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Federalism CP:

The fifty states and relevant subnational actors, including the National Governors
Association, should suspend their cooperation in the administration of federal
programs until the United States federal government expands 42 USC § 401(l) to
include drawing from the estate tax fund.
It competes and solves -- conditioning the plan never fiats it, but results in federal
adoption AND aggressively expands dual sovereignty.
Bloomberg ’21 [Scott; September 17; Associate Professor of Law, University of Maine School of Law;
Social Science Research Network, “Frenemy Federalism,” Draft Manuscript, p. 2-40]
i. Uncooperative Federalism

Dean Heather Gerken and Professor Jessica Bulman-Pozen have categorized state legalization of marijuana as an instance of uncooperative
federalism.108 In their influential 2009 essay, Uncooperative Federalism, Gerken and Bulman-Pozen observe that scholars had traditionally
conceived of our system of federalism through one of two lenses. Under the “ state autonomy ” model of federalism, the
states and the fed eral government are dual sovereign s who act as autonomous rivals , allowing
states to act as dissenters to federal policies they deem undesirable. 109 In contrast, under the “cooperative federalism”
approach, the states are like agents or servants of the federal government, dutifully carrying out a federal program to achieve a shared
objective.110

Uncooperative federalism presents a third type of relationship between the states and the federal government, one that
recognizes a principal’s or master’s dependence on their agents or servants, and the concomitant power of
an embedded agent or servant to push back against their superior. 111 Sometimes, the states do not
dutifully cooperate in administer ing a federal program, but actively seek to change or
undermine that program. They are uncooperative .
Gerken and Bulman-Pozen identify three categories of state actions that constitute uncooperative federalism. The first is “licensed” dissent,
which occurs when “Congress explicitly contemplates that states will deviate from federal norms in implementing federal policy, but states take
that invitation in a direction the federal government may not anticipate.”112 State efforts to catalyze federal welfare reform provide an
example. In the 1980s, states such as Wisconsin and Michigan utilized a waiver provision of the federal Aid to Families with Dependent Children
welfare program (“AFDC”) to “recast an entitlement for poor families struggling to raise children into a temporary grant for recipients who
would quickly move into the private workforce.”113 Departing from the existing federal policy, the states began enacting welfare-to-work
requirements that required welfare recipients to actively seek employment and terminated AFDC benefits after a set period of time.114
These uncooperative state s largely succeed ed in changing federal welfare law when Congress passed the
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996.115

The second form of uncooperative federalism occurs when states exploit gaps in federal regulatory schemes. In such
cases, “the federal government does not contemplate state variation but states have sufficient discretion that they find ways
to contest federal policy .”116 Gerken and Bulman-Pozen offer California’s efforts to regulate air pollution more stringently than
state has successfully exploited a narrow
the EPA as an example of this strain of uncooperative federalism. The
exception to the Clean Air Act’s preemption provision to drive federal emissions standards for decades.117

The third, and “strongest,” form of uncooperative federalism is civil disobedience, where states “simply refuse to comply with
the national program or otherwise obstruct it .”118 Gerken and Bulman-Pozen cite state pushback to the Patriot Act as an
example. After Congress passed the Act, several states enacted resolutions that prohibited their agencies from assisting the federal government
uncooperative action had real effect , as “the fed eral government relies on
in enforcing the Act.119 This

the states for enforcement assistance .”120

In early 2009, the federal-state relationship regarding marijuana fit within the uncooperative federalism framework, falling into the civil
disobedience bucket.121 At that point, thirteen states had legalized medical marijuana, a costly blow to the federal government due to its
dependence on the states for assistance in enforcing marijuana prohibition.122 The DEA, meanwhile, was “actively working to undermine the
decriminalization efforts underway in California, the state with the most nationally visible decriminalization policy.”123 Indeed, federal
prosecutions of individual medical marijuana users and marijuana businesses in California were commonplace in the early 2000s.124

ii. Increased Federal Cooperation

There is a great deal more cooperation in the federal-state marijuana relationship than there was when Gerken and Bulman-Pozen originally
described it as uncooperative federalism. Since 2009, dozens more states have legalized medical marijuana and many have also legalized the
drug for recreational use. In conjunction with these state policy change s , the fed eral government ’s policy
changed as well: It became far more cooperative with the states.

Though the fed eral government indisputably has the constitutional authority to prosecute marijuana
businesses and users operating in states where marijuana is legal, over the years it has agreed – expressly at times and tacitly at others –
to allow those businesses and users to avoid prosecution. This form of federal cooperation began with a series of DOJ memoranda instructing
U.S. Attorneys not to prosecute marijuana businesses and users acting in compliance with state law.

In 2009, Deputy Attorney General David Ogden issued a policy memorandum to U.S. Attorneys titled “Investigations and Prosecutions in States
Authorizing the Medical Use of Marijuana.”125 The “Ogden Memo,” as it has become known, instructed U.S. Attorneys in states that legalized
medical marijuana to deprioritize the enforcement of federal marijuana law against individuals who use medical marijuana in compliance with
state law.126 As a result, the federal government stopped prosecuting medical marijuana users unless the user failed to comply with
state law in a manner that implicated one of several “potential federal interest[s]” listed in the Ogden Memo.127

Reasserting state sovereignty counterbalances governance failures from federal

encroachment -- extinction.
Mihalakas ’19 [Nasos; May 21; Global Professor of Law at the University of Arizona, LL.M. from
University College London, J.D. from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law; The Federalism Project,
“The Need for Governance Reform – Symptoms vs. Cause,”
https://the-federalism-project.org/2019/05/21/the-need-for-governance-reform-symptoms-vs-cause/]
There is no doubt that we live in “challenging” times. We face ‘social challenges,’ from racial discrimination to gender inequality, women’s
rights (reproductive or otherwise) that will have to be addressed, LGBTQ issues (recognition of gay marriage), a gun violence epidemic due to
both inadequate gun control laws but also excessive violence in our society, etc. We also face ‘ economic challenge s ,’ like
stagnant salaries and low wages, job insecurity (due to automation or outsourcing), taxes that are too high for some and not
high enough for others, mounting student debt, and yes massive income inequality. And, of course, we do face ‘ external

challenges ’, from nuclear prolif eration in the Korea n peninsula, to ISIS and religiously motivated global
terror ism, to global warming and climate change!

Yet, most of these issues are but symptoms of a greater cause . Their existence, or our inability to overcome them,
is being caused by a much greater problem in our society that unless we address soon we risk permanent
societal failures within the next 20 to 30 years.

This greater cause is our very own failing system of governance !!!
Though brilliant in its original construction by the founding fathers, our Federal system of governance (separation of powers, check and
balances, separate Federal and State governments) is grossly off track and highly unbalanced. During the past 200 years, we
witnessed a steady transfer of power away from the States and into the Fed eral government, and within the
Federal government we saw a similar steady concentration of power in the hands of the Executive (the singular President), and to a certain
extend the Supreme Court (due to Congressional acquiescence).

This did not happen due to some conspiracy by the ‘powerful elite’ or through interference by foreign powers. It happened gradually (almost
naturally), as a response to major failures at the State level: in dealing with slavery and racial discrimination (see Civil War and Jim Crow laws in
the south), in dealing with market failures and the need to regulate business and provide a safety net (see Great Depression, The New Deal and
the Great Society), in fighting a Cold War with the Soviet Union (see expansion of military and intelligence services to advance US foreign
policy).

Today, power and authority to deal with issues and solve problems is highly concentrated at the Federal level, away from ordinary people and
their ability to monitor let alone influence elected politicians.

There is so much power concentrated at the Fed eral level, and in particular in the hands of one person (the
President) that it makes Washington politicians constant targets of special interests and lobbying
negotiations for compromise impossible because there is so much at stake, and it has created
organizations, makes

a highly unbalanced system (where “checks and balances” are not fully implemented and more often can’t work effectively).
Washington gridlock, dysfunction, polarization, and partisanship have led to the inability to pass a budget (balanced or otherwise), or address
the need for immigration reform, or provide for adequate healthcare coverage and affordable prescription drugs, or even implement proper tax
reform. Therefore, unless we address these ‘ systemic ’ failures of our system of governance, unless we implement
fix the process , we will never get lasting solutions to our current and future
institutional changes and

societal challenges .
Unfortunately, there is no one thing we can do, no ‘magic bullet’ that can fix the dysfunction of our Federal system of governance (because it’s
not just ‘the Federal government’ that needs reform, but also/primarily Congress and the Judiciary). Rather, there are several things (from
specific process changes through laws/regulations to Constitutional amendments) that we will have to changes now, in order to see
improvement in the function of our system of governance in the next 20 to 30 years.

There is a parallel example to this system of governance failures, and it’s that of ‘global warming.’ Global temperatures have been rising, due to
greenhouse gases (caused by human activity – burning fossil fuels like coal and oil), presenting an existential threat to our planet and our way of
life. However, fossil fuels are not inherently evil, used by certain people bent on the destruction of humanity! Energy from fossil fuels was
instrumental in facilitating the industrial revolution, which brought progress and technological innovations during the past 150 years, that
helped the whole world to advance, prosper, and better connect. It was not until recently that we realized that the constantly expanding use of
fossil fuels by humans is contributing to rising temperatures, and if we don’t do something now to ‘bent the curve’, then in 20 to 30 years from
now temperatures will rise to levels that can be devastating to the planets ecosystem, and by extension us humans.

Concentration of power at the Federal level, over the past 200 years, though not inherently evil (downright necessary and proper
during some critical periods), has reached a point of pure dysfunction . The proof of the unsustainable
nature of our current system (like rising temperatures are a proof of global warming) is income inequality. During the past
50 years, we have witnessed a steady concentration of wealth at the hands of the top 10% (and primarily the top 1%).

And although one can look at our society today statically and say: “things are still ok: there are rich people and poor people, and we are still the
most powerful and wealthy nation in the world – so what’s the problem?”… the trend keeps going upwards: currently over 70% of our national
wealth is concentrated at the hands for the top 10%. When do we need to do something to stop this trend? When it gets to 80%, or 90%?

Democrats and Republicans (now thanks to Donald Trump) both agree on the existence of a ‘powerful elite, in cahoots with the political
establishment, bent on exploiting the middle class’… yet both party’s solution is the same: win political power and cut or raise taxes, regulate
more or less, appoint some type of judges… in essence, deal with the symptoms and not the underlying cause!

If we want to address the underlying cause of income inequality (and outsourcing of jobs, health-care failures, racial
tensions, education funding, women’s rights, public housing, etc.), then we need to reform our system of governance, before we can
consider specific policy priorities. By fixing the legislative process, restoring proper checks, correcting the imbalance within the government
branches and return ing powers back to the States … we can get on a path where we see real results within the next 20 to 30
years.

Otherwise, gridlock and dysfunction at the Federal level will only get worse !
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Courts CP

The United States federal judiciary ought to hold that Constitutional guarantees
compel the United States federal government expands 42 USC § 401(l) to include
drawing from the estate tax fund.
It solves AND compelling redistributive schemes unravels the political question
doctrine.
Pilon ’12 [Roger; 2012; Vice President for Legal Affairs at the Cato Institute, founding director of the
Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, formerly held five senior posts in the Reagan
administration, including the Department of Justice, Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of Chicago, J.D.
from George Washington University School of Law; Cato Supreme Court Review, “The Non-Political
Branch?” vol. 11]
The Least Dangerous Branch

Many of today's Court critics, especially on the Left, are disposed to think of the period that followed the New Deal constitutional revolution of
1937-38 as the "golden age" of judicial temperance. The Lochner Era behind it, the Court was largely deferential to the
political branches, thus enabling a vast sea of federal and state redistributive and regulatory
schemes to pour forth. Democracy itself was unleashed --majoritarian will, unencumbered by constitution al
constraint s .

Yet judicial deference is no measure of judicial responsibility , as became crystal clear once the civil
rights movement started to intrude on that pacific world. And few wrestled more with the clash that followed than a young
Alexander Bickel, clerking for Justice Felix Frankfurter when Brown v. Board of Education was decided in 1954, although his main ruminations
on the matter would appear only eight years later in The Least Dangerous Branch, written from his influential post at the Yale Law School. In
a SCOTUSblog symposium last month marking the book's 50th anniversary, I and other contributors took note of Bickel's struggle to come to
grips with the very institution of judicial review. His two central themes--the "countermajoritarian difficulty" and the "passive virtues"--show
plainly that at his core he was, like so many coming out of the New Deal, a small "d" democrat, trying to square judicial review with democracy.

And a particular concern was to show that Brown had been rightly decided, yet to show also that the Court had been right a year later when it
indulged the "passive virtues" by deciding not to decide Naim v. Naim, a challenge to Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute. As I wrote in
the SCOTUSblog symposium, Bickel granted that the principle was the same in both cases, but given the intensity of the opposition to Brown,
especially in the South, he asked whether it would have been "wise," in that context, for the Court to have decided Naim. That's a political
question, of course, which the Court answered, implicitly, by ducking the issue, which Bickel defended. When he wanted or needed to,
therefore, he could rise "above" principle; and he could because he seems to have been working with multiple principles, not all of them
grounded in the Constitution.

Well is it proper for the Court to indulge the "passive virtues," by which Bickel meant mainly the nonjusticiability principles? Clearly it is in many
cases, given the Constitution's Case or Controversy Clause, although there will be close calls. But in Naim it was not a question of ripeness,
mootness, and the like. Rather, it was the prior question of whether the Court should take the case at all, whether it should exercise its
discretion to deny a petition for certiorari, as authorized by the Judiciary Acts of 1891 and, more fully, 1925. Bickel drew our attention to this as
perhaps the most "political" of the Court's legitimate powers, and it is. Here especially there will be close calls, but in this case, where the
equal-protection principle was the same as in Brown, I believe the Court (and Bickel) erred--easy to say, I grant, at this historical distance.

In other cases, however, the Court would be perfectly correct in declining to grant review, and correct as a matter not simply of discretion but
of principle. Setting aside the mixed posture of the case, and the litigation below of a federal question, where might the decision not to decide
have been better made, I submit, than in Roe v. Wade? The question there was quintessentially one of line-drawing under a state's general
police power. Unlike in Naim or, later, in Griswold v. Connecticut, where the challenged state statutes were protecting no plausible rights, but
indeed were interfering with plausible rights--the right to marry in Naim, the right to sell and use contraceptives in Griswold--in Roe, reasonable
people could have reasonable differences about when right-claiming life begins and hence about when the general police power, which belongs
to the states, comes into play. As in so many other line-drawing contexts, that is a decision for the people, through their political institutions, to
make, not for the courts to decide. Given that it is a political question, when courts do decide such matters, often in split decisions and contrary
to the express decisions of the people, they cease to act as the non-political branch.

To the Core of the Matter

But the main problem today concerning the "non-political" branch has far deeper roots. In fact, it's implicit in the very "countermajoritarian
difficulty" that so perplexed Bickel and others of that post-New Deal era. Courts are indeed "countermajoritarian" institutions. But so is the
Constitution, the very document that authorizes and empowers our courts. The Constitution is replete with checks on majoritarian will,
including the check afforded by judicial review, a practice implicit in a written constitution that vests "the judicial Power" in the courts the
document authorizes. Those courts will be seen as a "difficulty," however, only if you imbue democracy--and hence majoritarianism, its
practical manifestation--with greater scope and power than the Constitution authorizes. And that, precisely, is what the New Deal
"constitutional revolution" brought about.

The revolution's roots were in the ideas of the earlier Progressives, who rejected Madison's Constitution for liberty through limited
government. As I wrote in the Bickel symposium, they drew variously from German ideas about good government (Bismarck's social security
scheme), British utilitarianism (replacing natural rights theory), and the emerging social sciences (enter the social engineer), all to reorient us
toward seeing law as "policy" and hence as legislation aimed at providing the greatest good for the greatest number. That vision stood in sharp
contrast with the older Madisonian idea of law mainly as principle, grounded in liberty, property, and contract, secured by courts enforcing
those rights as well as such legislation as might be necessary to flesh them out, to provide a limited set of "public goods," strictly defined, and
to do whatever else might otherwise be constitutionally authorized.

