Federalism

Federalism

Federalism was a concept created by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and George Washington. The founding fathers were looking for a way to balance the federal government as well as the state government and allow them to work cohesively. This way of governing also allowed for a separation of focusses, meaning that the federal government was able to focus on leading the country as a whole, conducting foreign relations, going to war, building interstates, ect. The state government was able to utilize its resources in order to build roads in their state, deal with most criminal activity, and for the most part, govern themselves within the bounds of the federal law.

Two things that both federal and state governments handle are laws and taxes. One drawback of federalism is that citizens have to pay both federal and state taxes, because the two are separate and therefore both require funding. Lawmaking on both the federal and state level comes with all of the appropriate checks and balances, but on the state level it causes the problem of inconsistency, where laws can differ from one state to another so people have to adjust to different laws. For most people, this is not a problem, but people who smoke Marijuana, for example, have to stay in certain states in order to continue to practice that.

The benefit of having a federal government that handles all foreign relations, immigration policies and wars, is that the state government can focus on their people’s needs. The state government is completely out of dealing with foreign policy, and they are free to continue on, maybe with a new agenda, but still continue to help the state itself in times of war and crisis. Since every state has different groups of people, all with different kinds of people, it is in many ways very beneficial to the states to have federalism, so that the states can tend to those peoples’ needs.

Roads and transportation are another way that federalism is very helpful. States do not have to coordinate interstates, highways and freeways all with one another because the federal government handles any interstates so that the roads can be fast and convenient. The other benefit of this is that the states can retain some funding so that they can build other roads in state, and once again, have a greater, more central focus on the people’s needs. Interstates and highways work together, just like the federal and state governments.

The separation of powers on a state and federal level is one of the many ways that the United States was original in its constitution. This distinguishing aspect is also another way that the United States chose to divide and share power, rather than have one monarch or leader rule the country however they see fit. The separation of powers from executive, legislative and judicial is not too different from the separation of state and federal. The nation chose to separate the power of a very powerful country because our founding fathers respected the potential that we had as the United States of America.

In conclusion, the separation of state and federal government, known as federalism, is beneficial overall to the United States of America because it allows for big problems and issues like foreign policy, immigration, war, and anything else that needs to be addressed by the USA as a whole to be handled with separation to the care of the people, which is handled by the individual states, in order to form a “more perfect union.”