Fiscal Federalism Quotes

Strengthening the system and spirit of cooperative federalism, my government is taking the states along to achieve national goals.

The U.S. fiscal union has worked, in no small part, by enabling subsidies to the Mississippis without requiring the approval of the Minnesotas. It creates an important form of insurance.

We ought not to cripple them [the Australian States] using our power of direct taxation, unless under the stress of some great emergency; we ought to leave them free to enlarge their revenues by direct taxation [income and property taxes], seeing that they will have no power to resort to customs or excise duties if they want additional revenue.

The growing tendency to justify and base governance on the grounds of maintaining economic efficiency has opened the door to secessionists who can legitimately claim that they are not reaping the benefits of economic restructuring.

Federalism is no longer the fault line of Centre-State relations but the definition of a new partnership of Team India. Citizens now have the ease of trust, not the burden of proof and process. Businesses find an environment that is open and easy to work in.

Well, the federal government has a responsibility to provide leadership in bringing together provinces.

Conservatives deserve a consistent and thoughtful vision for the role of federal government in relationship to states.

Profitable Federalism

Statehood is not a model for economic development; it is simply a way to organize a federation. What statehood does in fiscal and economic terms is apply uniform rules of the game to all states.

We need to reinstate the idea of federalism.

Once you have an equalization instrument in place, as you have in Canada, there arise tremendous bureaucratic values - bureaucratic rent so to speak - in maintaining the system that you have. To shift to a system that paid the transfers directly to individuals, by having differential rates of federal income tax levied to adjust to provincial fiscal capacities, which would be my preference, you would have huge bureaucratic opposition. People would try to protect the rents they have in the current system of institutions.

Thankfully, due to the United Kingdom and the commitment of the Westminster government we are able to ensure that money brought in, whether it be from the City of London or from North Sea oil, can be pooled and directed to wherever it is needed most. That is what being in the United Kingdom is all about.

Unfunded mandates are an insidious way for government at one level to pass on to governments at a lower level responsibility for the funding of programs. Governments at the higher levels can take credit for instituting the program, but lower levels of government have to produce the funding.

It seems paradoxical that a region so dependant on the Federal government decried government influence.