globally cooperative world order. More probable would be a protracted phase of rather inconclusive realignments of both global and regional power, with no grand winners and many more losers, in a setting of international uncertainty and even of potentially fatal risks to global well-being. Rather than a world where dreams of democracy flourish, a Hobbesian world of enhanced national security based on varying fusions of authoritarianism, nationalism, and religion could ensue.

The leaders of the world's second-rank powers, among them India, Japan, Russia, and some European countries, are already assessing the potential impact of U.S. decline on their respective national interests. The Japanese, fearful of an assertive China dominating the Asian mainland, may be thinking of closer links with Europe. Leaders in India and Japan may be considering closer political and even military cooperation in case America falters and China rises. Russia, while perhaps engaging in wishful thinking (even schadenfreude) about America's uncertain prospects, will almost certainly have its eye on the independent states of the former Soviet Union. Europe, not yet cohesive, would likely be pulled in several directions: Germany and Italy toward Russia because of commercial interests, France and insecure Central Europe in favor of a politically tighter European Union, and Britain toward manipulating a balance within the EU while preserving its special relationship with a declining United States. Others may move more rapidly to carve out their own regional spheres: Turkey in the area of the old Ottoman Empire, Brazil in the Southern Hemisphere, and so forth. None of these countries, however, will have the requisite combination of economic, financial, technological, and military power even to consider inheriting America's leading role.

China, invariably mentioned as America's prospective successor, has an impressive imperial lineage and a strategic tradition of carefully calibrated patience, both of which have been critical to its overwhelmingly successful, several-thousand-year-long history. China thus prudently accepts the existing international system, even if it does not view the prevailing hierarchy as permanent. It recognizes that success depends not on the system's dramatic collapse but on its evolution toward a gradual redistribution of power. Moreover, the basic reality is that China is not yet ready to assume in full America's role in the world. Beijing's leaders themselves have repeatedly emphasized that on every important measure of development, wealth, and power, China will still be a modernizing and developing state several decades from now, significantly behind not only the United States but also Europe and Japan in the major per capita indices of modernity and national power. Accordingly, Chinese leaders have been restrained in laying any overt claims to global leadership.

At some stage, however, a more assertive Chinese nationalism could arise and damage China's international interests. A swaggering, nationalistic Beijing would unintentionally mobilize a powerful regional coalition against itself. None of China's key neighbors -- India, Japan, and Russia -- is ready to acknowledge China's entitlement to America's place on the global totem pole. They might even seek support from a waning America to offset an overly assertive China. The resulting regional scramble could become intense, especially given the similar nationalistic tendencies among China's neighbors. A phase of acute international tension in Asia could ensue. Asia of the 21st century could then begin to resemble Europe of the 20th century -- violent and bloodthirsty.

At the same time, the security of a number of weaker states located geographically next to major regional powers also depends on the international status quo reinforced by America's global preeminence -- and would be made significantly more vulnerable in proportion to America's decline. The states in that exposed position -- including Georgia, Taiwan, South Korea, Belarus, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, and the greater Middle East -- are today's geopolitical equivalents of nature's most endangered species. Their fates are closely tied to the nature of the international environment left behind by a waning America, be it ordered and restrained or, much more likely, self-serving and expansionist.

A faltering United States could also find its strategic partnership with Mexico in jeopardy. America's economic resilience and political stability have so far mitigated many of the challenges posed by such sensitive neighborhood issues as economic dependence, immigration, and the narcotics trade. A decline in American power, however, would likely undermine the health and good judgment of the U.S. economic and political systems. A waning United States would likely be more nationalistic, more defensive about its national identity, more paranoid about its homeland security, and less willing to sacrifice resources for the sake of others' development. The worsening of relations between a declining America and an internally troubled Mexico could even give rise to a particularly ominous phenomenon: the emergence, as a major issue in nationalistically aroused Mexican politics, of territorial claims justified by history and ignited by cross-border incidents.

Another consequence of American decline could be a corrosion of the generally cooperative management of the global commons -- shared interests such as sea lanes, space, cyberspace, and the environment, whose protection is imperative to the long-term growth of the global economy and the continuation of basic geopolitical stability. In almost every case, the potential absence of a constructive and influential U.S. role would fatally undermine the essential communality of the global commons because the superiority and ubiquity of American power creates order where there would normally be conflict.