Such was the main business--although, alas, not the only business--of the "Old Court," nowhere more evident than in its
splendid Lochner decision in 1905. But as legal realism, with its conflation of politics and law, took hold in American legal thought, the Court
began to cave, doing so systematically after President Franklin Roosevelt's notorious Court-packing threat. The Constitution's core doctrine of
enumerated powers was eviscerated in 1937; the Bill of Rights and judicial review were bifurcated in 1938, with economic and property rights
the main victims; and the nondelegation doctrine was jettisoned in 1943, giving us the modern executive state. To oversimplify, but not
by much, the Constitution became a largely empty vessel , to be filled by transient majorities, though more realistically by
those best situated to work the new system--and the courts were " restrained " from hearing a vast array of
regulatory and redistributive complaints .

That "restraint" might be thought to keep the courts out of politics and hence to preserve their role as
the non-political branch--and many of today's conservatives and liberals alike have argued just that point. But that view is
deeply mistaken . It ignores, when it does not champion, both the constitutional inversion the New Deal Court brought about and the
means by which it brought it about. The inversion turned a document that for 150 years was understood by all as authorizing only limited
government into one that authorized the opposite. The idea that for 150 years, starting from the time it was written and ratified, the
Constitution was fundamentally misunderstood simply strains credulity. Moreover, the systematic inversion was brought about through
political pressure from the top: the judicial decisions that achieved the inversion were political, plain and simple, responding to that pressure,
not to constitutional imperative. Finally, in the name of a purported diminished role for the courts, this view ignores the political judging that
was institutionalized once the inversion was completed.

First, with the demise of the doctrine of enumerated powers , the courts were now faced with a
surfeit of political acts —legislation—all of which required them to interpret and apply vast statutory
schemes to the controversies before them. Because law is often unclear , especially the kind of law that was now pouring forth
from Congress, the odds of the Court making political rather than legal judgments multiplied
exponentially. Does growing wheat in excess of the statutory limit (Wickard v. Filburn), unlike carrying a gun near a public school (United
States v. Lopez), "affect" interstate commerce? Is that a political or a legal question? Only Justice Clarence Thomas, in Lopez, has seemed willing
to speak plainly: "Clearly, the Framers could have drafted a Constitution that contained a 'substantially affects interstate commerce' clause had
that been their objective." They did not.

Second, even if the courts might try to avoid hearing cases brought in the name of rights by invoking the bifurcation that flowed from
(in)famous footnote four of Carolene Products, they would still have to decide which groups were "discrete and insular minorities" and, far
more often, which rights were and were not "fundamental" and what level of judicial scrutiny was accordingly appropriate. None of that is in
the Constitution, of course. Yet here too, all of it requires judges to make the kinds of value judgments that are, inescapably, political
judgments. Take the simple case of Lawrence v. Texas. Was the sexual freedom at issue there a "fundamental" right? If so, Lawrence wins; if
not, he likely looses. But why is that political question even before the Court? It is because the New Deal
Court carved out a class of " lesser " rights relating to "ordinary commercial transactions ," thus
rendering "rationally based" economic reg ulation s effectively immune from judicial scrutiny--and that
was pure politics .

PQD blocks norm development for drone warfare.

Hafetz ’17 [Jonathan; January 6; Professor of Law at Seton Hall University, J.D. from Yale University, M.
Phil. From Oxford University, B.A. from Amherst College; Just Security, “The Troubling Application of the
Political Question Doctrine to Congressional Force Authorizations,”
https://www.justsecurity.org/36021/troubling-application-political-question-doctrine-congressional-
force-authorizations/]

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Nov. 21 dismissed the suit brought by U.S. Army Captain Nathan Michael Smith
challenging the legality of the military campaign against ISIS under Operation Inherent Resolve. The opinion by
Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly rejecting the suit on p olitical q uestion grounds is troubling. (Judge Kollar-Kotelly also denied
Smith had standing based on his claim that continuing to fight in an unauthorized military action against ISIS would violate his oath to support
and defend the Constitution). The Obama administration’s release last month of its Report on the Legal and Policy Frameworks Guiding and
Limiting the United States’ Use of Military Force and Related National Security Considerations (“Framework Report”), while admirable in several
respects (see Marty Lederman’s comprehensive summary), crystalizes concerns about the potential ramifications of the political question ruling
in Smith v Obama.

In Smith, the plaintiff maintained that neither the 2001 nor 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF)—the former enacted for al
Qaeda and the Taliban, the latter for Iraq—constituted authorization for military action against ISIS. Such action, the plaintiff therefore argued,
was unlawful under the 60-day time limit imposed by the War Powers Resolution. The district court held that the suit presented a
nonjusticiable political question because the issues raised were primarily ones committed to the political branches of
government and because the court lacked judicially manageable standards. This holding, as Michael Glennon has argued here, and Marty has
argued here, here, and here, misconstrues and misapplies the political question doctrine. In short, a suit asking a court to interpret the scope
and meaning of a congressional force statute—and, particularly, what entities it applies to—presents a legal question squarely within the
province and ability of the judiciary to decide.

Smith’s suit, in the court’s view, would have failed anyway for lack of standing. But the court’s political question ruling
sweeps more widely and if followed, would bar suit by future plaintiffs raising similar merits claims
even where they unquestionably had standing . Those future plaintiffs could include, for example,
individuals detained by the United States or harmed by U.S. drone strikes (including family members of individuals killed in
such strikes). The ruling would foreclose those persons from claiming that the U.S. action was illegal if it were predicated on their connection to
ISIS or to another group that fell outside current force authorizations.

The Obama administration’s Framework Report underscores these concerns, particularly as executive power is handed to a Trump
administration that could jettison existing policy constraints while further enlarging America’s forever war against terrorist groups.

The Framework Report highlights several broader trends. First, it reinforces that the U.S. armed conflict against al Qaeda
and the Taliban seems only to expand , not contract, with time. Since 2001, it has extended to other groups,
whether because they fall under the al Qaeda umbrella (like ISIS) or are deemed associated forces (as al-Shabaab recently was).

Second, the Report underscores that, under the current framework, the president generally has authority—even if he does not exercise it—to
detain and target individuals based solely on their purported membership in a military group covered by the 2001 AUMF. That authority thus
permits status-based detention or targeting, without resort to claims of self-defense.

Third, the Report reinforces that additional restrictions on this broad legal authority exist only as a matter of policy. As such, they may be
discarded by the next administration. Further, the policies themselves—which apply heightened requirements for using lethal force outside
areas of active hostilities—have proven susceptible to workarounds in practice (See the valuable New York Times reporting by Charlie Savage,
Eric Schmitt, and Mark Mazzetti on how in Somalia the U.S. military has avoided limitations in the May 2013 Presidential Policy Guidance
through assertions of an independent power of collective self-defense, which includes assistance to U.S. partners on the ground).

Courts remain an important check on elastic c ounter t errorism powers. This check will become even
more important in a Trump admin istration that expansively interprets existing—or future—force
authorizations while disregarding restraints. In the past, suits challenging particular drone strikes —both ex-ante and
ex-post—have been dismissed on threshold justiciability grounds. Smith, however, is the first decision to hold that the central
underlying question—the meaning and scope of executive power under a congressional force authorization—is itself a political
question . As Smith explained “Plaintiff asks the Court to second-guess the Executive’s application of these statutes to specific facts on the
ground in an ongoing combat mission halfway around the world” (emphasis in original). Smith’s rationale would prevent other challenges to the
application of force authorizations not only to ISIS, but also to other, yet unidentified, groups.

Nuke war.
Boyle ’13 [Michael; 2013; Professor of Political Science at La Salle University, former Lecture in
International Relations and Research Fellow in the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political
Violence; International Affairs, “The Costs and Consequences of Drone Warfare,” vol. 89]
The race for drones

An important, but overlooked, strategic consequence of the Obama administration’s embrace of drones is that it has generated a
new and dangerous arms race for this technology. At present, the use of lethal drones is seen as acceptable to US
policy-makers because no other state possesses the ability to make highly sophisticated drones with the range, surveillance capability and
lethality of those currently manufactured by the United States. Yet the rest of the world is not far behind . At least 76
countries have acquired UAV technology, including Russia , China , Pakistan and India .120 China is
reported to have at least 25 separate drone systems currently in development.121 At present, there
are 680 drone programmes in
the world, an increase of over 400 since 2005.122 Many states and non-state actors hostile to the United States have
begun to dabble in drone technology. Iran has created its own drone, dubbed the ‘Ambassador of Death’, which has a range of up
to 600 miles.123 Iran has also allegedly supplied the Assad regime in Syria with drone technology.124 Hezbollah launched an Iranian-made
drone into Israeli territory, where it was shot down by the Israeli air force in October 2012.125

A global arms race for drone technology is already under way . According to one estimate, global spending
on drones is likely to be more than US$94 billion by 2021.126 One factor that is facilitating the spread of drones
(particularly non-lethal drones) is their cost relative to other military purchases. The top-of-the line Predator or Reaper model costs
approximately US$10.5 million each, compared to the US$150 million price tag of a single F-22 fighter jet.127 At that price, drone technology is
already within the reach of most developed militaries, many of which will seek to buy drones from the US or another supplier. With
demand growing, a number of states, including China and Israel, have begun the aggressive selling of drones,
including attack drones, and Russia may also be moving into this market.128 Because of concerns that export restrictions are harming US
competitiveness in the drones market, the Pentagon has granted approval for drone exports to 66 governments and is currently being lobbied
to authorize sales to even more.129 The Obama administration has already authorized the sale of drones to the UK and Italy, but Pakistan, the
UAE and Saudi Arabia have been refused drone technology by congressional restrictions.130 It is only a matter of time before another supplier
steps in to offer the drone technology to countries prohibited by export controls from buying US drones. According to a study by the Teal
Group, the US will account for 62 per cent of research and development spending and 55 per cent of procurement spending on drones by
2022.131 As the market expands, with new buyers and sellers, America’s ability to control the sale of drone technology will be diminished. It is
likely that the US will retain a substantial qualitative advantage in drone technology for some time, but even that will fade as more suppliers
offer drones that can match US capabilities.

The emergence of this arms race for drones raises at least five long-term strategic consequences, not all of which
are favourable to the United States over the long term. First, it is now obvious that other states will use drones in ways that are inconsistent
with US interests. One reason why the US has been so keen to use drone technology in Pakistan and Yemen is that at present it retains a
substantial advantage in high-quality attack drones. Many of the other states now capable of employing drones of near-equivalent technology
—for example, the UK and Israel—are considered allies. But this situation is quickly changing as other leading geopolitical players, such as
Russia and China, are beginning rapidly to develop and deploy drones for their own purposes. While its own technology still lags behind that of
the US, Russia has spent huge sums on purchasing drones and has recently sought to buy the Israeli-made Eitan drone capable of surveillance
and firing air-to-surface missiles.132 China has begun to develop UAVs for reconnaissance and combat and has several new drones capable of
long-range surveillance and attack under development.133 China is also planning to use unmanned surveillance drones to allow it to monitor
the disputed East China Sea Islands, which are currently under dispute with Japan and Taiwan.134 Both Russia and China will pursue this
technology and develop their own drone suppliers which will sell to the highest bidder, presumably with fewer export controls than those
imposed by the US Congress. Once both governments have equivalent or near-equivalent levels of drone technology to the United States, they
will be similarly tempted to use it for surveillance or attack in the way the US has done. Thus, through its own over-reliance on drones in places
such as Pakistan and Yemen, the US may be hastening the arrival of a world where its qualitative advantages in drone technology are eclipsed
and where this technology will be used and sold by rival Great Powers whose interests do not mirror its own.

A second consequence of the spread of drones is that many of the traditional concepts which have underwritten
stability in the international system will be radically reshaped by drone technology. For example,
much of the stability among the Great Powers in the international system is driven by deterrence, specifically nuclear

deterrence .135 Deterrence operates with informal rules of the game and tacit bargains that govern what states, particularly those
holding nuclear weapons, may and may not do to one another.136 While it is widely understood that nuclear-capable states will conduct aerial
surveillance and spy on one another, overt military confrontations between nuclear powers are rare because they
are assumed to be costly and prone to escalation . One open question is whether these states will
exercise the same level of restraint with drone surveillance, which is unmanned, low cost, and possibly
deniable. States may be more willing to engage in drone overflights which test the resolve of their rivals, or engage in ‘salami
tactics’ to see what kind of drone-led incursion, if any, will motivate a response.137 This may have been Hezbollah’s logic in sending a
drone into Israeli airspace in October 2012, possibly to relay information on Israel’s nuclear capabilities.138 After the incursion, both Hezbollah
and Iran boasted that the drone incident demonstrated their military capabilities.139 One could imagine two rival states—for example, India
and Pakistan—deploying drones to test each other’s capability and resolve, with untold consequences if such a probe were misinterpreted by
the other as an attack. As drones get physically smaller and more precise, and as they develop a greater flying range, the temptation to use
them to spy on a rival’s nuclear programme or military installations might prove too strong to resist. If this were to happen, drones might

deterrent relations hips that exist between nuclear powers , thus magnifying the risks
gradually erode the

of a spiral of conflict between them.

Another dimension of this problem has to do with the risk of accident . Drones are prone to accidents and
crashes . By July 2010, the US Air Force had identified approximately 79 drone accidents.140 Recently released documents have revealed
that there have been a number of drone accidents and crashes in the Seychelles and Djibouti, some of which happened in close proximity to
civilian airports.141 The rapid proliferation of drones worldwide will involve a risk of accident to civilian aircraft, possibly producing an
international incident if such an accident were to involve an aircraft affiliated to a state hostile to the owner of the drone. Most of the drone
accidents may be innocuous, but some will carry strategic risks . In December 2011, a CIA drone designed for nuclear surveillance
crashed in Iran, revealing the existence of the spying programme and leaving sensitive technology in the hands of the Iranian government.142
The expansion of drone technology raises the possibility that some of these surveillance drones will be interpreted as attack drones, or that an

accident or crash will spiral out of control and lead to an armed confrontation .143 An accident would be
even more dangerous if the US were to pursue its plans for nuclear-powered drones, which can spread radioactive material like a dirty bomb if
they crash.144

Third, lethal drones create the possibility that the norms on the use of force will erode , creating a much
more dangerous world and pushing the international system back towards the rule of the jungle . To
some extent, this world is already being ushered in by the United States, which has set a dangerous precedent that a state may simply kill
foreign citizens considered a threat without a declaration of war. Even John Brennan has recognized that the US is ‘establishing a precedent
that other nations may follow’.145 Given this precedent, there is nothing to stop other states from following the American lead and using drone
strikes to eliminate potential threats. Those ‘threats’ need not be terrorists, but could be others— dissidents, spies, even journalists—whose
behaviour threatens a government.
One danger is that drone use might undermine the normative prohibition on the assassination of leaders and government officials that most
(but not all) states currently respect. A greater danger, however, is that the US will have normalized murder as a tool of statecraft and created a
world where states can increasingly take vengeance on individuals outside their borders without the niceties of extradition, due process or
trial.146 As some of its critics have noted, the Obama administration may have created a world where states will find it easier to kill terrorists
rather than capture them and deal with all of the legal and evidentiary difficulties associated with giving them a fair trial.147

Fourth, there is a distinct danger that the world will divide into two camps: developed states in possession of drone technology, and weak
states and rebel movements that lack them. States with recurring separatist or insurgent problems may begin to police their restive territories
through drone strikes, essentially containing the problem in a fixed geographical region and engaging in a largely punitive policy against them.
One could easily imagine that China , for example, might resort to drone strikes in Uighur provinces in order
to keep potential threats from emerging, or that Russia could use drones to strike at separatist
movements in Chechnya or elsewhere. Such behaviour would not necessarily be confined to authoritarian governments; it is equally
possible that Israel might use drones to police Gaza and the West Bank, thus reducing the vulnerability of
Israeli soldiers to Palestinian attacks on the ground. The extent to which Israel might be willing to use drones in combat and surveillance
was revealed in its November 2012 attack on Gaza. Israel allegedly used a drone to assassinate the Hamas leader Ahmed Jabari and employed a
number of armed drones for strikes in a way that was described as ‘unprecedented’ by senior Israeli officials.148 It is not hard to imagine Israel
concluding that drones over Gaza were the best way to deal with the problem of Hamas, even if their use left the Palestinian population subject
to constant, unnerving surveillance. All of the consequences of such a sharp division between the haves and have-nots with drone technology is
hard to assess, but one possibility is that governments with secessionist movements might be less willing to
negotiate and grant concessions if drones allowed them to police their internal enemies with
ruthless efficiency and ‘manage’ the problem at low cost. The result might be a situation where such conflicts are
contained but not resolved, while citizens in developed states grow increasingly indifferent to the suffering of those making secessionist or even
national liberation claims, including just ones, upon them.

