Overview
Across the episodes in these excerpts, the federal government is discussed less as a single institution than as a set of contested powers: the power to make and collect student loans, the power to regulate air pollution alongside the states, and the power to determine citizenship and residency. Guests and callers describe it variously as a lender, a regulator, a debt collector, and a boundary against which states define their own authority. No excerpt offers a general definition of the federal government; each treats it through a particular program or dispute.
Cooperative federalism and the Clean Air Act
In an episode on the Clean Air Act, Ted Hadzi-Antich explains federalism as the relationship between the federal government and the state governments, and the question of which aspects of law and regulation each is responsible for. He states that the United States Constitution enumerates the very limited powers of the federal government and that, under the reserve clause, all other powers not specifically enumerated are reserved to the states. He notes that the Clean Air Act, in 1967, coined the phrase cooperative federalism How the EPA Violated the Clean Air Act (2017).
Bob Zadek frames the Act as an experiment in cooperative federalism and asks Hadzi-Antich to explain what the phrase means in the context of how the Act was originally structured. The excerpt breaks off after Hadzi-Antich’s description of the 1967 origin of the phrase, so the specific mechanics of how authority is divided under the Act are not stated in the excerpt.
California, residency, and autonomy from the federal government
In an episode on California and federalism, Joe Mathews describes the California Freedom Coalition, whose research and policy director is Dave Marin, as the most moderate of the groups seeking ballot initiatives related to California leaving the Union. Mathews says the Coalition’s proposal does not call for secession but for seeking greater autonomy from the federal government over the long term California Discovers Federalism (2018).
Mathews states that under the Constitution and federal law, the federal government decides who citizens are, and contrasts this with Switzerland, where local government decides who a citizen of the country is. He describes the Swiss arrangement as a truly federalist system, unlike the United States. He proposes that California should be able to determine who is a legal resident, and cites the Little Hoover Commission, a state reform body, which in 2002 suggested creating a Golden State Residency Program to accelerate the integration of immigrants, including the undocumented, into California society. He mentions that San Francisco is about to allow immigrants to vote in school board elections.
Mathews argues that a residency program would let California protect immigrants it chooses to protect, and that if the federal government seized a California resident in another state and sought to deport the person, he would want the person deported back to California; if the federal government deported them anyway, it would have to bear all related costs, including costs of caring for family left behind. He identifies groups he would include: people with family members who are US citizens or legal permanent residents, veterans of the US military and their spouses, asylum seekers, and Dreamers, whom he says number 800,000 nationwide with a couple hundred thousand in California, about 25 percent. He says anyone convicted of a violent felony is not welcome under current laws and that a residency program should enshrine that.
Bob Zadek asks whether the immigrants Mathews would protect would otherwise be considered by the federal government to be illegal immigrants subject to deportation, and whether the federal government would have to build its wall along California’s border with Nevada. Mathews responds that the wall is nonsense and that people mostly enter the country through airports, coming legally and then staying. He says he hopes other states might follow California’s approach.
The federal government as student lender and debt collector
In an episode on the student loan crisis, Bob Zadek describes the federal government as the world’s worst debt collector, saying it has both powers and an approach the private sector would want but does not have, and calls it hypocritical that the federal government regulates debt collection while not having cleaned up its own practices The Truth About the Student Loan Crisis (2021).
Preston Cooper describes Biden’s proposal as across-the-board forgiveness of $10,000 for borrowers, and says Senators Schumer and Warren argue that does not go far enough and propose $50,000. Cooper states the $10,000 proposal would cost about $370 billion according to his calculations and the $50,000 proposal about $1 trillion. He says both fail to address that the federal government will make more than a trillion dollars in new loans over the next decade, so the proposals kick the can down the road. He says the federal government goes after borrowers with a fury a private debt collector would never dream of.
Cooper says the federal government put a suspension on student loan payments for 18 months because of the pandemic, with payments due to resume in October, and that talk of forgiveness creates an incentive not to repay. He warns of an incentive to borrow more in the future, saying that if students see loans forgiven once they may expect it again, and that colleges may raise prices because the federal government puts a giant implicit subsidy into the student loan program. He compares this to the mortgage crisis, when the federal government said it would bail out banks and mortgage companies.
Cooper proposes a student loan relief plan not centered on forgiveness, including a safety net such as income-driven repayment for borrowers with less than $10,000 in debt, and a new penalty on bad colleges that leave taxpayers on the hook. Bob Zadek asks why the federal government is in the student loan business at all, suggesting colleges should make the loans and take the credit risk, as auto sellers do when they finance sales. Cooper agrees that in the longer term that approach aligns incentives, and cites Purdue University under Mitch Daniels, who instituted a model where students take financing from the university and repay in proportion to earnings over eight or ten years, as well as coding bootcamps that finance training and are paid in proportion to earnings.
Across episodes
The excerpts do not show a single developing argument about the federal government across episodes. The 2017 episode on the Clean Air Act treats the federal government through the lens of enumerated powers and cooperative federalism; the 2018 episode on California treats it as the decider of citizenship against which a state might assert residency; the 2021 episode on student loans treats it as a lender and debt collector. The 2017 Crossroads for Liberty episode includes a caller asking how to reel federal power back in and Bob Zadek promising solutions from William Watkins Jr., but the excerpt breaks off before Watkins states them. No excerpt shows one guest responding to another’s treatment.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state the founding date of the federal government, the text or number of any constitutional amendment beyond references to enumerated powers and the reserve clause, or the holding of any case. They do not describe the full structure of the Clean Air Act’s cooperative federalism, since the relevant excerpt breaks off mid-explanation. They do not state what became of the California residency proposal, the Little Hoover Commission recommendation, or the student loan forgiveness proposals.