AT: No Link/ No Snowball

Expansion of federal power is a slippery slope --- each violation key

Johnson ’01 (Virginia H., JD Candidate, Cardoza Law Review, November, Lexis)

Although the Lue court agreed that the "plainly adapted" 139 standard was the appropriate test to be applied to the Hostage Taking

Act, it found that, contrary to appellant's interpretation, the Act was "plainly adapted" to the Convention, in that "it tracks the language of the Convention in all material respects." 140 [*380] Specifically, the court found that the Act satisfied the means-ends relationship required by the prevailing view of the Necessary and Proper Clause because the statutory language did not stray too far, if at all, from the terms of the treaty, thus insulating the legislation from appellant's Necessary and Proper Clause attack. 141 Based on the judiciary's long-standing treatment of the Necessary and Proper Clause as conferring upon Congress broad implementation powers, 142 it is not surprising that the Lue court premised its opinion on the presumptive validity of treaty-implementing legislation. 143 However, what this analysis fails to take into account is the slippery slope toward a limitless treaty power that could ultimately result in the over-expansion of federal power, especially in the area of human rights. 144 The reasoning employed in Lue therefore provides a useful example of the typical but flawed understanding of the Necessary and Proper Clause, in that the Lue court simply assumed "necessary" and "proper" to be interchangeable constitutional requirements. 145

Small decisions are the greatest threat to federalism

Lebow ’97	(Cynthia C., Associate Dir – RAND, U. Tennessee Law Review, Spring, Lexis)

n162 See Southland, 465 U.S. at 21 (O'Connor, J., dissenting) (noting Rehnquist, C.J., joining opinion of O'Connor, J.); FERC, 456 U.S. at 775 (O'Connor, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (noting Rehnquist, C.J., joining in opinion of O'Connor, J.). Justice Powell filed his own partial dissent in FERC that also deserves mention. FERC, 456 U.S. at 771 (Powell, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Lauding the "appeal" and "wisdom" of Justice O'Connor's dissent, Powell stated that PURPA "intrusively requires [states] to make a place on their administrative agenda for consideration and potential adoption of federally proposed standards.'" Id. at 771, 775 (Powell, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). While finding that precedents of the Court supported the constitutionality of the substantive provisions of PURPA "on this facial attack," Powell also evoked principles of federalism to warn against the encroachment of federal authority into state affairs: But I know of no other attempt by the Federal Government to supplant state-prescribed procedures that in part define the nature of their administrative agencies. If Congress may do this, presumably it has the power to pre-empt state-court rules of civil procedure and judicial review in classes of cases found to affect commerce. This would be the type of gradual encroachment hypothesized by Professor Tribe: "Of course, no one expects Congress to obliterate the states, at least in one fell swoop. If there is any danger, it lies in the tyranny of small decisions in the prospect that Congress will nibble away at state sovereignty, bit by bit, until someday essentially nothing is left but a gutted shell." Id. at 774-75 (Powell, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (quoting Laurence H. Tribe, American Constitutional Law 302 (1978)). Despite his warning, Justice Powell could probably never have envisioned the degree to which Congress would attempt to preempt state court procedures with respect to tort and product liability actions, areas so traditionally anchored in state common law.

Federal and state powers are zero-sum --- they trade off

Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy ‘2K	(Spring, Lexis)

The new term actually gives us a new perspective on the enumerated powers. No power granted to Congress - think of the Commerce Clause - may be so construed as to preempt entirely the states' power over the people. I employ the phrase "power over the people" for two reasons. First, this phrase emphasizes that the reserved powers of the states must somehow reflect general sovereign powers, which are powers over people. 60 The "States qua States" cases preserve the states' power over some people - those who are state employees. A state that may resist commandeering so as to retain only the power to exist in name possesses no meaningful powers. Second, I refer to the states' power over "people" because the Court has overlooked "the people" in its arguments over the Tenth Amendment, and "the people's" rights are also reserved. The Tenth Amendment expresses a triangular relationship among the federal government, state governments, and the people. Although the context for Tenth Amendment litigation has involved disputes between states and the federal government, residual state authority also inures to the benefit of "the people." In any contest between Congress and the [*566] states, a decision that favors expanded federal powers necessarily disfavors the states and the people. When Justice Souter wrote in Alden that "the commerce power is no longer thought to be circumscribed," 61 he meant, implicitly, that the people have reserved no powers over commerce or anything affecting it.

