The Reflecting Pool
In This Article
- NCSL Invades Washington
- Supreme Court Strikes a Blow to the Dual Banking System
- Talks Continue with White House on No Child Left Behind
Related Items
An eye on the state-federal relationship.
By Carl Tubbesing
April 26, 2007
NCSL Invades Washington
I bet that headline got your attention. Just think of the lead sentence of the story that might follow: “Armed with copies of the 10th Amendment and Justice Louis Brandeis’ famous ‘laboratories of democracy’ dissent in New State Ice, thousands of state legislators and legislative staff marched on the nation’s capital last week to restore balance to the federal system.”
Well, it wasn’t really an invasion and it wasn’t really thousands, but several hundred legislators and staff were in Washington, D.C., last week for NCSL’s Spring Forum and they were carrying the metaphorical federalism banner in numerous face-to-face encounters with members of Congress, their staffs and administration officials.
NCSL’s 11 standing committees meet three times a year—in the late fall in places like San Antonio and Phoenix, at the NCSL annual meeting and in the spring in our nation’s capital. An important value of the spring meeting—the Spring Forum—is the chance it gives legislators and staff to walk over to the Dirksen or Rayburn buildings to meet with senators and congressmen and to taxi over to HHS or the Department of Justice for meetings with assistant secretaries and deputy under secretaries. Some of these meetings are the kind the NCSL staff might not know about—the Ohio state senator visiting with her congressman about local politics (translated, by the way, as “Isn’t he ever going to retire so I can run for his seat?”). Many others, though, are the ones we arrange to advance a priority issue. Last week’s “invasion” was particularly successful in that regard.
The primary focus of about 10 meetings was, you guessed it, Real ID. Led by Oregon Senator Bruce Starr, who chairs NCSL’s Transportation Committee, nine state legislators and staff got quality time with several of our Real ID allies, including Hawaii Senator Daniel Akaka, New Hampshire Senator John Sununu, Maine Congressman Tom Allen and Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy. Senator Starr and his colleagues effectively pressed our “fix it and fund it” message—that is, NCSL will work for repeal of Real ID if it isn’t fixed and funded by the end of this year. The members of Congress were mostly receptive, although they are more optimistic about fixing the law than they are about finding the $11 billion or more it will take to fund it.
The farm bill, which is due for reauthorization this year, also got attention. Kansas Senate President Steve Morris, who is chairing an NCSL working group on the farm bill, headed a group of eight legislators and staff who met with Minnesota Congressman Collin Peterson, chair of the House Agriculture committee, and California Congressman Jim Costa, a member of the Agriculture Committee, almond farmer and former president of NCSL. The NCSL group got to try out their newly-agreed upon approach of centering our efforts on the rural development and energy and environment sections of the bill.
Several weeks before the meeting, our Human Services and Welfare Committee secured an appointment with Maryland Senator Ben Cardin. Senator Cardin was a member of the U.S. House for 20 years before successfully running for the Senate last fall. He was speaker of the Maryland House before his move to Congress and once chaired the NCSL standing committees (then known as the State-Federal Assembly). Senator Cardin managed to keep the appointment even though it conflicted with his time for questioning Attorney General Alberto Gonzales during the Judiciary committee’s hearing on the firing of the U.S. attorneys.
Supreme Court Strikes a Blow to the Dual Banking System
Just as legislators and staff were arriving for the Spring Forum, the U.S. Supreme Court announced a decision that significantly undermines the country’s dual banking system and, more fundamentally, erodes state authority in the federal system. The Court ruled in Watters v. Wachovia that a non-banking subsidiary—in this case, a mortgage company—of a national bank cannot be regulated by a state—in this case, Michigan.
Writing a dissenting opinion that was joined by two of his colleagues, Justice John Paul Stevens aptly and forcefully captured the consequences of the majority ruling: “The Court’s eagerness to infuse congressional silence with preemptive force threatens the vitality of most state laws as applied to national banks—a result at odds with the long and unbroken history of dual state and federal authority over national banks, not to mention the federal system of government.”
A practical advantage of the dual banking system is that states have far more resources in their state bank departments to regulate banking and to protect consumers than the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates national banks. The question now is whether Congress will provide more funding for the Comptroller of the Currency or whether it will consider legislation to reverse the Watters ruling.
Talks Continue with White House on No Child Left Behind
Last Thursday afternoon, four state legislators met for the second time in four weeks with White House and Department of Education officials about renewal of the No Child Left Behind law. The meeting, attended by New York Senator Steve Saland, Kansas Senator John Vratil, New Jersey Assemblyman Craig Stanley and Utah Representative Kory Holdaway, was significant because it revealed movement in NCSL’s direction on two major issues. One of legislators’ major complaints about the current law is the way the Department of Education has handled waiver requests and amendments to state plans. Legislators would say that there has been no transparency in these decisions. It was difficult, and mostly impossible, for a legislator in one state to find out how another state’s request had been handled.
At last week’s meeting, the administration officials said they are now posting the information on the department’s website. The officials noted that they have also come in our direction on flexibility for states in testing and adequate yearly progress, which is a centerpiece of the current law. There was nothing but disagreement, however, over the third major issue covered in last week’s meeting—the question of testing students covered by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.