Finally, drones have the capacity to strengthen the surveillance capacity of both democracies and authoritarian regimes, with significant
consequences for civil liberties. In the UK, BAE Systems is adapting military-designed drones for a range of civilian policing tasks including
‘monitoring antisocial motorists, protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers’.149 Such drones are also envisioned as monitoring Britain’s
shores for illegal immigration and drug smuggling. In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued 61 permits for
domestic drone use between November 2006 and June 2011, mainly to local and state police, but also to federal agencies and even
universities.150 According to one FAA estimate, the US will have 30,000 drones patrolling the skies by 2022.151 Similarly, the European
Commission will spend US$260 million on Eurosur, a new programme that will use drones to patrol the Mediterranean coast.152 The risk that
drones will turn democracies into ‘surveillance states’ is well known, but the risks for authoritarian regimes may be even more severe.
Authoritarian states, particularly those that face serious internal opposition, may tap into drone technology now available to monitor and
ruthlessly punish their opponents. In semi-authoritarian Russia, for example, drones have already been employed to monitor pro-democracy
protesters.153 One could only imagine what a truly murderous authoritarian regime—such as Bashar al-Assad’s Syria—would do with its own
fleet of drones. The expansion of drone technology may make the strong even stronger, thus tilting the balance of power in authoritarian
regimes even more decisively towards those who wield the coercive instruments of power and against those who dare to challenge them.

Conclusion

Even though it has now been confronted with blowback from drones in the failed Times Square bombing, the United States has yet to engage in
a serious analysis of the strategic costs and consequences of its use of drones, both for its own security and for the rest of the world. Much
of the debate over drones to date has focused on measuring body counts and carries the unspoken assumption that if drone strikes
are efficient—that is, low cost and low risk for US personnel relative to the terrorists killed—then they must also be effective. This article has
argued that such analyses are operating with an attenuated notion of effectiveness that discounts some of the other key dynamics—such as

growing anti-
the corrosion of the perceived competence and legitimacy of governments where drone strikes take place,

Americanism and fresh recruitment to militant networks—that reveal the costs of drone warfare . In
other words, the
analysis of the effectiveness of drones takes into account only the ‘loss’ side of the ledger for the
‘bad guys’, without asking what America’s enemies gain by being subjected to a policy of constant surveillance and attack.
In his second term, President Obama has an opportunity to reverse course and establish a new drones policy which mitigates these costs and
avoids some of the long-term consequences that flow from them. A more sensible US approach would impose some
limits on drone use in order to minimize the political costs and long-term strategic consequences. One step might be to limit the use of
drones to HVTs, such as leading political and operational figures for terrorist networks, while reducing or eliminating the strikes against the
‘foot soldiers’ or other Islamist networks not related to Al-Qaeda. This approach would reduce the number of strikes and civilian deaths
associated with drones while reserving their use for those targets that pose a direct or imminent threat to the security of the United States.

Such a self-limiting approach to drones might also minimize the degree of political opposition that US drone strikes generate in states such as
Pakistan and Yemen, as their leaders, and even the civilian population, often tolerate or even approve of strikes against HVTs. Another step
might be to improve the levels of transparency of the drone programme. At present, there are no publicly articulated guidelines stipulating who
can be killed by a drone and who cannot, and no data on drone strikes are released to the public.154 Even a Department of Justice
memorandum which authorized the Obama administration to kill Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, remains classified.155 Such non-
transparency fuels suspicions that the US is indifferent to the civilian casualties caused by drone strikes, a perception which in turn magnifies
the deleterious political consequences of the strikes. Letting some sunlight in on the drones programme would not eliminate all of the
opposition to it, but it would go some way towards undercutting the worst conspiracy theories about drone use in these countries while also
signalling that the US government holds itself legally and morally accountable for its behaviour.156

A final, and crucial, step towards mitigating the strategic consequences of drones would be to develop international ly
recognized standards and norms for their use and sale. It is not realistic to suggest that the US stop using its
drones altogether, or to assume that other countries will accept a moratorium on buying and using
drones. The genie is out of the bottle : drones will be a fact of life for years to come. What remains to
be done is to ensure that their use and sale are transparent, regulated and consistent with internationally recognized
human rights standards. The Obama administration has already begun to show some awareness that drones are dangerous if placed in the
wrong hands. A recent New York Times report revealed that the Obama administration began to develop a secret drones ‘rulebook’ to govern
their use if Mitt Romney were to be elected president.157

The same logic operates on the international level. Lethal drones will eventually be in the hands of those who will use them with fewer scruples
than President Obama has. Without a set of internationally recognized standards or norms governing their sale and use, drones will proliferate
without control, be misused by governments and non-state actors, and become an instrument of repression for the strong. One remedy might
be an international convention on the sale and use of drones which could establish guidelines and norms for their use, perhaps along the lines
of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) treaty, which attempted to spell out rules on the use of incendiary devices and
fragment-based weapons.158 While enforcement of these guidelines and adherence to rules on their use will be imperfect and marked by
derogations, exceptions and violations, the presence of a convention may reinforce norms against the flagrant misuse of drones and induce
more restraint in their use than might otherwise be seen. Similarly, a UN investigatory body on drones would help to hold states accountable
for their use of drones and begin to build a gradual consensus on the types of activities for which drones can, and cannot, be used.159 As the
US now has an opportunity to show leadership in
progenitor and leading user of drone technology, the
developing an international legal architecture which might avert some of the worst consequences of their use.
3
 CP---1NC
The fifty states, through a limited constitutional convention, should expand 42 USC §
401(l) to include drawing from the estate tax fund.
4
 CP---1NC
The United States federal government should decrease fiscal redistribution in the
United States by exempting innovative activities from taxation and expand 42 USC §
401(l) to include drawing from the estate tax fund.
It competes:
The CP is a PIC out of the mandate that ss is part of an ‘increase’ in fiscal
redistribution.
‘Increase’ means on net.
Words and Phrases ‘8 [Words and Phrases; 2008; English language dictionary; v. 20a, p. 264-265]
Cal.App.2 Dist. 1991. Term “ increase ,” as used in statute giving the Energy Commission modification jurisdiction over any alteration,
replacement, or improvement of equipment that results in “increase” of 50 megawatts or more in electric generating capacity of existing
thermal power plant, refers to “ net increase ” in power plant’s total generating capacity; in deciding whether there has
E nergy C ommission cannot
been the requisite 50-megawatt increase as a result of new units being incorporated into a plant,

ignore decreases in capacity caused by retirement or deactivation of other unit s at plant. West’s Ann.Cal.Pub.Res.Code §
25123.

Exempting innovative activity from taxation catalyzes innovation across all sectors.
Hart ’19 [David and Elizabeth Noll; December 2; Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University,
Ph.D. in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Senior Fellow with the ITIF’s
Center for Clean Energy Innovation; Energy and environmental policy consultant, M.Sc. in Public Policy
from the Georgia Institute of Technology; Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, “Less
Certain Than Death: Using Tax Incentives to Drive Clean Energy Innovation,”
https://itif.org/publications/2019/12/02/less-certain-death-using-tax-incentives-drive-clean-energy-
innovation/]
Tax Incentives as Energy Innovation Policy

Taxation is one of the most powerful tools in the policy tool kit. As the old saying goes, along with death, it is one of
only two certainties in the human experience. Yet, like all such admonitions, this one is not always true. Indeed, the power to exempt
an activity from taxation is almost as potent a tool as taxation itself .
U.S. lawmakers have long recognized and utilized this tool. Many policies that are implemented directly by governments in other countries are
carried out through tax incentives in the United States. The federal tax code contains a large array of provisions that support particular
activities, industries, professions, and other groups of taxpayers.

Although some of these incentives make little economic sense, this tool can be a powerful and efficient one to drive
innovation and growth. For instance, tax incentives can and should be used to stimulate firms to
support research that benefits their competitors or the public, as well as themselves. Such incentives
compensate firms for the risk that the research they fund may “ spill over ” in this fashion. Virtually
all leading countries performing r esearch and d evelopment (R&D) provide tax incentives for private research
spending. The U nited S tates was the first to enact such a policy, but its generosity now lags well behind its
competitors.12
Similarly, tax incentives for capital goods may lead to private investments that spill over to the rest
of society. Firms purchasing new capital equipment receive only about half of the returns these investments provide. Customers, workers,
other industries, and even competitors share in the gains.13

A similar line of thought allows us to identify when tax incentives are most likely to drive clean energy innovation. If a tax incentive encourages
economic actors to carry out an activity that benefits society as well as themselves, then it is well targeted. If the activity only benefits the
economic actor, then it is most likely an unwarranted subsidy.

The technology adoption “ S curve ” provides a framework for making this distinction. As pictured in figure 1, the curve
shows that the uptake of a new technology is very slow in its early stages, when the costs and risk of adoption are high. As the

tech nology becomes better , cheaper , and more familiar , it may hit the takeoff stage , when the
pace of adoption is quickest. As the market becomes saturated and the technology matures, the pace slows again.
Figure 1: The technology adoption “S curve”

Figure 1 is highly stylized. The slope of the curve varies dramatically across technologies. Some technologies are widely adopted in just a few
years, while others take decades. Some never reach takeoff, flatlining instead. Still other technologies go through a series of S curves, regularly
reinvigorated by successive technological breakthroughs.

The sources of technological progress change as one moves along the curve. To the left of the curve, in the early stages of adoption, R&D

investments are the driving force , and may be made by the public or private sector ( aided by R&D
tax incentives ), or both. To the right of the curve, in the late stages of adoption, mass production leads to cost reduction
through economies of scale . Profits and private investments provided by capital markets typically fuel
these stages.
In the middle, as technologies move through the takeoff stage and enter the steepest part of the curve, the sources of progress are more
numerous and complex. They include learning by doing in production and implementation, and learning through feedback from early adopters,
as well as R&D and scale-up. Ideally, adoption and innovation feed off one another in this stage, thereby forming a virtuous cycle.14
However, takeoff may be slowed or interrupted for a variety of reasons, such as when capital is
scarce , as is likely when the market is small, or if imitation is cheap, thereby discouraging risk-taking. Technology-
specific tax incentives may overcome such obstacles by reducing the risks of adoption in this stage,
as they give the buyers of early versions of innovations a discount. Lower prices mean higher sales. Higher sales provide funding for R&D,
learning, and scaling up, all of which, in turn, should lead to further innovation, resulting in even lower prices and better performance.

Public-private risk sharing in the takeoff stage of clean energy innovation makes sense because the
public benefits along with private investors—assuming large-scale adoption can be unlocked and the curve made
steeper. In the earlier stages of adoption, the public must bear most of the risk because the benefits are difficult for private investors to
capture. In the later stages, the benefits are largely privatized, as long as there is a carbon price or regulatory policy that addresses the
environmental externality.

Proper targeting of tax incentives therefore strongly influences their effectiveness. Some innovations
are not mature enough to respond quickly to the market signals incentives provide. In such cases, the problems encountered by early adopters
do not lead to learning, and few mainstream adopters are drawn into the market. In these cases, developers must go back to the drawing board
and do more R&D. Innovations that have already taken off, on the other hand, are so far up the adoption curve that the incremental market
growth provided by incentives does relatively little to drive down costs or improve performance. Rather, they subsidize private interests
without creating a public benefit.

In particular, the energy sector---extinction.

Werikhe ’22 [Aaron; 2022; Planner Environment and Natural Resources at National Planning
Authority, MSc. Sustainability and Environmental Management from the University of Derby, Master of
Economic Policy and Planning from Makerere University, BA in Economics from Makerere University;
Current Research in Environmental Sustainability, “Towards a Green and Sustainable Recovery from
COVID-19,” vol. 4]
1. Introduction

Whilst it is evident that the COVID -19 pandemic containment measures including lockdowns have slowed down
anthropogenic activity (closure of transport systems, less industrial activity etc) resulting into reduced emissions,
accompanied by incidental natural environment gains such as cleaner air , clearer skies and water ways, and
recuperating ecosystems (EEA, 2020), the question is how long these benefits will last, and whether they will
move the world closer to its environmental sustainability and carbon neutral goals espoused in the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change
and 2030 Transformative Agenda on Sustainable Development. The lockdowns have been identified as one of the COVID-19 containment
strategies in the absence of a specific vaccine or treatment in the short term (WHO, 2020).
Evidently, cities across the world registered gains in the natural environment with significant reductions in pollution of several environmental domains such as soil, water and air (Khan et al., 2020). The European Environmental
Agency (EAA) reported decreasing amounts of air pollutant concentrations attributed to reduced traffic especially in major cities under lockdown measures (EAA, 2020). Relatedly, Sharma et al. (2020) reported that COVID-19
induced lockdowns improved air quality in various cities across the globe due to reduced emission levels of Particulate Matter (PM2.5, PM10), Carbon monoxide, and Nitrous Oxide. At city level, the scale of registered transitory
planetary benefits seemed to depend on the length of the lockdowns. For instance, two weeks after the lockdown announcement on March 23rd, Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) pollution in some of the UKs cities fell by 60% (Khoo, 2020)
compared to the same time in 2019 while the worlds most polluted capital New Delhi (India) recorded a 60% drop in fine particulate matter (Meredith, 2020), a pollutant that is considered as the worlds deadliest air pollutant by
the World Health Organization (WHO, 2020). Relatedly, Chinas carbon emissions plummeted by a quarter during the peak of its COVID-19 outbreak (Lauri Myllyvirta, 2020). However, the World Economic Forum (2020) expressed
uncertainty about the length of these benefits asserting that although the COVID-19 pandemic triggered cleaner air through its containment measures, it will do little to address the issue of air pollution in the long term. Therefore,
it can be concluded that celebrating the COVID-19 generated incidental positive gains on the natural environment is premature and focus should rather be on how to sustain the accrued gains through granular policy decisions
during the design of COVID-19 stimuli and recovery packages.

Besides, albeit the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown a wrench into the 2020 global climate change and environmental action calendar, there is an opportunity to ramp up action by harnessing several stimuli and recovery packages
being prepared by governments to energize their economies. For this reason, this article succinctly cautions against the premature celebration and focus on the positive environmental spillovers generated by COVID-19 induced
lockdowns, enumerates the likely environmental and climate change setbacks triggered by COVID-19, and highlights strategies for adoption by governments to build back better by using the 2030 Agenda and 2015 Paris Agreement
as pointers for the design of stimuli and recovery packages.

2. Methodology and approach

This article primarily relied on COVID-19 relevant literature in the form of articles and papers published in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic between March 2020 and December 2020. It also inferred earlier reports such as the
2016 UN Environment Programme Frontiers Report which establishes an inextricable relationship between the health of the planet and public health. The Paper leverages these data sources to discuss how the world can
simultaneously deal with the economic meltdown triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic while ensuring sustainable environmental management and climate change action.