*** Aff ***

AT: States CP

No Solvency – General

States fail – federal action is key to sustain investment

Freemark 12 – journalist who writes about cities and transportation. He created and continues to write for the website The Transport Politic, and has also contributed to Next American City, The Atlantic Cities, Planning, and Dissent (Yonah, 02/16, “Clearing it Up on Federal Transportation Expenditures,” http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2012/02/16/clearing-it-up-on-federal-transportation-expenditures/)

For one, as I have noted above, states and municipalities have no clear record of choosing to invest in better projects when they are fully in charge of collecting the revenues to do so. States have too often proven a complete disregard for public transportation investments when they’re left fully in charge — see state infrastructure banks as evidence for that fact. While federal investments in transportation have been far from perfect, they have nonetheless provided for the significant expansion in transit offerings we’re now seeing. From the 1980s on, the Congress has maintained a steady stream of funding for transit from the fuel tax revenues it collects. How many states, which collect a huge amount of fuel tax revenues themselves, can say the same? But the most important role of the federal government in transportation financing is to ensure that funding is maintained during economic downturns. The Obama Administration actually increased spending on roads and transit projects following the 2008 recession, despite a decline in federal fuel tax revenues, because it was able to use its power of deficit spending (an authority state and local governments do not have**) to maintain investments when the country needed them. Devolution is overrated.

States lack the necessary capacity and planning and fight over investment

The Economist 11 (04/28, “America's transport infrastructure: Life in the slow lane,” http://www.economist.com/node/18620944)

Formula-determined block grants to states are, at least, designed to leave important decisions to local authorities. But the formulas used to allocate the money shape infrastructure planning in a remarkably block-headed manner. Cost-benefit studies are almost entirely lacking. Federal guidelines for new construction tend to reflect politics rather than anything else. States tend to use federal money as a substitute for local spending, rather than to supplement or leverage it. The Government Accountability Office estimates that substitution has risen substantially since the 1980s, and increases particularly when states get into budget difficulties. From 1998 to 2002, a period during which economic fortunes were generally deteriorating, state and local transport investment declined by 4% while federal investment rose by 40%. State and local shrinkage is almost certainly worse now. States can make bad planners. Big metropolitan areas—Chicago, New York and Washington among them—often sprawl across state lines. State governments frequently bicker over how (and how much) to invest. Facing tight budget constraints, New Jersey’s Republican governor, Chris Christie, recently scuttled a large project to expand the railway network into New York City. New Jersey commuter trains share a 100-year-old tunnel with Amtrak, a major bottleneck. Mr Christie’s decision was widely criticised for short-sightedness; but New Jersey faced cost overruns that in a better system should have been shared with other potential beneficiaries all along the north-eastern corridor. Regional planning could help to avoid problems like this.

No Solvency – $

States fall short – federal investment is critical

Kavinoky 12 – executive director of transportation and infrastructure at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (Janet, 02/16, “5 Answered Questions about Federal Transportation Infrastructure Investment,” http://www.freeenterprise.com/infrastructure/5-answered-questions-about-federal-transportation-infrastructure-investment)

Some members of Congress want to eliminate federal transportation programs altogether and leave the responsibility to states. Is that a good idea? Absolutely not. States need a strong federal partner to ensure that interstate commerce, international trade policies, interstate passenger travel, emergency preparedness, national defense, and global competitiveness are adequately supported by the nation’s infrastructure. Without federal support for an interconnected transportation system, several large, less-populated rural states would be unable to afford the costs of sustaining their roads and bridges. Many of our nation’s conservative visionaries, including Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan, understood the proper role of the federal government in meeting these needs, as Pete Ruane, president of the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, notes in today’s Washington Times. Even today, some of the most vocal opponents of federal spending recognize the importance of transportation investment. Rep. Paul Ryan points out in A Roadmap for America’s Future that transportation is a core government responsibility: “Governments must provide for a limited set of public goods: they must build roads and other infrastructure, foster the protection of property rights, and maintain internal and external security… this ‘core’ government spending tends to foster economic growth.

