States CP - DDI 2023

Neg
1NC States
The 50 states and all relevant territories should ________________.
Solves—states have the resources, avoid issues at the local and federal level, and cause fed follow-on.
Economic Security Project 22 [Economic Security Project, distinguished group of over 100 entrepreneurs, activists, researchers, and philanthropists sign on to the mission of championing direct cash payments and disburses grants, runs issue campaigns, develops creative interventions and research products, and convenes the field to advance our issues and turn bold ideas into reality to empower Americans to live and work to their full potential, 04-13-2022, “States Lead the Way,” Economic Security Project, https://economicsecurityproject.org/resource/states-lead/] laura
Every person deserves to live with dignity and have their basic needs met. After decades of rollbacks and disinvestment, our current social safety net is insufficient given the economic situation we face. In the United States there is unconscionable and accelerating wealth inequality, wages have been stagnant for 40 years and, both before and throughout the coronavirus pandemic, many Americans struggle to meet their basic needs. In the richest country on Earth, elimination of deep poverty is attainable and long overdue. Historically, states have played a critical role in testing concepts to improve the lives of low-income residents and created a blueprint for anti-poverty measures that can be implemented nationwide. It is time to boldly reimagine and revitalize an eroded social safety net, and states have an opportunity to lead by example. The devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic prompted mitigation strategies intended to get cash to people who were impacted. Federal policies such as increased unemployment insurance, an expanded and fully refundable Child Tax Credit (CTC), and stimulus checks have led to burgeoning support for permanent cash transfer programs like a guaranteed income. Additionally, state and local governments added to relief efforts by using federal dollars provided by both the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act and the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to fund cash transfer programs of their own. At the same time, an increasing number of municipalities and other units of local government across the country are exploring guaranteed income demonstrations in their community, and states should seize this opportunity to build upon this work. Local guaranteed income programs, though limited in scope, produce incredibly valuable data to prove the efficacy of unconditional cash programs, which are critical for states to obtain buy-in from the necessary stakeholders. One limitation of local programs, however, is that they often aren’t scaled to study the potential for community-level change or other broader economic impacts. At the federal level, the expanded CTC being debated as part of President Biden’s American Families Plan represents a form of guaranteed income for 39 million households. Unfortunately, federal conversations around nationwide cash transfer programs – like an expanded CTC – have been underwhelming. As of December 2021, the Build Back Better Act does maintain the fully refundable nature of the expanded-CTC, allowing low- and no-income families excluded pre-pandemic to continue to receive a credit, but only a temporary extension is being considered for the increased amounts families received during the pandemic. While the Build Back Better Act has not yet passed, the stimulus checks and expanded CTC have moved the needle, breaking down barriers to moving cash policies at any level of government. We now have a much better sense of what is possible when it comes to distributing monthly cash payments, and we have data and stories of the impact these policies have in the lives of low- and middle-income earning families. In light of the current limits at the local and federal level, there is an opportunity for state governments to explore ambitious, publicly-funded cash transfer policies that: promote dignity and greatly improve the lives of their low-income residents; add to a growing body of research with assessments of larger scale positive impacts across geographically and racially diverse areas; utilize the revenue raising powers of state government; and could be a model for a permanent federal program. We need a permanent federal guaranteed income, but political gridlock and polarization threaten to frustrate attempts at a federal program in the immediate term. States have an opportunity to push closer to that ideal with large scale, publicly funded, permanent programs of their own that will provide essential data and experience toward the realization of a federal program. This guide seeks to arm state-level advocates and policymakers with information regarding the choice points in program design, the positive impacts shown by existing research, and special considerations for states including options for guaranteed income implementation, interactions with existing public benefits programs, opportunities for public funding, and promoting racial equity.
Key to federalism.
Mitchell 13, Mitchell, Dan. “DECENTRALIZATION AND FEDERALISM IS THE LIBERTARIAN WAY TO DETERMINE WHETHER A BASIC INCOME IS PRACTICAL OR DESIRABLE.” Libertarianism.Org, www.libertarianism.org/columns/decentralization-federalism-is-libertarian-way-determine-whether-basic-income-is-practical. Accessed 12 July 2023.