3. Misleading narrative

Undoubtedly, the short term environmental and climate change benefits triggered by the COVID-19 induced lockdowns are commendable.
However, since these have been achieved when the global economy is almost fully closed, caution ought to be taken to avert misconceptions
and a misleading narrative that achieving climate change responsive goals and environmental sustainability will be largely disruptive, requires
global lockdowns and is synonymous with economic decline. The incidental environmental benefits owing to COVID-19 containment measures
have been accompanied by economic losses with the International Monetary Fund forecasting an imminent severe economic meltdown only
second to the 1930s Great Depression (IMF, 2020). Conversely, climate change action and a green economy can be
achieved with less disruptive interventions that decouple development from g reen h ouse g as emissions
climate change
while building competitive economies and inclusive resilient societies simultaneously. The missing link is the recognition of

and environmental degradation as existential threats that equally require urgent prioritization and
action to be contained.
Although there is a likelihood of COVID-19 incidentally contributing towards the attainment of certain SDGs such as segments of SDG 6 on Clean Water and Sanitation since hand washing with water and soap have been widely
embraced as a preventive measure, a conclusive impact can only be ascertained at the end of the pandemic. Besides, the length of the current environment and climate change benefits owing to COVID-19 induced slowed
economic activity is uncertain and may be wiped out on the onset of recovery programs implementation. Using the 2008 global financial crisis as an example, global carbon emissions fell by 1.4% in 2009 relative to 2008 but grew
by 5.9% in 2010 in fossil-fuel combustion and cement production alone thus outstripping the incidental gains garnered during the financial crisis (Peters et al., 2011). The astronomical resurge in emissions was largely driven by
global efforts to resuscitate economies. This implies that the longevity of accrued planetary benefits from the lockdown can only be established when the pandemic dust settles and their sustainability is tied to the direction of
recovery packages, and the stimuli earmarked for revitalizing economies.

In the face of these short-term environmental benefits, the pandemic has also spurred setbacks in local and global action to combat climate change and ensure environmental sustainability as unearthed in the subsequent section.

4. Likely impact of COVID-19 on the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated partial and total lockdowns present a profound test of the resilience of the SDGs and the ability to achieve them by the set deadline of 2030. The intricate linkage and inter-relatedness
nature of the various SDGs where none can be achieved in isolation of the rest is likely to compound the scale of dire implication of the pandemic on the goals realization. Notably, existing global inequalities will be exacerbated by
the COVID-19 total and partial lockdowns. This is because whereas the global north can sustain lockdowns and provide adequate safety nets to its vulnerable sections of the population, the same cannot be said about the global
south which hosts a greater proportion of people living in extreme poverty, with the World Bank, 2020a, World Bank, 2020b indicating that Sub-Saharan Africa alone accounts for 63% of the global poor population. Partial and total
lockdowns in the global south will thus worsen pre-pandemic existing vulnerabilities such as income poverty and food insecurity directly reversing gains accrued in the race towards realizing SDGs. Therefore, although some
sections of the population who live from hand to mouth with casual labour as their biggest asset may be shielded from COVID-19 through lockdowns, they will have to wrestle with other life-threatening challenges such as hunger
and other forms of poverty– income and energy. Relatedly, albeit partial and total lockdowns were flagged as a silver bullet to COVID-19 containment by WHO, they are blind to the housing deficit experienced especially in the
global south where several households live in single rooms with others lacking basic housing facilities. The lockdowns thus only cause congestion while fueling domestic conflict driven by scarcity of resources.

Considering the above, COVID-19 and its containment measures is likely to reverse progress on the achievement of SDGs on ending poverty (SDG1), zero hunger (SDG2), gender equality (SDG5), reduced inequalities (SDG 10) and
climate action (SDG13) among others. In agreement, Naidoo and Fisher (2020) affirm that two thirds of the 169 SDG targets are either under threat as a result of this pandemic or not positioned to mitigate its impacts. This is
premised on the SDGs success factors which is sustained economic growth and globalization, both thwarted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Quantitatively, the World Bank, 2020a, World Bank, 2020b projects that between 40 million
to 60 million people will be pushed back into poverty by the end of 2020 making ending poverty by 2030 out of reach. Additionally, about 130 million people or more risk facing acute food insecurity as part of the damage trail left
by COVID-19 (WFP, 2020). The World Bank in its Reversals of Fortune Report (2020) reported that for the first time in over twenty years, global poverty rose in 2020 due to the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, the
pandemic will erode progress made towards SDGs and may undermine their achievement by 2030 if the recovery packages are not designed in a way that salvages and builds on reminder gains garnered over the years.

5. Environmental and climate change setbacks triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic

The incidental natural environment gains from the pandemic notwithstanding, there are some setbacks in global environmental and climate
action owing to the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. For instance, with global and local focus on saving lives and containing the pandemic, the
concern for climate change and environmental sustainability has dimmed, despite of 2020 being earmarked as the year of enhanced global
climate action. Unfortunately, the climate change threat is an equally urgent emergency whose severity is
increasing by day. Besides, a warm er planet will imply more frequent lethal pandemics given the
scientifically proven nexus between environmental ecosystem health and public health.1
A 2016 UN Environment Programme Report2 indicates that 60% of all infectious diseases in humans are zoonotic (transmitted to humans via animals) as are 75% of all emerging infectious diseases with environmental degradation
being the underlying driver. Therefore, failure to reverse the current trend of environmental degradation poses a huge threat to public health since habitat loss and deforestation bring humans into closer contact with wildlife,
thereby compounding the risk and frequency of zoonotic pathogens spillover from wildlife to humans. All this disrupts economic, social, and environmental action. Specifically, the COVID19 pandemic has triggered the following
setbacks to environment and climate change action:

i. Increasing volumes of unrecyclable waste and organic waste emanating from limited trade in perishable agriculture products due to travel restrictions, disruptions in supply chains and dumping of surplus
produce (WEF, 2020). Severe cuts in agricultural and fishery exports followed by low domestic markets absorption have led to significant accumulation of organic wastes yet municipalities have suspended
waste collection and recycling activities for fear of spreading COVID-19 in recycling centers (UNCTAD, 2020). Leaving waste to decay produces methane emissions (Shirmer et al., 2014) and these are likely
to rise during and after the COVID19 crisis. Besides the organic waste, a new strain of waste (COVID-19 medical waste) has also emerged especially the single use masks, sanitizer containers which may
aggravate the poor solid waste management systems in some cities across the globe;
ii. With deployment of security forces to enforce COVID-19 lockdowns and containment measures, it implies that less security is available to protect habitats and curb illegal poaching and logging. For
instance, illegal fishing remains high in Malaysia (Dian Septiari, 2020) while the rising unemployment caused by the crisis is likely to compound environmental degradation in the form of deforestation for
charcoal making and land use changes in fragile biodiverse ecosystems such as wetlands.
iii. Expectedly, the response to the pandemic at global and national level will be marred by budget cuts and reallocations. Saving lives and containing the pandemic are likely to receive the first call on
resources at the expense of other pressing needs such as sustainable environmental management and climate action. The budget cuts and reallocations will be more apparent in developing countries with
weaker disaster preparedness systems. The possibility of reallocating resources earmarked to combat climate change and environmental degradation cannot be ruled out. The Monitoba province
government has already cut environmental funding (Lamber, 2020) as part of its plan to cope with the fiscal deficit resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, this will be counterproductive in
the longrun since the health of the planet is intricately linked to public health;
iv. There is likely to be a decline in Official Development Assistance flows between advanced economies and developing countries. This spells doom for climate action and environmental management
projects and plans in Sub-Saharan Africa most of which are externally funded by development partners. The pandemic has diluted globalization indicated by growing nationalism rather than
internationalism where countries are closing borders and mobilizing gigantic country or region-specific recovery packages with peanuts ear marked for concerted global recovery. For instance, whilst
developed economies are poised to spend an estimated USD 11 trillion on domestic responses to COVID-19, appeals to raise only 0.3% of this amount (USD 35 billion) to avail COVID-19 vaccines,
diagnostics, and treatments to all countries (Homi Kharas and John McArthur, 2020) are failing to come to fruition.
v. The UN Climate Change 26th Conference of Parties (COP 26) initially scheduled for November 2020 in Glasgow was postponed to 2021 (UNFCCC, 2020). Importantly, this conference was supposed to be
preceded by submission of country specific enhanced climate change action (reviewed Nationally Determined Contributions - NDCs), as a five-year milestone towards achieving the 2015 Paris Agreement
Goal of limiting global average temperature rise to below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels, and pursuing efforts to limit temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels by the end of this century.
With the discussions postponed, there is likely to be a delay in submissions of enhanced NDCs thus putting the Paris Agreement to a test regarding the achievement of its first milestone.

6. How to build back better

The COVID 19 pandemic has exposed the volatility of the current economic and development system, and it will be unfortunate to emerge out
of the crisis and continue with the same frail system unaltered. The planet , financial and economic systems, and governments may
lack the current resilience to withstand and recover from future related disasters if the global
system is simply rebuilt back to the pre COVID-19 state. The price of oil, a life blood of several economies, fluctuated by 300%
(Julianne Geiger, 2020) between January and April 2020, plunging to negatives in April, implying that oil producers and traders had to pay
consumers to get rid of their black gold. Economies that are fully reliant on export of this fossil fuel are at a higher risk of the economic
meltdowns triggered by the COVID-19. Therefore, building back better implies using the holistic sustainable development goals as the compass
to design recovery packages and prioritizing interventions that work for the planet, people, and economy. This direction will hedge against
addressing one challenge of the pandemic while worsening another – climate change and biodiversity loss. Design of the recovery packages
should thus be underpinned by the following strategies:
1. Adoption of the One Health Approach in the design of Recovery packages. One health approach loosely means ensuring harmonious and healthy co-existence of people, animals, and ecosystems. It has increasingly been proven
that the health of the planet determines public health and as such, building resilience against future pandemics requires holistic policies and strategies that cater for the health and integrity of biodiversity, humans, and ecosystems.
WHO (2019) defines “One Health” as an integrated unifying approach that aims to sustainably balance and optimize the health of people, animals, and ecosystems. Recovery packages should desist from the temptation of fully
focusing on economic recovery and resuscitation at the expense of social and environmental strategies that build happy resilient societies while conserving and sustainably managing biodiversity;

2. Conditioning highly polluting corporations, businesses and industries' access to recovery packages, bail outs and economic stimuli to a commitment to embark on sustainable reporting and reduced carbon footprint. A great deal
of the recovery packages and bailouts will be disbursed to businesses in energy, transport and agriculture among others who have been prioritizing economic gain and profitability at any cost of the environment and biodiversity in
the pre-pandemic era. Ensuring that one of the bailout packages access requirement is commitment to improved corporate environmental and climate action performance will go a long way in ensuring that COVID-19 recovery
packages move the world closers to its climate and sustainability goals espoused in the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Importantly, this does not imply denying highly polluting or environmentally non-
compliant corporations bailouts but rather using them (bailouts) as an impetus to prompt corporations move towards sustainable corporate reporting, integration of climate risk in their conventional risk analysis, and reducing their
carbon footprint with the access of the recovery or bailout packages henceforth. This will be a win-win for the economy, corporations, and the planet;

3. Integrate environmental sustainability and climate change action in the design of quick, short term, medium to long term COVID-19 stimuli and recovery packages respectively. As development gains traction, consumption
patterns inevitably change thereby stimulating agriculture intensification to feed the growing global population estimated at 7.7 billion (UNDESA, 2019). This is accompanied by land use changes which habitat loss, deforestation,
and biodiversity loss culminating into environmental degradation, both a key driver and an effect of climate change. Environmental degradation and climate change have been singled out as significant explanatory factors for the
increased frequency of zoonotic infections (UNEP, 2019) such as Corona viruses. Accordingly, sustainable recovery will require a global paradigm shift from the status quo of waiting for the zoonotic diseases to strike and race
towards finding a vaccine to a systemic approach that deals with underlying drivers of such pandemics. With environmental degradation and climate change identified among the underlying drivers, a robust recovery programme
should move the globe towards addressing illegal wildlife trade, protecting water resources and oceans from pollution particularly plastics, conserving biodiversity and habitats, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions in a bid to
achieve carbon neutrality by mid-century and limit temperature rise to below 2 °C by 2100 as committed in the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. This implies that sustainability must permeate across quick responses such as
stimuli and medium to long recovery packages and plans. Prioritizing environmental sustainability and climate response in COVID-19 recovery measures will not only resuscitate ailing economies but also act as a medium to long
term preventive strategy against related future zoonotic pandemics. Environmental degradation accompanied by habitat loss, biodiversity loss, and a warmer climate creates an amiable environment for emergency of dominant
species, and viruses that cannot be controlled ecologically which evolve with the changing temperatures to find new hosts (UNEP, 2019). Fig. 1 below enumerates the primary drivers of previous disease emergencies while Fig. 2
indicates the past four major zoonotic diseases and their impact;

4. Pursue an inclusive approach in the design of COVID-19 Recovery packages to address the diversity of needs of all victims of the pandemic. Unlike previous global crises such as the 2008 global financial crisis that left largely
financial and economic impacts, the COVID-19 pandemic is littered with multifaceted dire impacts transcending the economic, social, and environmental spheres. Therefore, addressing or recovering from these multiple setbacks
cannot be solely addressed by governments but rather a consortium of actors such as the private sector, civil society, government, and development partners to thoroughly deal with various segments of the challenges at hand in
the short, medium, and long term. These actors ought to foster a recovery that is hinged on futuristic planning that builds resilient competitive economies and inclusive societies, to reduce the severity of disruptions posed by
future related disasters. Besides, replication of the scale of government coordination and public behavioral change demonstrated in the response to the pandemic to deal with other existential threats such as climate change and
biodiversity loss is essential albeit its success will also be hinged on partnerships.

5. Leverage the rare window of gigantic government expenditures to combat climate change and
environmental degradation. Albeit science has proven that climate change is an emergency , and a warmer
planet will only imply increased frequency of disasters (IPCC, 2018), the response over the years has not matched
with the magnitude of this existential threat , yet, the economic and social cost of climate change is evident .

Achievement of the Paris Agreement goal of limiting temperature rise to 2° C by the end of this century, through
racing towards carbon neutrality by mid-century will remain a mirage , if the recovery packages work against
flattening the climate change and environmental degradation curve. The global economy is likely to rise with immense oomph to offset losses
incurred during the COVID-19 lockdowns. The recovery process is therefore capable of sparking off an exponential rise in greenhouse gas
emissions above normal circumstances thereby throwing the planet into a deeper dungeon of climate change and falling short of the required
7.6% annual reduction target in global missions to achieve zero net emissions by 2050 (UN environment 2019). There are granular

interventions that can be captured in the recovery packages. These include; stimulat ion of uptake and deployment
of affordable renewable energy tech nologies; de-risking of green investment opportunities to trigger
private sector capital and ingenuity ; leapfrogging to green tech nology to reshape
unsustainable production patterns and foster green industrialization and circularity; and formulation of green fiscal
instruments (subsidies on green technologies, carbon taxes and pricing) to nurture green capital markets expansion without imperiling
financial stability . Equally important is resuscitating cities through retrofitting buildings to enhance energy efficiency, augmenting
green public transport, and prioritizing affordable green housing since some catastrophes like COVID-19 call for self-isolation at home.
5
 CP---1NC
The United States federal government should expand 42 USC § 401(l) to include
drawing from the estate tax fund.

