Return Research and Program Funding to the States

Here’s a question worth sitting with: why does so much of the money for research and programs that serve particular places, industries, and institutions get collected by Washington, routed through federal agencies, and handed back out with strings attached — when the states could fund those same things directly, closer to the people they affect?

We think the answer is mostly habit and control, not good government. And we’d like to change it.

The problem with running it all through Washington

When the federal government becomes the paymaster for nearly everything, two bad things happen.

It makes vital work fragile. A single change of administration, a single budget standoff, a single political mood swing can freeze or cancel research and programs that whole communities and careers depend on — overnight, and for reasons that have nothing to do with the work itself. Funding that lurches every few years isn’t stewardship; it’s a gamble.

It pulls money and accountability far from the people. Dollars collected nationally and spent locally pass through a layer of distance that dilutes responsibility and invites politics. The states are steadier, closer, and easier for citizens to actually hold to account.

What should stay federal

We’re not against national investment — we’re for putting it where it belongs. The federal government should fund the things that are genuinely national in scope:

• National defense and security, including the research that underpins it.
• Research and preparedness for threats that hit all Americans at once — pandemics and public health, and a small handful of others where a fifty-state patchwork would leave everyone exposed.
• Energy security, because the power and fuel that run the country are a shared national concern.

These are the cases where the country has to move as one.

The honest caveat on energy

Even on energy — a legitimately national interest — we’d be candid: Washington has proven too erratic to be relied on as the sole steward. Priorities reverse with each election, long-term projects get whipsawed, and the certainty that real energy investment requires never arrives. So even here, the answer isn’t blind faith in the federal government; it’s a stable framework and a much larger, steadier role for the states.

What should go home

Nearly everything else — the research, grants, and programs that serve specific regions, institutions, and industries — should be funded by the states, with the tax dollars that pay for it returned to the states as well. A simple test captures the spirit of it: if a program wouldn’t meaningfully change for you by moving from one state to another, it can be national; if it would, it belongs closer to home.

This isn’t a cut. It’s a transfer of both the responsibility and the resources to the level of government that’s nearer, steadier, and more answerable to you. States compete, learn from one another, and adjust to what their people actually need — and the work stops living or dying by the next federal budget fight.

Funding that’s closer to home is funding that’s harder to politicize and easier to protect. That’s the whole idea behind this movement.

The fuller case is in Righting the Ship.