States don’t have the money – increased federal investment is key

Hart 11 – VICE PRESIDENT FOR GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS AND GENERAL COUNSEL, US HIGH SPEED RAIL ASSOCIATION (Thomas A., 01/27, “TESTIMONY OF THOMAS A. HART, JR., ESQ.,” PDF)

The debate is now how do we fund one of America’s most important infrastructure projects. With the continuing economic and political climate of reducing public spending and the challenges in attempting to balance the budget, the future HSR development in the Northeast Corridor will heavily depend upon private sector investment. In addition, the price tag is encouraging some state government institutions to redirect capital away from these types of projects. In spite of this, there has been a renewed commitment for federal investment from the Obama administration, but more capital is needed to ensure a successful project that meets the expectations of consumers in an efficient and profitable manner. Public-private partnerships are needed to carry out this important national program and global experience shows that they can be successful.

No Solvency – Uniformity

States are too uncoordinated to solve

EPIC 12 – Energy Policy Information Center (03/08, “You say you want a devolution; transportation policy and energy security,” http://energypolicyinfo.com/2012/03/you-say-you-want-a-devolution-transportation-policy-and-energy-security/)

That’s an interesting idea, but misguided. States do determine their own transportation priorities today, except when Congress earmarks — DeMint and others are right in their opposition to that practice. But in general, construction priorities aren’t dictated to the states — but national needs and priorities are given additional national funding that the states then spend in accordance with those needs. And while Senator DeMint is correct when he says that the system “is plagued by thousands of wasteful earmarks, bureaucratic red tape, and outdated funding formulas that pick winners and losers,” that’s a good reason to reform the system, not throw up our hands and just let individual states decide our national transportation policy through 50+ disparate and uncoordinated efforts. This is especially the case given the huge macro and microeconomic toll inflicted by our transportation-driven dependence on petroleum. While there are others, that’s reason enough for a national transportation policy and reason enough to be wary of seductive calls for devolution.

States are too piecemeal and uncoordinated

Maki 12 – professor, University of Minnesota, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics (Wilbur R., 03/07, “Infrastructure: Rural America,” http://american-business.org/3423-infrastructure-rural-america.html)

State and local infrastructure planning efforts remain piecemeal and uncoordinated. There still is no clear consensus about the implications of these changes on the varying local demands for the many different kinds of infrastructure investments that most clearly affect the well-being of rural residents and their local economic base. Spending for broadband and related capital facilities are still being excluded from current infrastructure development initiatives.

50 State Fiat Bad

50 state fiat is illegitimate –

1. Reciprocity – the counterplan’s fiat isn’t reciprocal to Usfg action

2. It’s not real world – no policymaker can choose between federal action and the 50 states acting in unison – there’s no literature about the counterplan, and it’s anti-educational

3. Ground – the counterplan does the plan’s mandates, and there’s no reason it’s critical to neg ground

4. Running the private counterplan or DAs to federal action solves their offense

5. This is a voting issue – teams will use the states counterplan as a generic crutch if judges let them get away with it – voting against it forces teams to develop more case-specific strategies, which is better for topic education

AT: Federalism DA

Not Unique

Federalism is dying – federal subsidies to states

de Rugy 12 – senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University (Veronique, 01/24, “Federalism Death Watch: State Dependency on Federal Dollars,” http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/289113/federalism-death-watch-state-dependency-federal-dollars-veronique-de-rugy#)