The term ‘fiscal redistribution’ reifies colonial violence---using it in legislation asserts

the state as the rightful distributor of stolen wealth.
Tuck ’12 [Eve and K. Wayne Yang; State University of New York at New Paltz; University of California,
San Diego; “Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society,” No. 1, p. 24-28]
The Occupy movement for many economically marginalized people has been a welcome expression of resistance to the massive disparities in
the distribution of wealth; for many Indigenous people, Occupy is another settler re-occupation on stolen land. The rhetoric of the movement
relies upon problematic assumptions about social justice and is a prime example of the incommensurability between “re/occupy” and
“decolonize” as political agendas. The pursuit of worker rights (and rights to work) and minoritized people’s rights in a settler colonial context
can appear to be anti-capitalist, but this pursuit is nonetheless largely pro-colonial. That is, the ideal of “ redistribution of
wealth” camouflages how much of that wealth is land , Native land. In Occupy, the “99%” is invoked as a
deserving supermajority , in contrast to the unearned wealth of the “1%”. It renders Indigenous
peoples (a 0.9% ‘super-minority’) completely invisible and absorbed, just an asterisk group to be
subsumed into the legion of occupiers . For example, “If U.S. land were divided like U.S. wealth ” (figure 1.1)
is a popular graphic that was electronically circulated on the Internet in late 2011 in connection with
the Occupy movement. The image reveals inherent assumptions about land, including: land is
property ; land is/belongs to the U nited S tates; land should be distributed democratically . The beliefs
that land can be owned by people , and that occupation is a right, reflect a profoundly settling,
anthropocentric, colonial view of the world. In figure 1.1, the irony of mapping of wealth onto land seems
to escape most of those who re-posted the images on their social networking sites and blogs: Land is
already wealth; it is already divided ; and its distribution is the greatest indicator of racial
inequality17 . Indeed the current wealth crisis facing the 99% spiraled with the crash in home/land ownership. Land (not money) is
actually the basis for U.S. wealth. If we took away land, there would be little wealth left to redistribute. Settler colonization can be visually understood as the unbroken pace of invasion, and settler occupation,

into Native lands: the white space in figure 1.2. Decolonization, as a process, would repatriate land to Indigenous peoples, reversing the timeline of these images. As detailed by public intellectuals/bloggers such as Tequila Sovereign (Lenape scholar Joanne Barker), some Occupy sites, including Boston, Denver, Austin, and Albuquerque tried to engage in discussions about the problematic and colonial overtones of occupation (Barker, October 9, 2011). Barker blogs about a firsthand experience in bringing a proposal for a Memorandum of Solidarity with Indigenous Peoples,18 to the General Assembly in Occupy Oakland. The memorandum, signed by Corrina Gould, (Chochenyo Ohlone - the first peoples of Oakland/Ohlone), Barker, and numerous other Indigenous and non-Indigenous activist-scholars, called for the acknowledgement of Oakland as already occupied and on stolen land; of the ongoing defiance by Indigenous peoples in the U.S. and around the globe against imperialism, colonialism, and oppression; the need for genuine and respectful involvement of Indigenous peoples in the Occupy Oakland movement; and the aspiration to
“Decolonize Oakland,” rather than re-occupy it. From Barker’s account of the responses from settler individuals to the memorandum, Ultimately, what they [settler participants in Occupy Oakland] were asking is whether or not we were asking them, as non-indigenous people, the impossible? Would their solidarity with us require them to give up their lands, their resources, their ways of life, so that we – who numbered so few, after all – could have more? Could have it all? (Barker, October 30, 2011) These responses, resistances by settler participants to the aspiration of decolonization in Occupy Oakland, illustrate the reluctance of some settlers to engage the prospect of decolonization beyond the metaphorical or figurative level. Further, they reveal the limitations to “solidarity,” without the willingness to acknowledge stolen land and how stolen land benefits settlers. “Genuine solidarity with indigenous peoples,” Barker continues, “assumes a basic understanding of how histories of colonization and imperialism have produced and still produce the legal and economic possibility for Oakland” (ibid., emphasis original). For social justice
movements, like Occupy, to truly aspire to decolonization nonmetaphorically, they would impoverish, not enrich, the 99%+ settler population of United States. Decolonization eliminates settler property rights and settler sovereignty. It requires the abolition of land as property and upholds the sovereignty of Native land and people. There are important parallels between Occupy/Decolonize and the French/Haitian Revolutions of 1789-1799 and 1791-1804, respectively. Haiti has the dubious distinction of being “the poorest country in the Western hemisphere” (Central Intelligence Agency, 2012); yet, it was the richest of France’s colonies until the Haitian Revolution, the only slave revolution to ever found a state. This paradox can be explained by what/who counts as whose property. Under French colonialism, Haiti was a worth a fortune in enslaved human beings. From the French slave owners’ perspectives, Haitian independence abolished not slavery, but their property and a source of common-wealth. Unfortunately, history provides us with the exact figures on what their property was worth; in 1825, “France recognized Haitian
independence by a treaty requiring Haiti to pay an indemnity of 150 million francs payable in 5 years to compensate absentee slaveowners for their losses” (Schuller, 2007, p.149). The magnitude of these reparations not for slavery, but to former slave owners, plunged Haiti into eternal debt. Occupy draws almost directly from the values of the French Revolution: the Commons, the General Assembly, the natural right to property, and the resistance to the decolonization of Indigenous life/land. In 1789, the French Communes (Commons) declared themselves a National Assembly directly “of the People” (the 99%) against the representative assembly of “the Estates” (the 1%) set up by the ruling elite, and adopted the celebrated Declaration of the Rights of the Man and the Citizen. Not unlike the heated discussions at the December 4, 2011 General Assembly of Occupy Oakland that ultimately rejected the proposal to change the name to “Decolonize Oakland”, the 1789 National Assembly debated at great length over the language of emancipation in the Declaration. Ultimately, the Declaration abolished slavery but not property, and effectively
stipulated that property trumped emancipation. While rhetorically declaring men as forever free and equal (and thus unenslavable), it assured the (revolutionary) colonial proprietors in the assembly that their chattel would be untouched, stating unequivocally: “The right to property being inviolable and sacred, no one ought to be deprived of it...” (Blackburn, 2006, p. 650). Decolonizing the Americas means all land is repatriated and all settlers become landless. It is incommensurable with the redistribution of Native land/life as common-wealth. Our critique of Occupation is not just a critique of rhetoric. The call to “occupy everything” has legitimized a set of practices with problematic relationships to land and to Indigenous sovereignty. Urban homesteading, for example, is the practice of re-settling urban land in the fashion of self-styled pioneers in a mythical frontier. Not surprisingly, urban homesteading can also become a form of playing Indian, invoking Indigeneity as ‘tradition’ and claiming Indian-like spirituality while evading Indigenous sovereignty and the modern presence of actual urban Native peoples. More significant examples are
Occupiers’ claims to land and their imposition of Western forms of governance within their tent cities/colonies. Claiming land for the Commons and asserting consensus as the rule of the Commons, erases existing, prior, and future Native land rights, decolonial leadership, and forms of self-government. Occupation is a move towards innocence that hides behind the numerical superiority of the settler nation, the elision of democracy with justice, and the logic that what became property under the 1% rightfully belongs to the other 99%. In contrast to the settler labor of occupying the commons, homesteading, and possession, some scholars have begun to consider the labor of de-occupation in the undercommons, permanent fugitivity, and dispossession as possibilities for a radical black praxis. Such “a labor that is dedicated to the reproduction of social dispossession as having an ethical dimension” (Moten & Harney, 2004, p.110), includes both the refusal of acquiring property and of being Property.
6
 P---1NC
New affs are bad---kills clash and fairness by forcing shallow debates, obviates
research---reject the team
Even if it’s not a reason to reject err neg on theory.
8
 CP---1NC
Optional Legislation CP

The United States federal government should expand 42 USC § 401(l) to include
drawing from the estate tax fund.to all states and relevant territories that opt-in to
federal enforcement of an estate tax and waiver of sovereign immunity regarding the
estate tax fund.
The counterplan competes, solves the aff, avoids politics, and spills over to solve
federalism and polarization.
Krishnamurthi ‘22 [Guha and Jacob Bronsther; 11-2022; Associate Professor of Law, University of
Oklahoma College of Law, JD; Assistant professor of Law, Michigan State University College of Law, JD;
Minnesota Law Review, “Optional Legislation”, 107 Minnesota Law Review 297]

Not since the nineteenth century has partisanship been this intense . 1 The only thing that Democrats and
Republicans can agree upon, it seems, is that "Washington is broken." 2 Indeed, [*298] for years now, Congress has been
unable to pass legislation on issues that pose serious risk to the nation and on which there is broad
consensus for a federal solution of some kind. Aside from stimulus bills 3 and tax cuts, 4 Congress has enacted
very little substantial legislation in almost a generation , with Obamacare and the recent but long-delayed
infrastructure bill being the [*299] most notable exceptions. 5 Entire policy areas have been left essentially untouched ,

including poverty , the environment , education , immigration, and so forth, with Presidents often struggling to
fill in the regulatory gaps with executive orders. 6 The simple number of bills enacted is telling. The last five Congresses
(representing ten calendar years) have passed an average of 339 bills , whereas the twenty-five Congresses between
1935 and 1985 passed an average of 1,249 bills , including such monumental legislation as the S ocial S ecurity Act, the
Voting Rights Act, and the Civil Rights Act. 7

new solution to legislative

Beyond the chimeras of bipartisanship or enduring one-party rule, this Article proposes a

dysfunction in Washington: optional legislation . Imagine that states could opt in to a federal program - say, a
scheme for universal basic income - on the condition that they alone foot a higher tax bill to pay for the
plan. States that opt out are completely unaffected since they do not have to contribute funds. Given that
each party controls its own set of states, optional legislation enables each party to govern at the
federal level with a degree of independence from the other. By comparison to nationwide bills that have the
support of a single party , optional legislation would not only be more politically viable and resilient , but
would also lead to more innovative and democratic policies. This Article thus presents a new form of federalism

engineered for eras of extreme partisan discord. Indeed, optional legislation embodies the twin virtues of what Heather
Gerken envisions as the federalism of the future. 8 First, optional legislation conceives of the states
and [*300] the federal government as "cooperative" 9 or "braided" 10 governance regimes, eschewing the traditional New

Deal understanding of them as autonomous and competitive sovereigns. 11 Second, it rejects the premise of the civil rights
era that decentralization necessarily favors conservative interests. 12 When expressed through optional legislation, decentralization can
promote the agendas of both Democrats and Republicans, and it can help mend what is assuredly a broken
Washington .
Consider Democratic proposals for an expanded public healthcare system, such as the various forms of Medicare for All 13 and "the public
option." 14 What unites all such plans is their political fragility in Congress. In truth, they exist more as academic proposals for a future America
than as live political projects, at least on a national scale. Finding sixty votes in the current Senate for even the public option is a
non-starter . But what about fifty Democratic votes? First, for that question to matter, Democrats would have to eliminate the filibuster,
so that healthcare reform could pass with a simple majority vote. However, only twenty-one out of fifty Democratic Senators have committed
themselves to such a filibuster plan. 15 Regardless, even if healthcare reform could pass with fifty votes, finding fifty Democratic Senators in the
current Congress to vote for either Medicare for All or the public option is almost certainly impossible. 16 [*301] With consensus support
within the party only for a much milder expansion of benefits, 17 it is unsurprising that President Biden has not included healthcare reform
among his major policy proposals. 18

Enter optional legislation. Twenty-eight states are represented among the fifty Senators who caucus with the Democrats. 19 While finding a

majority or supermajority in Congress for healthcare reform is unlikely , the chances improve dramatically at
the state level . It is doubtful that all twenty-eight states would opt in to Medicare for All or the public option, but it is
not hard to imagine that some number of them - say, five to fifteen states at first - would choose to join some
version of an expanded insurance program. In this way, optional legislation takes its cue from Otto von Bismarck, who once remarked
that politics is "the art of the next best." 20 While a nationwide law would, of course, cover many more people, there are likely millions of
individuals living in those five to fifteen states who are uninsured or underinsured, and who would stand to benefit greatly from an optional
hybrid optional bill, by which a
program. Is it not better to help some people rather than none? Another possibility yet is a

baseline of federal programming is guaranteed to all, while allowing for states to opt in to additional
forms of support.

Regardless, if the optional program is succeeding in participating states, then additional states can and, we
will opt in. Optional bills hypercharge the "laboratories of democracy" 21 [*302] afforded by our federal system,
think,

given that they enable states to experiment with programming that they would be unable or unwilling to
administer on their own. 22 As such, well-managed optional programs may be an effective means of convincing
people who are skeptical of progressive demands for a more socialized system . For instance, the
Medicaid expansion associated with Obamacare, which the Supreme Court converted into an option for the states, 23 has
now been adopted by thirty-eight states, many of which were initially vehemently opposed to the
policy. 24 This is "proof of concept" for the notion that states, even red states , will eventually join a successful ,
progressive program.

Reasserting state sovereignty counterbalances governance failures from federal

encroachment---extinction.
Mihalakas ’19 [Nasos; May 21; Global Professor of Law at the University of Arizona, LL.M. from
University College London, J.D. from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law; The Federalism Project,
“The Need for Governance Reform – Symptoms vs. Cause,”
https://the-federalism-project.org/2019/05/21/the-need-for-governance-reform-symptoms-vs-cause/]
There is no doubt that we live in “challenging” times. We face ‘social challenges,’ from racial discrimination to gender inequality, women’s
rights (reproductive or otherwise) that will have to be addressed, LGBTQ issues (recognition of gay marriage), a gun violence epidemic due to
both inadequate gun control laws but also excessive violence in our society, etc. We also face ‘ economic challenge s ,’ like
stagnant salaries and low wages, job insecurity (due to automation or outsourcing), taxes that are too high for some and not
high enough for others, mounting student debt, and yes massive income inequality. And, of course, we do face ‘ external

challenges ’, from nuclear prolif eration in the Korea n peninsula, to ISIS and religiously motivated global
terror ism, to global warming and climate change!

Yet, most of these issues are but symptoms of a greater cause . Their existence, or our inability to overcome them,
is being caused by a much greater problem in our society that unless we address soon we risk permanent
societal failures within the next 20 to 30 years.

This greater cause is our very own failing system of governance !!!
Though brilliant in its original construction by the founding fathers, our Federal system of governance (separation of powers, check and
balances, separate Federal and State governments) is grossly off track and highly unbalanced. During the past 200 years, we
witnessed a steady transfer of power away from the States and into the Fed eral government, and within the
Federal government we saw a similar steady concentration of power in the hands of the Executive (the singular President), and to a certain
extend the Supreme Court (due to Congressional acquiescence).

This did not happen due to some conspiracy by the ‘powerful elite’ or through interference by foreign powers. It happened gradually (almost
naturally), as a response to major failures at the State level: in dealing with slavery and racial discrimination (see Civil War and Jim Crow laws in
the south), in dealing with market failures and the need to regulate business and provide a safety net (see Great Depression, The New Deal and
the Great Society), in fighting a Cold War with the Soviet Union (see expansion of military and intelligence services to advance US foreign
policy).

Today, power and authority to deal with issues and solve problems is highly concentrated at the Federal level, away from ordinary people and
their ability to monitor let alone influence elected politicians.

There is so much power concentrated at the Fed eral level, and in particular in the hands of one person (the
President) that it makes Washington politicians constant targets of special interests and lobbying
negotiations for compromise impossible because there is so much at stake, and it has created
organizations, makes

a highly unbalanced system (where “checks and balances” are not fully implemented and more often can’t work effectively).
Washington gridlock, dysfunction, polarization, and partisanship have led to the inability to pass a budget (balanced or otherwise), or address
the need for immigration reform, or provide for adequate healthcare coverage and affordable prescription drugs, or even implement proper tax
reform. Therefore, unless we address these ‘ systemic ’ failures of our system of governance, unless we implement
fix the process , we will never get lasting solutions to our current and future
institutional changes and

societal challenges .
Unfortunately, there is no one thing we can do, no ‘magic bullet’ that can fix the dysfunction of our Federal system of governance (because it’s
not just ‘the Federal government’ that needs reform, but also/primarily Congress and the Judiciary). Rather, there are several things (from
specific process changes through laws/regulations to Constitutional amendments) that we will have to changes now, in order to see
improvement in the function of our system of governance in the next 20 to 30 years.

There is a parallel example to this system of governance failures, and it’s that of ‘global warming.’ Global temperatures have been rising, due to
greenhouse gases (caused by human activity – burning fossil fuels like coal and oil), presenting an existential threat to our planet and our way of
life. However, fossil fuels are not inherently evil, used by certain people bent on the destruction of humanity! Energy from fossil fuels was
instrumental in facilitating the industrial revolution, which brought progress and technological innovations during the past 150 years, that
helped the whole world to advance, prosper, and better connect. It was not until recently that we realized that the constantly expanding use of
fossil fuels by humans is contributing to rising temperatures, and if we don’t do something now to ‘bent the curve’, then in 20 to 30 years from
now temperatures will rise to levels that can be devastating to the planets ecosystem, and by extension us humans.

Concentration of power at the Federal level, over the past 200 years, though not inherently evil (downright necessary and proper
during some critical periods), has reached a point of pure dysfunction . The proof of the unsustainable
nature of our current system (like rising temperatures are a proof of global warming) is income inequality. During the past
50 years, we have witnessed a steady concentration of wealth at the hands of the top 10% (and primarily the top 1%).