They’re right, but there’s actually a better way of approaching the issue. Why not take all income-​redistribution programs, put them into a single block grant, and then transfer the money – and responsibility – to state governments? In an ideal world, the block grant would gradually diminish so that states would be responsible for both the collection and disbursement of all monies related to welfare. But that’s a secondary issue. The main benefit of this federalist approach is that you stop the Washington-​driven expansion of the welfare state and you trigger the creation of 50 separate experiments on how best to provide a safety net. Some states might choose a basic income. Others might retain something very similar to the current system. Others might try a workfare-​based approach, while some could dream up new ideas that wouldn’t stand a chance in a one-​size-​fits-​all system run out of Washington, DC. And as states adopted different systems, they could learn from each other about what works and what doesn’t work. And since it’s easier to influence decisions that are closer to home, taxpayers at the state level almost certainly would have more ability to impact what happens with their money. Moreover, there’s actually some evidence that this approach is practical. The 1996 welfare reform legislation isn’t a perfect analogy, but the core feature of that law was the elimination of a national entitlement and the provision of a block grant so that states could decide (with some strings attached) how to deal with poverty. By most measures, the 1996 reform was a success, with Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution explaining that it resulted in lower levels of welfare dependency and reductions in child poverty. This isn’t to say the 1996 law was ideal. The advantage of a comprehensive federalist approach is that policy experts can push states to experiment with different policies. And given the vast differences between various American states, it’s almost guaranteed that there will be lots of diversity. This diversity not only will inform policy makers about what works and what doesn’t work. It also will satisfy the libertarian desire to get Washington out of the business of income distribution, while presumably producing a system that actually does a better job of helping the less fortunate escape government dependency. In other words, all the advantages of the basic income plan without the potential system-​wide downsides.
It's modeled—solves global war.
Steven G. Calabresi, 95. Associate Professor, Northwestern University School of Law. B.A. 1980, J.D. 1983, Yale. "A Government of Limited and Enumerated Powers": In Defense of United States v. Lopez.” Michigan Law Review, 94.3 (1995): 752-831. JSTOR.
The bitter harvest of the nationalist revolution was gathered in this century with the slaughter of the First and Second World Wars and with the fifty-year Cold War that then followed. These events finally made clear to the great-great-grandchildren of the Enlight- enment that celebration of the nation state could lead to Nazism and Stalinism, to war and genocide, and to totalitarianism and the most complete loss of freedom humankind ever experienced. By 1945, the democratic revolution was still in full flow, but the nationalist revolution was not. World leaders scrambled to replace the still collapsing colonial, imperial transnational structures with new federal and confederal transnational structures. The fifty years since then have seen the birth of the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Union, the European Convention on Human Rights, the British Commonwealth, the Confederation of Independent States (CIS), the GATT, the NAFTA, and countless other transnational "federal" entities of varying degrees of importance.24 Many of these were openly inspired by the success story of American federalism, which, for example, led many Europeans to want to build a Common Market that could become a "United States of Europe." While many of these new democratic transnational entities are very weak, they nonetheless have developed important powers: they have helped to keep the peace, and in some instances, as with the European Union, they show real potential for some day attaining essentially all the attributes of sovereignty commonly associated with a federal nation-state, like the United States. The growth and success of transnational confederal forms since 1945 is truly aston- ishing and rightly is viewed by many - either with alarm or with hope - as holding out the eventual prospect of a future global fed- eral government or at least the prospect of several continental-sized federal governments. At the same time, U.S.-style constitutional federalism has become the order of the day in an extraordinarily large number of very important countries, some of which once might have been thought of as pure nation-states. Thus, the Federal Republic of Germany, the Republic of Austria, the Russian Federation, Spain, India, and Nigeria all have decentralized power by adopting consti- tutions that are significantly more federalist than the ones they re- placed.25 Many other nations that had been influenced long ago by American federalism have chosen to retain and formalize their fed- eral structures. Thus, the federalist constitutions of Australia, Can- ada, Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico, for example, all are basically alive and well today. As one surveys the world in 1995, American-style federalism of some kind or another is everywhere triumphant, while the forces of nationalism, although still dangerous, seem to be contained or in retreat. The few remaining highly centralized democratic nation- states like Great Britain,26 France, and Italy all face serious secessionist or devolutionary crises.27 Other highly centralized nation- states, like China, also seem ripe for a federalist, as well as a demo- cratic, change. Even many existing federal and confederal entities seem to face serious pressure to devolve power further than they have done so far: thus, Russia, Spain, Canada, and Belgium all have very serious devolutionary or secessionist movements of some kind. Indeed, secessionist pressure has been so great that some federal structures recently have collapsed under its weight, as has hap- pened in Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and the former Soviet Union. All of this still could be threatened, of course, by a resurgence of nationalism in Russia or elsewhere, but the long-term antinational- ist trend seems fairly secure. There is no serious intellectual sup- port for nationalism anywhere in the world today, whereas everywhere people seem interested in exploring new transnational and devolutionary federal forms.28 The democratic revolution that was launched in Philadelphia in 1776 has won, and now it seems that democrats everywhere join Madison in "cherishing the spirit and supporting the character of federalists."29
1NC EITC CP
Text: The 50 States and all relevant territories should uniformly reform their Earned Income Tax Credit by:
-Making the Earned Income Tax Credit fully refundable.
-Expanding the states’ Earned Income Tax Credit federal match rate.
-Raise Income eligibility to middle income workers, immigrants, unpaid caregivers, and domestic workers.
The counterplan gives a functional guaranteed income by reforming pre-existing systems to target communities better while avoiding federal economic litigation and bureaucracy which solves the aff AND is mutually exclusive.