Libertarians and free-market advocates have a particular attachment to the concept of federalism. If states can differentiate themselves on the basis of taxes, spending, and regulation, or even social policies, that gives Americans more leeway in deciding the rules under which we live. If we’re dissatisfied with the policies of the state we live in, we can register our discontent by voting with our feet and moving to another jurisdiction. In theory, this competition for residents helps keep lawmakers in check, giving them an incentive to keep taxes and other intrusions modest. While this is great as a concept, that’s all it is — a concept. No matter where you live, you are subjected to Washington’s tax bite, which has grown so big that differences in state tax rates don’t mean as much as they used to. Also, the federal government is pouring billions of dollars each year in the states’ coffers. But this money isn’t free; it comes with many strings attached. In the end, the relationship between states and the federal government is that of a wealthy parent who give $20 to his kid and then forces him to buy $50 worth of clothes. So much for independence. The Cato Institute’s Tad DeHaven has a great chart that makes this point by showing the share of state spending paid for with federal dollars: He writes: State officials have become addicted to federal subsidies because they allow them to spend money taken from taxpayers across the country instead of having to ask their voters to pony up the funds. As the following charts shows, total state spending continued to increase during the economic downturn because the federal government picked up the slack. Note that the federal share of total state spending went from 25.7 percent in 2001 to 34.1 percent in 2011. This is more evidence that federalism is slowly (or not so slowly) dying in America.

Federal power is expanding rapidly

Sampson 12 – president and CEO of the Property Casualty Insurers Association (David, 04/16, “Property Casualty Insurance: A Case Study in Federalism,” http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/2012/04/16/property-casualty-insurance--a-case-study-in-federalism)

Recently, the Supreme Court heard arguments on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. While the focus was primarily on the individual mandate and the application of the Commerce Clause, the fundamental debate surrounding the healthcare law is really about the proper size and scope of the federal government. Since 2009, Americans have seen an unprecedented expansion of the power of the federal government; the stimulus, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, and the aforementioned Affordable Care Act are just a few high-profile examples. The trend in recent years—and especially since the economic crisis—has been to nationalize every issue and cede control of state or private matters to a federal bureaucracy in Washington.

Federalism low now – 2013 transportation budget

Freemark 12 – journalist who writes about cities and transportation. He created and continues to write for the website The Transport Politic, and has also contributed to Next American City, The Atlantic Cities, Planning, and Dissent (Yonah, 02/16, “Clearing it Up on Federal Transportation Expenditures,” http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2012/02/16/clearing-it-up-on-federal-transportation-expenditures/)

The reaction to President Obama’s 2013 budget for transportation has ranged from the dismissive — “it’s too big to be part of the discussion” — to the supportive (myself, among others), most of the commentary revolving around the proposed program’s large size. Another theme, however, has reemerged in the discussion: The role of the federal government in funding transportation. It’s not a new conversation, of course; in American transportation circles, the roles of the three major levels of government are constantly being put into question. The argument goes something like this: The federal government, because of its national power and ability to collect revenues from the fuel taxes it administers, is a wasteful spender and it chooses to invest in projects that are inappropriate enough that they wouldn’t be financed by local governments if they were in charge.

No Impact

No impact to federalism – political safeguards check

Blackmun 85 – former Supreme Court Justice (Harry, 02/19, Opinion of the Court, Garcia v. San Antonio Transit Authority, No. 82-1913, 469 U.S. 528, http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0469_0528_ZO.html)

Of course, we continue to recognize that the States occupy a special and specific position in our constitutional system, and that the scope of Congress' authority under the Commerce Clause must reflect that position. But the principal and basic limit on the federal commerce power is that inherent in all congressional action -- the built-in restraints that our system provides through state participation in federal governmental action. The political process ensures that laws that unduly burden the States will not be promulgated. In the factual setting of these cases, the internal safeguards of the political process have performed as intended. These cases do not require us to identify or define what affirmative limits the constitutional structure might impose on federal action affecting the States under the Commerce Clause. See Coyle v. Oklahoma, 221 U.S. 559 (1911). We note and accept Justice Frankfurter's observation in New York v. United States, 326 U.S. 572, 583 (1946): The process of Constitutional adjudication does not thrive on conjuring up horrible possibilities that never happen in the real world and devising doctrines sufficiently comprehensive in detail to cover the remotest contingency. Nor need we go beyond what is required for a reasoned disposition of the kind of controversy now before the Court.

AT: Economy Impact

Their impact evidence is based on correlation, not causation

Miller 2k – economist, adjunct professor in the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Administration, consultant on international development issues, former Executive Director and Senior Economist at the World Bank (Morris, Winter, “Poverty as a cause of wars?”)