And although one can look at our society today statically and say: “things are still ok: there are rich people and poor people, and we are still the
most powerful and wealthy nation in the world – so what’s the problem?”… the trend keeps going upwards: currently over 70% of our national
wealth is concentrated at the hands for the top 10%. When do we need to do something to stop this trend? When it gets to 80%, or 90%?

Democrats and Republicans (now thanks to Donald Trump) both agree on the existence of a ‘powerful elite, in cahoots with the political
establishment, bent on exploiting the middle class’… yet both party’s solution is the same: win political power and cut or raise taxes, regulate
more or less, appoint some type of judges… in essence, deal with the symptoms and not the underlying cause!

If we want to address the underlying cause of income inequality (and outsourcing of jobs, health-care failures, racial
tensions, education funding, women’s rights, public housing, etc.), then we need to reform our system of governance, before we can
consider specific policy priorities. By fixing the legislative process, restoring proper checks, correcting the imbalance within the government
branches and return ing powers back to the States … we can get on a path where we see real results within the next 20 to 30
years.

Otherwise, gridlock and dysfunction at the Federal level will only get worse !
9
 K---1NC
Invocation of death impacts is necrophilia, an obsession with body counts that ends in
extinction. Vote neg to reject it.
Mehrvand ’21 [Ahad; 2021; Associate Professor of English Literature, Azarbaijan Shahid Madani
University; Tabrizu, “Frommian Biophilic Ethics in Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich,”
https://philosophy.tabrizu.ac.ir/article_13595_f6e7ac14ac064ce66e8bbd6ef7f18b9c.pdf]
3. Theoretical Framework

A glimpse of Fromm’s thoughts explicated in his later works; i.e., The heart of the man, The anatomy of human destructiveness and To have or
to be? indicates how, to a considerable degree, Fromm examines the concepts of life and death. In The heart of man and later with more
elaboration in The anatomy of human destructiveness, Fromm defines and elaborates on the two key terms: “necrophilia” and “biophilia”.

Fromm suggests that “necrophilia” is not solely a type of sexual perversion which is oftentimes pertained to a
pathological infatuation and obsession with corpses; rather, in line with the Miguel de Unamuno, the renowned
Spanish philosopher, who approaches the term from a nonsexual angle of view, Fromm also investigates necrophilia in “the

characterological sense” as a character type (1973: 332). In a nutshell, Fromm defines necrophilia as “the passionate
attraction to all that is dead , decayed, putrid, sickly; it is the passion to transform that which is alive into
something unalive ; to destroy for the sake of destruction ; the exclusive interest in all that is purely
mechanical ” (332, emphasis in original).

antonym of “necrophilia”, Fromm coins the term “biophilia” which is a character type
To illuminate the

displaying opposite traits, indicative of one’s love of life . Fromm (1964) differentiates his definition of
“biophilia” from Freud’s superego, arguing,

the conscience of the biophilous person is not one of forcing oneself to refrain from evil and to do
good. It is not the superego described by Freud, a strict taskmaster employing sadism against
oneself for the sake of virtue. The biophilous conscience is motivated by its attraction to life and
joy ; the moral effort consists in strengthening the life-loving side in oneself. For[these] reasons the
biophile does not dwell in remorse and guilt, which are, after all, only aspects of self-loathing and sadness. He turns quickly to life
and attempts to do good. (23)

Fromm (1964) further clarifies the difference between his definitions and those proposed by Freud, asserting
that he is against Freud’s view that both death drive , or what Post Freudians called Thanatos, and life drive , or Eros, are
of “normal biological tendency”, asserting,

The dichotomy of biophilia-necrophilia is the same as Freud's life-and-death instinct . I believe, as Freud did, that
most fundamental polarity that exists. However, there is one important difference. Freud assumes
this is the

that the striving toward death and toward life are two biologically given tendencies inherent in all living substance
that their respective strengths are relatively constant, and that there is only one alternative within the operation of the death instinct--namely,
that it can be directed against the outside world or against oneself. In contrast to these assumptions[,] I believe that necrophilia is
not a normal biological tendency, but a pathological phenomenon--in fact, the most malignant pathology that
exists in mail.(24)
Freud’s death instinct is connected to his understanding of the psychological causes of the World War I.
Andrea Heiss (2011) finds a similarity between Freud and Fromm’s discussions on death instinct and draws upon Fromm’s own opinions (1973)
on Freud, stating,

What reasons motivated Freud to postulate the death instinct? One reason which I have already mentioned was probably the impact of the
First World War. He, like many other men of his time and age, had shared the optimistic vision so characteristic of the European middle class,

and saw himself suddenly confronted with a fury of hate and destruction hardly believable before August 1,1914. (p.
498)

Fromm argues that “necrophilia” is the product of uncongenial and harsh environmental conditions, whereas “biophilia” is “a biologically given
quality” (1973:358):

Biophilia is the passionate love of life and of all that is alive; it is the wish to further growth ,
whether in a person, a plant, an idea, or a social group. The biophilous person prefers to construct rather than
to retain . He is capable of wondering, and he prefers to see something new rather than to find confirmation of the old. He
loves the adventure of living more than he does certainty . He sees the whole rather than only the parts, structures
rather than summations. He wants to mold and to influence by love , reason, and example; not by force , by cutting
things apart, by the bureaucratic manner of administering people as if they were things . (Fromm,
1973: 365)

Based upon his statements concerning biophilia and necrophilia, Fromm offers “biophilic ethics” (1973 :365), the tenet of which is defined as:
“Good is all that serves life; evil is all that serves death. Good is reverence for life, all that enhances life, growth, unfolding. Evil is all that stifles
life, narrows it down, cuts it into pieces” (1973:366). It can be understood from these remarks that Fromm is against any orientation
that mistakes a human for an object and that, he regards object-centeredness as an immoral act, for such
orientation makes one’s life soulless and indistinguishable from death .

Thus, later in To have or to be?, Fromm delineates two modes of existence, “having” and “being” which are conceivably the
subsets of necrophilia and biophilia, respectively. The reason for such assumption, that is, the aforementioned modes of existence
being considered subsets of necrophilia and biophilia, can be elicited from The Heart of the man where Fromm argues that for a

necrophilious person “ having rather than being , is what counts” (2010: ch.3). As explained in To have or to be?,
“having” is defined as a mode of existence where in one’s “ relations hip to the world is one of
possessing and owning , one in which I want to make everybody and everything, including myself, my
property ” (2008: 21). In contrast, “being” mode means “aliveness and authentic relatedness to the world” (21).
In addition, being mode is “in contrast to appearing and refers to the true nature, the true reality, of a person or a thing in contrast to deceptive
appearances as exemplified in the etymology of being”(21, emphasis in original). Although for a having-oriented person “I am= what I have and
what I consume” (23), a being-oriented person “neither has anything nor craves to have something, but is joyous, employs one’s faculties
productively, is oned to the world” (16, emphasis in original).

In The anatomy of human destructiveness, Fromm underscores how necrophilious individuals tend to find force and
violence as the most effective tools in resolving conflicts (1973: 337), exhibit “lifelessness” in their
conversations by remaining “cold”, “aloof” and “pedantic”, so do not listen with engagement and enthusiasm (339), regard dark
to be more fascinating than light (339), “look” rather than “see” (343) or briefly speaking, “their enemy is life itself”
(348) making them turn all “life” into “things” (350). This way, everything is already dead in the world
of “no-life” and “no-persons” (350). Blatantly ubiquitous necrophilia engenders “monocerebral man” ,
that is, someone who is one-dimensionally governed by intellect like a robot , at the expense of
emotions (1973: 352). One can derive from this discussion that the opposite of such qualities are ascribable to the individuals leading their
lives based upon biophilia. Interestingly, all these necrophilious and their opposite, i.e. biophilous traits are detectable in The death of Ivan
Ilyich; especially, with more vivid manifestation, in the protagonist himself before and after he grapples with the debilitating sickness.
10
 DA---1NC
Congress avoids shutdown now, but it’s narrow---bipartisanship is key.
Tran ‘9/7 [Ken; 2023; Reporter; Rachel Looker; “Will there be a government shutdown? Senators warn
'time is short' as hardline Republicans demand cuts,” USA Today,
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/09/07/schumer-house-republicans-avoid-
shutdown-bipartisanship/70781388007/]
While the House has yet to come back into session from its weeks-long summer break, the Senate, which returned Tuesday, has a gloomy
outlook on Congress' odds of avoiding a government shutdown.

“I’m convinced it’s happening,” Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., told reporters Wednesday, pointing to House conservatives who have downplayed
the effects of a shutdown on Americans. “I just think there’s too many people that think there’s some benefit in that.”

Government shutdowns play out differently, but they can have wide-ranging impacts from recipients of food assistance
programs seeing delays to federal employees being furloughed.

Senators have been approaching the process of keeping the gov ernment funded on a mostly
bipartisan basis . Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announced Wednesday at a weekly press conference the upper
chamber would vote next week on three out of the 12 appropriations bills needed to avert a
shutdown , praising both Senate Democrats and Republicans for moving swiftly on the process.

On the other hand, Schumer urged the House to follow in the Senate’s footsteps to avoid a shutdown.
“When the House returns next week, I implore, I beg my House Republican colleagues to follow the Senate’s lead, to recognize that time is
short, and the only way to avoid a shutdown is through bipartisanship in both the House and
Senate ,” Schumer said.

Ultra-conservative lawmakers draw hard lines on government shutdown

When the House comes back into session next Tuesday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has a daunting task ahead of him: wrangling
his narrow four-seat GOP majority to pass a temporary spending bill – called a continuing resolution – to avoid a shutdown by Sept. 30.

But McCarthy’s right flank from the House Freedom Caucus, a loose coalition of the most conservative lawmakers, have drawn hard lines on
government spending.

“I think it would be fair to say that (House Republicans) are having a spirited debate over there,” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., told USA TODAY
Wednesday.

The caucus took an official position in August, saying in a statement it will oppose any spending measure that fails to include more security on
the southern border, end what the group alleges is “unprecedented weaponization” of the Department of Justice and take down “woke
policies" in the Pentagon. The demands reflect a range of conservative lawmakers' grievances in Washington, from
the criminal indictments against former President Donald Trump to the Department of Defense's policies surrounding abortion.

“I think that we should be trying to get a good bill, and we should be trying to employ whatever tactics necessary to get that bill, and we’ll see
where that ultimately leads,” Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, told reporters Wednesday when asked if he shares the same views of House Freedom
Caucus members.

Those demands have virtually zero chance of passing the Democratic-controlled Senate or even passing with full GOP support in the House. If
McCarthy can’t reconcile the differences between his right flank and more moderate members in the GOP conference, the government could
be on the path towards a shutdown.

“I'm concerned that the hostage takers and (hard-right) extremists on the Republican side in the House may take us to the
brink of a shutdown ,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told USA TODAY.
Other GOP senators, though, share similar sentiments with House conservatives on cutting government spending. However, they still believe
funding deal to avert a shutdown will have to come to a middle ground between the House and
any

Senate’s spending proposals.

“All those votes are meaningless , and everybody knows it. What counts is what comes out of that conference
committee," Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., told reporters Wednesday. He said the only way to avert a shutdown is an agreement between the
House and Senate.

“The House is a raucous place and some people like government shutdowns, so we’ll see,” Cramer said.

Social security reform consumes oceans of political energy---it’ll drag into endless
conflict.
Chappel ’23 [James; February 13; Associate Professor of History at Duke University; Boston Review,
“The Frozen Politics of Social Security,” https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-frozen-politics-of-
social-security/]

Social Security is back in the news. Some Republicans are angling to reduce benefits , while
Dem ocrat s are posing as the valiant saviors of the popular program. The end result, most likely, is that
nothing will happen . We have seen this story before, because this is roughly where the politics of Social Security
have been stuck for about forty years . It’s a problem because the system truly does need repair, and the endless
conflict between debt-obsessed Republicans and stalwart Dem ocrat s will not generate the progressive
reforms we need.
Social Security, believe it or not, has a utopian heart: the idea that all Americans deserve a life of dignity and public support once they become
old or disabled. This vision does, for now, remain utopian: many Americans are right to worry that, without savings or private pensions, their
older years will be just as precarious and austere as their younger ones. Social Security is nonetheless the lynchpin of the U.S. welfare system,
such as it is. In 2022 some $1.2 trillion flowed from the system to nearly 66 million people. Most of those people are retired workers, but not all
of them. Millions are the spouses or dependents of retired workers; millions more are disabled people, or the spouses or dependents of the
disabled. All in all, about one in four Americans over the age of eighteen receives benefits from Social Security. If not for Social Security, almost
40 percent of older Americans would be living in poverty.

It is not going too far to say that the Social Security system, more than any other single institution, keeps the United States from becoming a
truly Dickensian world of poverty and despair. Yet it has serious downsides, too. For one thing, benefits are low; even after much-needed cost-
of-living increases, the average recipient will receive just over $21,000 per year. And for another, the Social Security trust fund will run dry in
about twelve years, prompting an immediate benefit drop of about 20 percent (there is no realistic scenario in which benefits disappear
altogether). For a middle-class family, that difference might not matter all that much, but for an elderly and disabled widow, already near the
poverty line, it would be devastating.

You probably already know most of this. Indeed, it’s become conventional wisdom that the Social Security system is in trouble and shouldn’t be
counted on. How many times have you heard people scoff about their Social Security taxes or warn a younger coworker their benefits will never
materialize? This shrugging nihilism might make sense for the wealthier among us, many of whom are indulging in the distinctly American ritual
of creating an entrepreneurial plan for our looming disability and death. But the majority of Americans don’t have 401(k)s, and many millions,
especially the poor and people of color, will rely on Social Security as their main source of retirement income.

Despite this dire situation, there has not been a congressional vote, even in committee, on major reforms to Social Security since 1983. This has
not been for lack of trying, at least among Democrats. In both the House and the Senate, there are serious bills, with significant support, to
salvage the program. The most well-developed, known as Social Security 2100, has more than 200 cosponsors in the House. It’s an audacious
bill, planning to expand Social Security benefits for the first time since the 1970s, focusing especially on the caregiving workforce. And in the
Senate, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have put forth an even more ambitious plan, which would raise taxes and benefits while
expanding the program’s solvency for decades.

Still, the odds of anything happening with these bills are low, at least for now. In addition to the expected Republican
intransigence , Dem ocrat s themselves are not united . The relevant division is between a politics of
incrementalism and a politics of bold reform and expansion. Social Security 2100 is on the less ambitious end of the spectrum,
especially as it has recently been rewritten to keep Biden’s promise of not raising taxes on people making less than $400,000 per year. As such,
the bill does little to address the solvency issue. The Social Security Expansion Act in the Senate is bolder and does more to address both equity
and solvency—but few Dem ocratic senator s have cosponsored the bill, leaving it oceans away from the
required votes.
For all their differences, these bills in the aggregate show that Social Security is perfectly capable of providing a vehicle for progressive welfare
reform: any of them would do wonders, most obviously for seniors and disabled workers. But all of us, too, would benefit from knowing that
something like a livable income was headed our way at the tail end of a serpentine labor market that has almost completely stopped providing
traditional pensions. Despite all this, the enormous energy in recent years around expanding Medicare
and Medicaid has not been matched by attention to Social Security: the politics around it have
languished .
Why? One major reason is that Social Security has a marketing problem. It seems like a boring, wonky program, and one that is in any case
unlikely to survive much longer. (A 2015 Gallup poll showed that more than half of Americans did not expect to receive benefits when they
retired.) This situation has left the door open for conservatives, who have been baying to privatize Social Security, or
at least cut benefits , since the 19 70s . However impractical and unpopular this idea is, it is at least an ethos. And it has kept
liberals on the defensive: again and again, they rest content by (rightly) showing that privatization would be a disaster and then insisting that
Social Security can be “saved,” perhaps with some tinkering to keep it solvent.

That ensures a House GOP revolt, causing an indefinite shutdown.

