Back in 1789 the Federal Government of the United States rose to power over all 50 states. The Federal Government has done so much to this country by the following: Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, the Civil war, Education money, Taxes, New Deal and the Commerce Clause. In this essay, I’m going to tell you how The Commerce Clause, the Constitution and the New Deal increased the Federal government power.
The Constitution was brought into play on September 17, 1787. The government was set up by the Constitution which is actually the second attempt at an American government. The first American government that was in place during the revolutionary was and for almost 10 year afterwards, was the Articles of Confederation. The Articles of Confederation had some good ideas but it was poorly executed. In Philadelphia during 1787 the delegates gathered to revise the Article, they ended up writing the new Constitution. The Articles really couldn’t govern because there was no executive branch, president or no judiciary to settle disputes. It was basically just a congress where each state were equally represented, had veto power and could sink the legislation. Most important, the Articles had no power to levy taxes, which meant that if it needed any money to do anything, it had to ask the states for money.
The Constitution helps out our government so much by getting rid of the Articles of Confederation.The national government gets the power to do anything to the states, by the Constitution in Article 1, Section 8 Clause 3 gives congress the power “to regulate commerce with foreign nation, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.” Commerce Clause is dual federalism and cooperative federalism. In the 19th century, the Supreme court has decided that almost any attempt by any government, federal or state, to regulate state economic activity would violate the Commerce Clause. This meant United States was following a dual federalism. The only thing the national government was doing at this time was going to war, buying and conquering enormous amounts of territories while delivering mail to people.Then the Great Depression occured, Franklin Roosevelt and Congress enacted the New Deal. This changed a big role in the Federal government. The New Deal brought us cooperative Federalism.
The national government is pursue Nationally-defined goals. The Government does this is by money. The money that the federal government gives to the states is called a grant-in-aid. Grants-in-aci is encouraging a state to adopt a certain policy. The federal government will withhold funds if a state doesn’t do what the national government wants Grants-in-aid are usually called categorical, because they’re given to states for particular purpose like transportation, education or alleviating poverty.