The question may be reformulated. Do wars spring from a popular reaction to a sudden economic crisis that exacerbates poverty and growing disparities in wealth and incomes? Perhaps one could argue, as some scholars do, that it is some dramatic event or sequence of such events leading to the exacerbation of poverty that, in turn, leads to this deplorable denouement. This exogenous factor might act as a catalyst for a violent reaction on the part of the people or on the part of the political leadership who would then possibly be tempted to seek a diversion by finding or, if need be, fabricating an enemy and setting in train the process leading to war. According to a study under- taken by Minxin Pei and Ariel Adesnik of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, there would not appear to be any merit in this hypothesis. After studying ninety-three episodes of economic crisis in twenty-two countries in Latin America and Asia in the years since the Second World War they concluded that:19 Much of the conventional wisdom about the political impact of economic crises may be wrong ... The severity of economic crisis – as measured in terms of inflation and negative growth – bore no relationship to the collapse of regimes ... (or, in democratic states, rarely) to an outbreak of violence ... In the cases of dictatorships and semi-democracies, the ruling elites responded to crises by increasing repression (thereby using one form of violence to abort another).

Even if conflicts occur, they won’t escalate

Bennett and Nordstrom 2k – Department of Political Science, Pennsylvania State University (D. Scott, Timothy, “Foreign Policy Substitutability and Internal Economic Problems in Enduring Rivalries,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 44, No. 1, Feb., pp. 33-61, JSTOR)

When engaging in diversionary actions in response to economic problems, leaders will be most interested in a cheap, quick victory that gives them the benefit of a rally effect without suffering the long-term costs (in both economic and popularity terms) of an extended confrontation or war. This makes weak states particularly inviting targets for diversionary action since they may be less likely to respond than strong states and because any response they make will be less costly to the initiator. * Following Blainey (1973), a state facing poor economic conditions may in fact be the target of an attack rather than the initiator. This may be even more likely in the context of a rivalry because rival states are likely to be looking for any advantage over their rivals. Leaders may hope to catch an economically challenged rival looking inward in response to a slowing economy. * Following the strategic application of diversionary conflict theory and states' desire to engage in only cheap conflicts for diversionary purposes, states should avoid conflict initiation against target states experiencing economic problems.

AT: Free Trade Impact

Interdependence doesn’t solve war

May 5 – Professor Emeritus (Research) in the Stanford University School of Engineering and a senior fellow with the Institute for International Studies at Stanford University (Michael, “The U.S.-China Strategic Relationship,” September 2005, http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/2005/Sep/maySep05.asp)

However important and beneficial this interdependence may be from an economic point of view, it is not likely to be a significant factor for strategic stability. Famously, economists before World War I sounded clear warnings that Europe had become economically interdependent to an extent that war there would ruin Europe. The war was fought nevertheless, Europe was duly ruined, and the ensuing political consequences haunted Europe to the end of World War II. Other cases exist. Modern war has been an economic disaster. Economic realities, including economic interdependence, play little role in whether a country goes to war or not. Economic myths certainly do and they usually affect strategic stability quite negatively. This is another reason why domestic perceptions matter: they determine which myths are believed.

History is on our side

Martin 6—prof pol sci, U France (Phillipe, 04/12, “Make Trade not War?,” http://www.ecore.be/Papers/1177063947.pdf)

Does globalization pacify international relations? The “liberal” view in political science argues that increasing trade flows, and the spread of free markets and democracy should limit the incentive to use military force in interstate relations. This vision, which can partly be traced back to Kant’s Essay on Perpetual Peace (1795), has been very influential: the main objective of the European trade integration process was to prevent the killing and destruction of the two World Wars from ever happening again1. Figure 1 suggests 2 however that on the 1870-2001 period, the correlation between trade openness and military conflicts is not a clear cut one. The first era of globalization, at the end of the XIXth century, was a period of rising trade openness and of multiple military conflicts, culminating with World War I. Then, the interwar period was characterized by a simultaneous collapse of world trade and conflicts. After World War II, world trade increased rapidly while the number of conflicts decreased (although the risk of a global conflict was obviously high). There is no clear evidence that the 1990s, during which trade flows increased dramatically, was a period of lower prevalence of military conflicts even taking into account the increase in the number of sovereign states.