Sivak ’23 [David; June 23; Congress & Campaigns Editor at the Washington Examiner; “Congress and
Biden barrel toward fall showdown over Washington spending,”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/house/congress-president-joebiden-fall-showdown-
washington-spending]

A $120 billion disagreement over federal spending threatens to send Washington hurtling toward a
government shutdown later this year, even as lawmakers race to pass their annual appropriations bills.

For a moment, it seemed as though Congress might avoid the kind of last-minute stalemates that have
come to define the appropriations process. Lawmakers had pledged to move the 12 annual bills individually after years of catchall packages that
often included extraneous measures and what critics consider bloated federal spending.

More importantly, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), leveraging a June deadline to raise the nation's borrowing limit, struck a deal
with President Joe Biden that effectively keeps the current level of nondefense spending in place. The compromise allowed House Republicans,
holding a narrow majority, to argue they had curbed federal spending, while the Biden administration and Democrats, in control of the Senate,
could claim they curbed larger GOP-sought cuts.

Yet no sooner had the country avoided default, raising the nation's debt ceiling to allow for more borrowing, than lawmakers faced a
new showdown.

A small group of conservatives staged a revolt over McCarthy's compromise with the White House, grinding
business on the House floor to a halt. The speaker, as a promise he made to win the gavel in January, pressed Biden to roll back spending to
2022 levels but walked away with far more modest cuts.

Members of the Freedom Caucus, who hold outsize influence in the House given Republicans' five-seat majority, were left fuming. Caucus
members and allied House conservatives even entertained the idea of holding a "no confidence" vote on McCarthy's speakership.
They relented from their blockade, however, after McCarthy agreed to draft spending bills at 2022
levels . The top lines he and Biden agreed to would be a ceiling, not a floor, said Appropriations Chairwoman Kay Granger (R-TX) three days
later as the House nailed down spending levels for each of the 12 bills it will pass in the coming months.

Yet it quickly became apparent that McCarthy had traded one headache for another . Democrats accused
him of "reneging" on his deal with Biden, while centrist Republicans grumbled more loudly than ever about his acquiescence to
members of the Freedom Caucus.

“Do you think any of us would have made a deal if we thought your number was the deal? What kind of deal is that? What kind of respect for
yourselves is that?” Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), a senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, chided Republicans earlier this
month.

The Senate is enduring far less drama as it crafts its own appropriations bills ahead of a Sept. 30 deadline to fund the federal government. In
fact, Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-WA) and the panel's top Republican, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), have pledged to work
on a bipartisan basis.

respite in legislative drama over spending will be brief . They have committed to crafting
Yet they know any

their spending bills at the levels established in the debt ceiling deal, setting Congress up for a House

versus Senate clash .

The two chambers have agreed to spare defense , veterans care, and homeland security from budget cuts , but
conservatives want to slash the rest of the discretionary budget. Granger doled out top lines that cut some appropriations
bills by more than a third relative to 2023 levels.

The result: a yawning, $119 billion gap between the House and Senate budget plans.
Deep reductions are a nonstarter for Democrats, who control the White House and Senate. Even some centrist Republicans in the House will be
reluctant to go along with McCarthy's plan.

Lawmakers, perhaps with the exception of the Freedom Caucus, fundamentally understand that to avert a shutdown starting Oct. 1, it will take
another bipartisan compromise such as that seen in the debt ceiling fight.

“You cannot pass appropriations bills without them being both bipartisan and bicameral. The president will not sign,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT),
the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, told reporters earlier this month.

“So, I think this notion that you can deal with 2022 levels, that appears to have been a part of this secret
deal, you then may be looking at guaranteeing a shutdown ,” added DeLauro, who led the Appropriations
Committee from 2021-23.

Yet some House conservatives are already shrugging at the prospect of a shutdown. Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) said this month he's happy to
shutter Washington for weeks if it means reining in federal spending.

For now, Senate appropriators are keeping their heads down. On June 21, they gave each of the 12 Appropriations subcommittees their
spending allocation levels for the coming fiscal year. The full Appropriations Committee also amended and rewrote, or "marked up," two of the
dozen federal spending bills, for military construction and agriculture.

"I'm focused on getting our job done right now," Murray told the Washington Examiner.

The push is notable — the full Senate has not passed an individual appropriations bill since 2019. Murray and Collins's predecessors, who
retired at the end of the last Congress, preferred to cut behemoth spending bills outside of the committee process.

Collins told the Washington Examiner she hopes the return to some semblance of normalcy will ease tensions for conservatives, who seethed at
what they viewed as years of backroom deals that excluded input from the rank and file.

She plans to have the "vast majority" of bills reported out of committee before the August recess.
The House Appropriations Committee has already approved funding for agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security and the
Department of Veterans Affairs.

But the entire process has appropriators irked since the cuts are too severe for Democrats to stomach. To compensate, Granger is eyeing
billions in funds Congress previously allocated but never spent, despite warnings from conservatives that the clawbacks are no substitute for
lower discretionary spending.

Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA), a member of Appropriations and the No. 3 Democrat in the House, worried aloud that the House would end up
short-changed in the process.

"We are completely ceding the appropriations process to the Senate at this point," Aguilar told reporters this month. "The Senate is the only
entity that is marking up to the agreed-upon numbers."

He predicted the House would eventually wind up voting on whatever the Senate produces .

That vote may not come in the fall. If history is any guide, lawmakers will extend government funding to late
December, teeing up a now-familiar scramble to avert a shutdown before the Christmas recess.

The stakes are not nearly so high as in the debt ceiling fight. There's mostly a political cost, usually shouldered by Republicans, to pay when the
government shuts down.

But Congress is incentivized to reach a deal by a provision in the debt ceiling compromise that
forces a 1%, across-the-board cut if lawmakers fail to act by the end of the year .

Shutdown collapses military readiness.

McCusker ’9/6 [Elaine; September 6, 2023; senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and
former acting undersecretary of defense (comptroller); “The avoidable consequences of a government
shutdown,” https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/2023/09/06/the-avoidable-consequences-of-a-
government-shutdown/]
As members of Congress return to the Capitol from the August work period at home with their constituents, only 11 joint legislative days
remain for them to finish their most fundamental annual duty: funding the federal government to support American
security and competitiveness.
There are many necessary and useful debates to be had related to this responsibility, including the size and scope of the federal government
and its activities, the way taxpayer funds are used, and the looming repercussions of a growing federal deficit. However, Americans
need more emphasis on negotiated solutions to confronting the nation’s key challenges, and less on who
gets the blame for failure.

With attention currently going toward the probability of a government shutdown, which is what happens when annual funding is not
enacted or extended, there appears to be little discussion or understanding of the consequences such a failure would bring.

The real hostages, and eventual losers in this blame game, are not elected officials or single issues of contention; they are American taxpayers
and the national security they support with their tax dollars.

Who are the winners ? China , Russia and other U.S adversaries .

The consequences of a government shutdown can be put into three basic categories. The first is reputational , which has broad strategic,
security and financial implications. The second is anticipatory, meaning the planning, diversion of attention and hedging activities that
come with a shutdown threat. The third is financial — or the tangible wasted money of shutting down and then restarting the government —
and the lost opportunity and revenue that permeates the economy and thereby threatens our security.

First, a government shutdown feeds directly into the strategic narrative of our adversaries who have the most to gain
when we provide evidence to support their talking points that the U.S. is fractured, dysfunctional, distracted and unreliable. Combine a
potential shutdown with the debacle leading up to the last-minute avoidance of the debt limit breach earlier this year; the Biden
administration’s inept, weak and confusing foreign policy; and the somewhat embarrassing nature of our current national politics, and our
country is not sending signals of confidence and strength .

In fact, the inability for our national leaders to accomplish even the most basic tasks must only encourage countries to continue

hedging strategies , allowing China and Russia to capitalize on our divisions to achieve their aims.
Second, as the end of the fiscal year approaches and a small cadre of elected representatives indicates a government shutdown may actually be
useful, federal leaders and the workforce must prepare for all the notifications and mechanics of making it happen. Despite the reams of
instructions and directives about how to do it, the actual implementation of a shutdown is complicated, confusing and subject
to shifting interpretations. In fact, there are so many detailed questions that arise before, during and after a government shutdown
that daily calls at leadership levels across the government consume large amounts of time . These

engagements cover a huge range of topics and questions, ranging from ways to maintain military
modernization momentum that is lagging China, to specifics on the diversion of major training events, to how to pay the local
base groundskeeper or provide loan assistance for military families who don’t know when the next paycheck may be coming.

Multiply these calls across functional areas around the globe , and thousands of hours adding up to millions of dollars are
wasted while attention is diverted from core missions and activities, and away from real national priorities of security and
economic progress.

Finally, a government shutdown is expensive and imposes a negative cost on the economy, and thereby on security. For example, the
Congressional Budget Office estimated that the 2018-2019 shutdown reduced gross domestic product by a total of $11 billion, including $3
billion that was unrecoverable.

Financial impacts come in the form of reduced access to federal loans, lost interest payments, delayed contracts and the inability to disburse
funds, which then reverberates into private sector investments and hiring decisions. A 2019 Senate report found that the three government
shutdowns — in 2013, 2018 and 2019 — cost taxpayers nearly $4 billion.

From a Pentagon perspective, weapons systems are delayed ; training is missed , which impacts readiness; and
junior uniform personnel, who are already struggling with financial challenges, go unpaid while they continue to work. In addition, costs are
incurred when back pay is provided to a federal workforce that is largely furloughed. These financial impacts not only waste taxpayer
dollars, but they reach large and small businesses, a shaky supply chain, and ultimately military competitiveness and national
security.

Congress has a key constitutional responsibility: providing annual appropriations to fund the federal government. The federal government has
only one mandatory and exclusive job: providing for the common defense. A government shutdown is an avoidable self-inflicted wound
that disgracefully demonstrates failure to meet both foundational tasks while damaging America’s reputation ,
security and economy .

The impact is nuclear war, nuclear terror, and arms racing.

Brands ’18 [Hal; January 16; Professor of Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins University’s School of
Advanced International Studies, Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments;
American Grand Strategy in the Age of Trump, “Does America Have Enough Hard Power?” Ch. 6]
Primacy and Post-Cold War Grand Strategy

Since World War II, the United States has had a military second to none . Since the Cold War, America has committed
to having overwhelming military primacy . The idea, as George W. Bush declared in 2002, that America must
possess “ strengths beyond challenge ” has featured in every major U.S. strategy document for a
quarter century; it has also been reflected in concrete terms.6

From the early 1990s, for example, the United States consistently accounted for around 35 to 45 percent of world defense
spending and maintained peerless global power-projection capabilities.7 Perhaps more important, U.S.
primacy was also unrivaled in key overseas strategic regions — Europe , East Asia , the Middle East .
From thrashing Saddam Hussein’s million-man Iraqi military during Operation Desert Storm, to deploying—with
impunity—two carrier strike groups off Taiwan during the China-Taiwan crisis of 1995– 96, Washington has been able

to project military power superior to anything a regional rival could employ even on its own
geopolitical doorstep.

This military dominance has constituted the hard-power backbone of an ambitious global strategy . After the
Cold War, U.S. policymakers committed to averting a return to the unstable multipolarity of earlier eras, and
to perpetuating the more favorable unipolar order . They committed to building on the successes of the postwar
era by further advancing liberal political values and an open international economy, and to suppressing international
scourges such as rogue states , nuclear proliferation , and catastrophic terrorism . And because they
recognized that military force remained the ultima ratio regum, they understood the centrality of military

preponderance .

Washington would need the military power necessary to underwrite worldwide alliance commitments. It would
have to preserve substantial overmatch versus any potential great-power rival . It must be able to answer
the sharpest challenges to the international system, such as Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 or jihadist
extremism after 9/11. Finally, because prevailing global norms generally reflect hard-power realities, America
would need the superiority to assure that its own values remained ascendant. It was impolitic to say that U.S. strategy
and the international order required “strengths beyond challenge,” but it was not at all inaccurate.

American primacy, moreover, was eminently affordable. At the height of the Cold War, the United States spent over 12 percent of GDP on
defense. Since the mid-1990s, the number has usually been between 3 and 4 percent.8 In a historically favorable international environment,
Washington could enjoy primacy—and its geopolitical fruits—on the cheap.

Yet U.S. strategy also heeded, at least until recently, the fact that there was a limit to how cheaply that primacy could be had. The American
military did shrink significantly during the 1990s, but U.S. officials understood that if Washington cut back too far, its primacy would erode to a
point where it ceased to deliver its geopolitical benefits. Alliances would lose credibility; the stability of key regions would be eroded; rivals
would be emboldened; international crises would go unaddressed. American primacy was thus like a reasonably priced insurance policy. It
required nontrivial expenditures, but protected against far costlier outcomes.9 Washington paid its insurance premiums for two decades after
the Cold War. But more recently American primacy and strategic solvency have been imperiled.

The Darkening Horizon

For most of the post–Cold War era, the international system was— by historical standards—remarkably benign. Dangers
existed, and as the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, demonstrated, they could manifest with horrific effect. But for two decades after

the Soviet collapse, the world was characterized by remarkably low levels of great-power competition ,
high levels of security in key theaters such as Europe and East Asia , and the comparative weakness of
those “rogue” actors—Iran, Iraq, North Korea, al-Qaeda—who most aggressively challenged American
power. During the 1990s, some observers even spoke of a “strategic pause,” the idea being that the end of the Cold War had afforded the
United States a respite from normal levels of geopolitical danger and competition. Now, however, the strategic horizon is
darkening , due to four factors.

First, great-power military competition is back . The world’s two leading authoritarian powers —
China and Russia—are seeking regional hegemony , contesting global norms such as nonaggression
and freedom of navigation, and developing the military punch to underwrite these ambitions.
military modernization
Notwithstanding severe economic and demographic problems, Russia has conducted a major

emphasizing nuclear weapons , high-end conventional capabilities , and rapid-deployment and

special operations forces — and utilized many of these capabilities in conflicts in Ukraine and Syria .10
China, meanwhile, has carried out a buildup of historic proportions , with constant-dollar defense outlays rising
from US$26 billion in 1995 to US$226 billion in 2016.11 Ominously, these expenditures have funded development of
power-projection and anti-access / area denial (A2/AD) tools necessary to threaten China’s neighbors
and complicate U.S. intervention on their behalf. Washington has grown accustomed to having a
generational military lead; Russian and Chinese modernization efforts are now creating a far more
competitive environment.

Second, the international outlaws are no longer so weak. North Korea’s conventional forces have
atrophied, but it has amassed a growing nuclear arsenal and is developing an intercontinental delivery
capability that will soon allow it to threaten not just America’s regional allies but also the continental United States.12
Iran remains a nuclear threshold state, one that continues to develop ballistic missiles and A2/AD
capabilities while employing sectarian and proxy forces across the Middle East. The Islamic State, for its part, is
headed for defeat, but has displayed military capabilities unprecedented for any terrorist group , and shown
that counterterrorism will continue to place significant operational demands on U.S. forces whether in this context or in
others. Rogue actors have long preoccupied American planners, but the rogues are now more capable than at any time in
decades .

Third, the democratization of technology has allowed more actors to contest American superiority in
dangerous ways. The spread of antisatellite and cyberwarfare capabilities; the proliferation of man-
air defense systems and ballistic missiles ; the increasing availability of key elements of the
portable

precision-strike complex— these phenomena have had a military leveling effect by giving weaker actors
capabilities which were formerly unique to technologically advanced states. As such technologies “ proliferate
worldwide ,” Air Force Chief of Staff General David Goldfein commented in 2016, “the technology and capability gaps
between America and our adversaries are closing dangerously fast.”13 Indeed, as these capabilities spread,
fourth-generation systems (such as F-15s and F-16s) may provide decreasing utility against even non-great-power
competitors, and far more fifth-generation capabilities may be needed to perpetuate American overmatch.