Economic Security Project 22 (“States Lead the Way”, April 13th 2022, Shiver Center on Poverty Law, Economic Security Project, The Economic Security Project brings ideas to transform our economy and provide resources to those in need, https://economicsecurityproject.org/resource/states-lead/) HSLA: RP
Expanding State Earned Income Tax Credit The federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is a refundable tax credit for working families created in 1975 by the Ford Administration. Its aim was to shield low-wage workers from the regressive effects of rising payroll taxes and to provide an additional income boost for workers near or below the poverty line.43 While the majority of an individual’s EITC comes from their federal tax return, thirty states, the District of Columbia, and a few municipalities44 have established their own EITCs to supplement the federal credit.45 Similar to the recently expanded federal Child Tax Credit, what distinguishes the federal EITC from many other credits in the tax code is its ”refundability,” meaning the full amount of the credit is given to low-income workers as cash, rather than merely reducing their tax liability. In 2018, the federal EITC lifted roughly 5.6 million people out of poverty, including about 3 million children. A state approach that modifies and bolsters a state EITC to achieve a functional guaranteed income for low-income people is an attractive proposition because it both comes with an existing mechanism to get payments to recipients, and those payments have a stronger basis for exemption from consideration as income in other benefits programs like SNAP and TANF. Unfortunately, the current federal EITC framework does not provide the full credit to households that do not meet the minimum threshold of earnings to qualify, excluding the lowest wage earning and non-wage earning households. Additionally, some groups like unpaid caregivers and domestic workers, as well as immigrants who file taxes with an Individual Tax ID number are not able to access these valuable credits. A state could create an efficient avenue to a functional guaranteed income for a large swath of a state’s population by enacting reforms to the state EITC that: Is fully refundable, ensuring that extremely low- and no-income families are eligible, Expands the state’s federal match rate to provide recipients with greater support, Raises income eligibility thresholds to extend eligibility to some middle-income earners, and Provide access to immigrants and other previously excluded groups.46
2NC Solvency
Generic
States solve best—they have a more prominent role in establishing influential economic policy.
Nunn, Parsons, & Schambaugh ’19 [ Ryan Nunn is an assistant vice president for applied research in Community Development at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. He received his doctorate in Public Policy and Economics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Jana Parsons is a Research Analyst with the Hamilton Project in the Economic Studies program at Brookings. Jay Schambaugh is the Under Secretary for International Affairs at Treasury.] “Nine Facts about State and Local Policy.” January 31, 2019. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/StateandLocal_Facts_Web_20190128.pdf CC
Policy debates often focus only on major decisions made in Washington, DC. But for many Americans, the decisions made much closer to home have just as large, if not larger, effects on day-to-day life. In important respects, the United States remains true to its original system of federalism: states and localities play a prominent role in setting policies that affect the economy more broadly. State and local government total expenditures amount to $2.9 trillion in the United States. While this is less than the federal government’s $4.3 trillion of expenditures, nearly two-thirds of federal total expenditures are transfers (either to individuals or state and local governments). This means that state and local governments have in some respects a more prominent role in decision-making than the federal government. Indeed, state and local governments make key investment decisions— about infrastructure, education, and many other areas—that help determine the long-run capacity of the entire economy. State and local governments also enact laws and regulations that define how economic activity takes place. These range from labor market rules to tax policy to environmental regulations to zoning rules. In addition, policymakers’ decisions about how to allocate resources—to education, transportation, or other public goods—are crucial to the U.S. economy. Although the federal government, either by law or by general practice, is required to do extensive analysis of the rules and regulations it makes, this is not always true at the state and local levels. The choices made across states—and sometimes local jurisdictions in the same state—often vary widely. For housing and transportation policy in particular, decisions made at the local level can have dramatic effects on how and where people choose to live and work. Mobility across states has declined sharply in the United States, and one reason appears to be that land-use restrictions in economically successful regions make it difficult for many workers to move to these locations. Similarly, transportation resources are not always efficiently allocated, making it more difficult for workers to access high-quality jobs. For the economy to grow and living standards to rise, it is crucial to have successful policy at all levels of government. A set of state and local policy proposals released in January 2019 is the latest in a series of efforts by The Hamilton Project to support broadly shared economic progress through the careful analysis of local, state, and federal policies. This document provides context for those policy proposals in the form of nine economic facts about how state and local policies matter for growth. These facts highlight how rigorous costbenefit analysis, optimal transportation policy, and land-use rules can affect access to opportunity.
AI
States action plays a key role in fighting federal overreach and solve humanitarian aid, A.I. and carbon footprint calculations
Bednar + Cuèllar ’22 [Jenna Bednar is a Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the University of Michigan and a member of the external faculty at the Sante Fe Institute. Mariano-Florentino Cuèllar is President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and was previously a justice on the California Supreme Court. He is the author of Governing Security: The Hidden Origins of American Security Agencies, 9/6/22, ‘The Fractured Superpower: Federalism Is Remaking U.S. Democracy and Foreign Policy’, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/fractured-superpower-federalism-remaking-us-democracy-foreign-policy?check_logged_in=1&utm_medium=promo_email&utm_source=lo_flows&utm_campaign=registered_user_welcome&utm_term=email_1&utm_co

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