AT: Hegemony Impact

Heg doesn’t solve anything

Mastanduno 9 – Professor of Government at Dartmouth (Michael, World Politics 61, No. 1, Ebsco)

During the cold war the United States dictated the terms of adjustment. It derived the necessary leverage because it provided for the security of its economic partners and because there were no viable alter natives to an economic order centered on the United States. After the cold war the outcome of adjustment struggles is less certain because the United States is no longer in a position to dictate the terms. The United States, notwithstanding its preponderant power, no longer enjoys the same type of security leverage it once possessed, and the very success of the U.S.-centered world economy has afforded America’s supporters a greater range of international and domestic economic options. The claim that the United States is unipolar is a statement about its cumulative economic, military, and other capabilities.1 But preponderant capabilities across the board do not guarantee effective influence in any given arena. U.S. dominance in the international security arena no longer translates into effective leverage in the international economic arena. And although the United States remains a dominant international economic player in absolute terms, after the cold war it has found itself more vulnerable and constrained than it was during the golden economic era after World War II. It faces rising economic challengers with their own agendas and with greater discretion in international economic policy than America’s cold war allies had enjoyed. The United States may continue to act its own way, but it can no longer count on getting its own way.

Heg doesn’t solve war
Conry 97 – Foreign Policy Analyst, Cato (Barbara, 02/05, “U.S. ‘Global Leadership’: A Euphemism for World Policeman,” http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-267.html)

Other proponents of U.S. political and military leadership do not point to particular benefits; instead, they warn of near-certain disaster if the United States relinquishes its leadership role. Christopher paints a bleak picture: Just consider what the world would be like without American leadership in the last two years alone. We would have four nuclear states in the former Soviet Union, instead of one, with Russian missiles still targeted at our homes. We would have a full-throttled nuclear program in North Korea; no GATT agreement and no NAFTA; brutal dictators still terrorizing Haiti; very likely, Iraqi troops back in Kuwait; and an unresolved Mexican economic crisis, which would threaten stability at our border. [55] Gingrich has pronounced a future without American leadership "a big mess." [56]And former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher has warned, What we are possibly looking at in 2095 [absent U.S. leadership] is an unstable world in which there are more than half a dozen "great powers," each with its own clients, all vulnerable if they stand alone, all capable of increasing their power and influence if they form the right kind of alliance, and all engaged willy-nilly in perpetual diplomatic maneuvers to ensure that their relative positions improve rather than deteriorate. In other words, 2095 might look like 1914 played on a somewhat larger stage. [57] In other words, if America abdicates its role as world leader, we are condemned to repeat the biggest mistakes of the 20th century--or perhaps do something even worse. Such thinking is seriously flawed, however. First, to assert that U.S. leadership can stave off otherwise inevitable global chaos vastly overestimates the power of any single country to influence world events. The United States is powerful, but it still can claim only 5 percent of the world's population and 20 percent of world economic output. Moreover, regardless of the resources Americans might be willing to devote to leading the world, today's problems often do not lend themselves well to external solutions. As Maynes has pointed out, Today, the greatest fear of most states is not external aggression but internal disorder. The United States can do little about the latter, whereas it used to be able to do a great deal about the former. In other words, the coinage of U.S. power in the world has been devalued by the change in the international agenda. [58] Indeed, many of the foreign policy problems that have confounded Washington since the demise of the Soviet Union are the kinds of problems that are likely to trouble the world well into the next century. "Failed states," such as Somalia, may not be uncommon. But, as the ill-fated U.S. and UN operations in that country showed, there is very little that outside powers can do about such problems. External powers usually lack the means to prevent or end civil wars, such as those in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, unless they are willing to make a tremendous effort to do so. Yet those types of internecine conflicts are likely to be one of the primary sources of international disorder for the foreseeable future. Despite the doomsayers who prophesy global chaos in the absence of U.S. leadership, however, Washington's limited ability to dampen such conflicts is not cause for panic. Instability is a normal feature of an international system of sovereign states, which the United States can tolerate and has tolerated for more than two centuries. If vital American interests are not at stake, instability itself becomes a serious problem only if the United States blunders into it, as it did in Somalia and Bosnia. [59]