Why Federal Shutdowns Feel Irrelevant
Few things stop, many things slow down, but most could be handled by the states.
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If Washington fell off the edge of the world, would anyone notice? The obvious answer is yes: the federal government does an enormous amount to defend the country, maintain a currency, and redistribution. But if you’ve been observing American federal politics for at least the last 15 years, you’ll observe that the rhetorical bark of a government shutdown — and the optics of such on cable news that cover it with an apocalyptic countdown clock — are much worse than its bite. There are clear adverse impacts including the many federal workers that are furloughed who have to find temporary financial arrangements to pay bills in the days and possibly weeks the shutdown persists.
Much of the impact centers around delays in the regulatory, oversight and civilian-facing services. Aviation training and nuclear regulatory review slow. Though Medicare and Social Security benefits continue to be disbursed, customer service may be slowed. Getting your renewed passport back might take more time. Federal courts and military slow down or delay practices. Customers and border enforcement slows. Federal payments and grants stall. And of course, the national parks close probably ruining lots of people weekend trips as the weather becomes more pleasant.
But much of what halts in a shutdown is not indispensable to daily life or national security. It’s administrative machinery—grantmaking, permits, compliance checks—that could just as easily be handled by states, local governments, or even interstate compacts. The very fact that life carries on with only mild inconvenience shows how much of Washington’s domestic role is managerial rather than essential. What the shutdown really exposes is how deeply the federal government has embedded itself into functions that, by design or practicality, could be localized without consequence.
Federal oversight of parks, housing, education, and small business lending, for instance, could all be managed closer to the communities they serve.
When the National Park Service shutters, for example, trails and monuments, states like Utah have repeatedly stepped in to fund and operate them temporarily. Housing and urban development programs, largely composed of grants and vouchers, could be administered by state housing authorities already familiar with regional markets and zoning patterns.
The federal Department of Education primarily redistributes funds and enforces standards, roles that state education agencies already perform. States could pool resources through compacts to ensure portability of credits or credentials, achieving coordination without federal micromanagement. Environmental and agricultural regulation could also shift downward: most states have their own environmental quality and agriculture departments capable of enforcing standards tailored to their geography.
Transportation is another area. When federal grants and approvals freeze, infrastructure projects stall not because states lack capacity, but because they depend on federal sign-offs for funds they themselves contributed through federal taxes. State departments of transportation already build and maintain most highways, regulate transit, and oversee airports. If funding and decision-making were localized—with the federal government retaining only interstate standards for safety and commerce—projects could proceed without Washington bottlenecks and the political brinkmanship that holds them hostage.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s most common shutdown effect is delayed inspections and permitting. Yet nearly every state already has an environmental quality department. Federal oversight could narrow to issues that are truly interstate in nature—rivers, air basins, migratory species—while leaving routine enforcement to local agencies. The same logic applies to agriculture, where Washington’s role is mostly to issue subsidies and manage rural development grants that could be more precisely targeted by state governments familiar with their own economies.
So what would best be left to the federal government indefinitely?
Of the areas affected by a shutdown, only a few must remain federal: air traffic control, customs and border security, national defense, the federal courts, and oversight of interstate systems like the power grid and nuclear regulation. These require uniform national standards and coordination across state lines. Everything else—permits, grants, regulatory reviews—can pause without endangering safety or sovereignty, underscoring how little of daily governance truly depends on Washington.
But it’s also the case that something that theoretically be deferred to the states — like air traffic control — could be more plausible in practice. The conventional wisdom is that dispersing the responsibilities of air traffic control poses too many risks to human life and a higher likelihood of accidents occurring over a lack of clarity over standard policies.
On the other hand, the heightened risk involved can make it more likely, not less likely, that states converge on a uniform standard without federal involvement. The idea being that entities, whether they are businesses or states, wind up adopting the same standards because of mutual incentives particularly on interstate matters. In fact, states have already converged on a number of policies including corporate and sales tax structures, environmental regulation, traffic safety, and so on.
So why defer to the states at all? For one, convergence isn’t universal. There are plenty of areas where states diverge—reflecting different priorities, cultures, and economic conditions—and that diversity is healthy. Second, civic participation and policy change are more accessible and less polarized at the state and local levels than in Washington. Residents can still shape policy through direct contact with their representatives or through ballot measures, something nearly impossible in the machinery of federal politics. Third, centralized power often serves as an agent of the status quo, defended on the grounds of “stability” through uniformity. But that stability carries its own risks. Federal bureaucracy can develop blind spots, unable or unwilling to reassess the efficacy of uniform standards in a changing landscape. A small number of national lawmakers and bureaucrats—often influenced by well-funded interest groups—end up steering policy away from adaptation. And there’s the subtler but corrosive risk of precedent: uniform policies tend to beget more uniform policies. The reasoning becomes self-reinforcing—“we already did X with Y policy, so why not do X with Z?”.
A shutdown doesn’t just expose dysfunction—it shows how avoidable it is. By clinging to responsibilities that states could manage, Washington turns everyday services into collateral. When Congress stalls, not for lack of local capacity, but because federal control makes them hostage to national politics. Devolving more functions to the states could insulate vital services from these recurring standoffs and keep governance steady even as Washington treads water on the responsibilities that it does have.