Finally, the number of challenges has multiplied . During the 1990s and early 2000s, Washington faced rogue states and
jihadist extremism—but not intense great-power rivalry. America faced conflicts in the Middle East—but East Asia and Europe were
comparatively secure. Now, the old threats still exist —but the more permissive conditions have vanished . The
United States confronts rogue states , lethal jihadist organizations, and great-power competition ; there
are severe challenges in all three Eurasian theaters. “I don’t recall a time when we have been confronted with a
more diverse array of threats, whether it’s the nation state threats posed by Russia and China and particularly their
substantial nuclear capabilities , or non-nation states of the likes of ISIL, Al Qaida, etc.,” Director of National
Intelligence James Clapper commented in 2016. Trends in the strategic landscape constituted a veritable “ litany of

doom .”14 The United States thus faces not just more significant, but also more numerous , challenges to its
military dominance than it has for at least a quarter century.
Tax Adv
 Inequality---1NC
Inequality’s declining.
Wright et. al ‘19 [Joshua D., Elyse Dorsey, Jonathan Klick, and Jan M. Rybnicek; University Professor
and Executive Director, Global Antitrust Institute at Scalia Law School; Attorney Advisor to Commissioner
Noah Joshua Phillips, United States Federal Trade Commission; Professor of Law, University of
Pennsylvania; Counsel in the antitrust, competition, and trade practice of Freshfields, Bruckahus
Deringer LLP; Arizona State Law Review, “REQUIEM FOR A PARADOX: The Dubious Rise and Inevitable
Fall of Hipster Antitrust,” vol. 51]

2. The Empirical Evidence : Is Inequality Really Growing ?

that inequality has increased in recent years. This view is fairly

All of the papers discussed above assume
common among economists and would seem to be borne out as seen in Figure 2 below, which presents
the Gini coefficient for U.S. incomes for the last fifty years.166

Figure 3, which plots the ratio of the share of US income among the fifth quintile of income-earning households to the share among the first
quintile of households167 tells a similar story.
Robert Kaestner and Darren Lubotsky underscore the point that inequality measures can be significantly affected by a
failure to account for government transfers and employee benefits that presumably substitute
for cash income .168 Given that healthcare costs have grown faster than inflation in recent years, a
failure to account for health insurance benefits could significantly affect economic inequality
measures. Reviewing estimates from the literature, Kaestner and Lubotsky find that including health insurance
substantially reduces the gap between incomes at the high end of the distribution and those at the
low end.169 Interestingly, however, the authors find that there is still an upward trend in inequality over time when
the cash equivalent of health insurance and government transfers are included .170 The trend, however ,
is substantially muted .171 Specifically, including government transfers and the imputed value of
employer subsidized health insurance, Kaestner and Lubotsky indicate that the ratio of income between
households at the ninetieth percentile and the tenth percentile was about five in 1995, growing to 5.2
in 2004 and to 5.6 in 2012.172
 Turn---1NC
Increasing Congress’ authority over SS weakens federalism.
Epstein and Loyola 14 [*Richard and **Mario; *American legal scholar known for his writings on
torts, contracts, property rights, law and economics, classical liberalism, and libertarianism, **Senior
Fellow at CEI and associate director for regulatory reform at the Council on Environmental Quality and
presidential speechwrite; Summer 2014 “Saving Federalism”; National Affairs;
https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/saving-federalism; accessed 6/27/2023; Lowell-
WN]

For Bulman-Pozen, the states are already dead as autonomous independent actors: "[W]e should
think more seriously about federalism's afterlife as a form of nationalism." For Gerken, "the federal
government can increase i ts power by devolving it"; the task of federalism now is to expand the list
of nationalist ends served by federalism and identify new institutional means for achieving those ends.
For Abbe Gluck, federalism " mostly comes — and goes — at Congress's pleasure "; National
Federalism goes beyond process federalism because it embraces "Congress as federalism's primary
source."

The National Federalists have done the country a signal service by dispelling the myth that any of the
variants of process or cooperative federalism can possibly coexist with the state's dual
sovereignty when Congress decrees otherwise. They are surely correct, and the Supreme Court will hopefully soon take
note that nobody on the right or left takes its affirmations of devotion to dual sovereignty seriously anymore.

Where the National Federalists present a most profound danger is in their confident argument that national control of states is a good thing.
Luckily, their arguments on this front are demonstrably incomplete and misconceived. Gluck, for
example, criticizes the Supreme Court's Obamacare decision (in the 2012 case National Federation of
Independent Businesses v. Sebelius) on the Medicaid front because it " unrealistically assumed that
erecting barriers to state implementation of federal law will stop Congress from enacting major
federal legislation altogether. The New Deal, however, is here to stay. The question is not whether we will have major federal
statutes, but what the continuing relevance of the states in this landscape will be." The "alternative to National Federalism is not state
autonomy," she assures us; "it is more Washington-controlled federal legislation."

In fact, however, cooperative federalism allows the federal government to do many things it might
not be able to do otherwise. Medicaid might never have passed if it had been unconstitutional for the federal government to rope
states into match-funding a federal program, because the federal cost projections would have been staggering. Or consider marijuana
decriminalization in Colorado and Washington: Without state and local police on hand to do its bidding, the federal government can't even
enforce its own drug laws.

Unfortunately, the National Federalist account misses many of the troubling questions that its aggressive agenda raises for political economy
and constitutional principle in the post-New Deal era. For
example, the National Federalists laud the states' ability to
vary from federal standards because it enfranchises local preferences while advancing national goals.
What they ignore is that these benefits are a one-way ratchet: States can always pile taxation and
regulation on top of the federal baseline, but they can never reduce the federal baseline . The
National Federalists concede states the right to have more government than the national norm, but never less, except in the rare case that a
special waiver program allows it. Wisconsin's mid-1990s welfare reform, for instance, is one of the few examples of a state reducing a
cooperative-federalism program pursuant to a federal waiver.
Officials in regulation-heavy and tax-heavy states have an enormous incentive to collude with their fellows in other states to form coalitions in
Congress aimed at imposing a high level of regulation and taxation on everyone. We saw why in the Child Labor case: With industrialization,
labor and capital were becoming increasingly mobile and sensitive to seemingly small differences in state regulation. States with child-labor
laws set at 14 years were furious that other states set theirs at 12. They cried out to Congress for a uniform national standard to counteract
"the race to the bottom," a progressive pejorative for interstate regulatory competition.

One major objective of the New Deal was to safeguard states with high levels of taxation and regulation by neutralizing the effects of mobile
labor and capital through federal programs meant to eliminate the competitive advantage of states with low levels of taxation and regulation.
Modern federalism advances this vision with brutal effectiveness. The whole system is biased in
favor of producing the highest level of overall government control and economic extraction that
is politically sustainable — exactly the opposite of the competitive federalism of the original
Constitution.
Another point the National Federalists overlook, again in keeping with their progressive forebears, is that their vision substantially neutralizes
one of the great benefits of a modern economy. Keeping both capital and labor mobile encourages innovation,
increases the velocity of exchange, and propels the market toward higher productivity and wealth
creation. Consider, for example, one of the great legacies of the New Deal: the Rust Belt. Precisely when markets were needed to introduce
a rapid re-allocation of human and material resources, the federal government stepped in to freeze everything in place
with "protections from competition" and "economic security for the common man." The inevitable
result of hitting efficient markets with these heavy interventions — which were driven by convictions
that were as passionate as they were economically illiterate — was the desolation of an entire region of
the country.
Bulman-Pozen unwittingly alludes to this problem when she sees states as "staging grounds for national networks seeking to further their
agendas." There is one group of national networks that has increasingly little to gain from using the states as staging grounds, namely those
with the agenda of reducing the overall level of taxation and regulation. The networks that have the most to gain from the system are, of
course, special interests that masterfully pull government levers in order to extract special rents and benefits from the rest of society.

In championing massive delegations of rulemaking authority to the executive branch and the end of the
states as independent actors within a structural framework of dual sovereignty, the National
Federalists champion "integration" over " separation." They either fail to see, or blithely assume it
doesn't matter, that their faith in integration runs totally counter to the checks and balances of
divided government that the framers thought vital for protecting democracy from the power of faction.

Sweeping expansion of federal welfare policies wrecks federalism and undercuts

states’ autonomy.
Petersen 17 [Austin; American writer, political activist, commentator, and broadcaster; 8/8/2017; “It’s
time to restore federalism and make our Founding Fathers proud”; The Hill;
https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/state-local-politics/345716-its-time-to-restore-federalism-and-
make-our-founding/; accessed 6/27/2023; Lowell-WN]

{mosads}But
the Senate’s failure here is also indicative of a deeper problem — a problem that has gone
ignored by both parties for far too long. The fact that the process has proven so challenging shows us
that the federal government is struggling to deal with something it was never intended to deal
with in the first place.
Republicans and Democrats have both forgotten one of the most basic principles of our government,
namely, the principle of federalism , which reserves all powers not given to the federal government in
the Constitution to the states and the people.

We see the consequences of this forgetfulness across all sorts of policy issues. We see it in the current healthcare debacle, as
federal leaders struggle with ObamaCare, one of the most egregious examples of federal
overreach in the history of our nation.

We see it in other areas, as the Environmental Protection Agency singlehandedly spent a whopping $344
billion during the Obama administration — far more than any other agency — primarily on regulations written by unelected
bureaucrats. We see it in our justice system, where federal mandatory minimums have put thousands
behind bars for nonviolent drug offenses, wasting millions of dollars on legal fees and corrections.
On July 4, I announced my candidacy for the U.S. Senate. It was an intentional and symbolic choice of date. If elected, I will fight to restore the
principles upon which this great nation of ours was founded: federalism and freedom. I will block federal overreach at every step, and strive to
return federal power to where the 10th Amendment says it belongs, which is with the states and the people.

Fortunately, I come from Missouri,

a state that in recent years has made strides towards restoring federalism
and constitutional government. State Rep. Jeff Pogue, for example, authored bold legislation that
demonstrates the kind of approach towards federalism our country so desperately needs right
now. The legislation essentially nullifies any federal laws that violate the right of Missourians to bear
arms. It is a right guaranteed not only in the U.S. Constitution, but in Article I of the Missouri State Constitution as well.

Some might cite the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution against Pogue’s legislation, arguing that it gives the
federal government power over the states. But this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the law .
The clause gives the federal government ultimate power only in those areas where power has been expressly
delegated to the federal government. Since federal law states that the right to keep and bear arms “shall not be infringed,” the
Supremacy Clause does not apply in this situation, and the 10th Amendment allows Missouri to, in effect, nullify federal gun laws in the state.

We need more of this kind of approach — and not just from our state legislators. We need federal
legislators to fight federal overreach so that state leaders like Pogue won’t need to be on the defensive
and craft nullification laws like this in the first place.
 Innovation---1NC
Investment is going towards sustainability
Julia Wanday and Samer Ajour El Zein 22, Wanday: Geneva Business School, El Zein: Researcher in
Economics and Finance Department at EAE Business School, 10/25/2022, “Higher expected returns for
investors in the energy sector in Europe using an ESG strategy,”
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2022.1031827/full , RS

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing has sparked a widespread curiosity by many asset
managers. The value of ESG-focused portfolios across major markets surpassed US$30 trillion in 2019. ESG investing is important to
investors for a minimum of two reasons. For starters, by emphasising ESG investing, ethically responsible investment activities are strongly
encouraged. Secondly, ESG investing is rapidly being thought of as a way to improve performance of a managed portfolio, thus improving
returns while decreasing portfolio risk (Broadstock et al., 2021).

Investors are mostly drawn to organisations that have a high number of assets to invest in and it causes the stock market to rise in value. This
idea is reinforced by Rahmandia (2013) and Zaki, et al. (2017), who claim that a company’s scale has a favourable impact on stock prices.

Oil and gas corporations’ social and governance activity is frequently disregarded in favour of
environmental exhortations. However, In the past, the energy sector has been a pioneer in creating excellent health, safety, and
governance rules. During the last two to three years, the emergence of ESG has resulted in significant adjustments toward focusing on “E”
factor and “S” factor and organisational cultures are rapidly evolving to tackle these issues.

Following the Paris Climate Agreement (United Nations, 2015), ESG has advanced dramatically, and numerous worldwide
efforts are working to advance ESG standards. Previously, environmental reviews were best suited, with little attention for
emissions or impacts farther along the value chain. ESG has become its own entity, propelled by huge institutional investors and foreign
financiers. Finance and investment must be the driving forces behind transformation. As a result, as a worldwide corporation, they will select
financiers who prioritise ESG in their strategy, as it is what potential investors expect.

The energy sector must recognise the role that governments all over the globe have undertaken in conditioning the people to the usage of fossil
fuels. Investors
are aware of the shifting market trends and are monitoring the actions done in
accordance. Technology applications in the decarbonization of the energy sector should be a primary
priority for enterprises in the energy and gas industry in order to adapt to shifting market demands and
restore investor confidence.

As most oil and gas firms will likely continue to invest in traditional production, industry
leaders are prioritising sustainable
energy projects as compared to other firms within the industry (Petroplan, 2021). The urge for resilient and secure
practices is at the heart of the energy sector’s change. A global appeal has been issued to investigate sustainable energy practices and to
embrace safe processes.
Courts Adv
 Regulatory Regimes---1NC
No impact---it’s terminally denied when corporations have had power for decades.
Corporate power is key to resolving stagnation and advantage 1.
Alexander Hein 20, B.A from Roger Williams University, “Can Capitalism Foster Sustainability? Adopting
Environmental Ethics into Capitalism,” https://www.proquest.com/docview/2818617195?pq-
origsite=gscholar&fromopenview=true , Wpeng

The next proposed solution is corporate social responsibility ( CSR ). It is well established that the world largely operates in
a capitalist market and has since the Industrial Revolution. In this market of capita, corporations hold great power. Because of this,
Benejamin J. Richardson and Beate Sjafjell, professors of Law at the University of Oslo, argue, “ putting the economy on a sustainable path
requires a more comprehensive and fundamental strategy that includes rethinking the very purpose and nature of
economic activity , including that of the dominant business organization: the corporation ” (Richardson et al, 2009). Referencing back to the
notion of short-term profit vs long-term profit, it is clear Richardson et al call for long-term profit , where corporations foster
sustainability and allow for long-term growth, as opposed to short term profit followed by environmental
collapse . Building on this statement, Richardson et al claims that, “economic activity that has public costs should be accountable for such
impacts” (Richardson et al, 2009). Here, any corporation who is not operating in a carbon neutral nor a carbon negative way should be
held accountable for their impact on the ecosystem . For their actions impact the globe. Because of this, Richardson et al call for
c orporate s ocial r esponsibility ( CSR ). Dating back to the 19th century, CSR is defined by the World Business Council for Sustainable
Development (WBCSD) as, “the continuing commitment by business to behave ethically and contribute to economic
development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as of the local community and society at large”
(Richardson et al, 2009).

Any corporation contributing to the emission production and depletion of Earth’s resources are clearly
hurting the workforce, their families, the local community, and society at large. Under an CSR framework, corporations consider the
bigger picture of their placement in society and in nature. When considering profits under this business model, business will
prosper when the environmental and social issues are considered. The problem with most companies today is with their
financial rational, as most do not consider sustainability, but solely make decisions based on their revenue (Richardson et al, 2009). However, when assessing

the relationship between CSR and c orporate f inancial p erformance ( CFP ), an important discovery was made. Looking

further into this relationship, Wang et al that assessed 42 studies of CSR and found that, “this study endorses the prevalent argument that CSR
enhances CFP ” (2016). From this, it is clear that when companies invest in CSR framework , their business will perform
better. Importantly, Richardson et al argue that the perspective of CSR is hindered due to a lack of ethics. However, it has earlier been established that there is
an ethical concern over the environment as humans are rational actors.
 Turn---1NC
Warming’s key to mine rare earth elements from Greenland.
Burns ’19 [Stuart; 2019; Founder and Editor-at-Large of Metal Miner, graduate of Ashridge
Management College’s Strategic Business Management Program , Graduated with First Class Honors in
Applied Science from Kingston University, Former Founder and CEO of Marine & Corrosion Alloys Ltd
and MCA UK Ltd., Managing Director of Amari Overseas Ltd., The International Trading Arm of Glynwed
Metal Services, Former Senior Trader at Stemcor London; Metal Miner, “Greenland’s Retreating Ice
Sheets Open up Rare Earth Resources,” https://agmetalminer.com/2019/09/25/greenlands-retreating-
ice-sheets-open-up-rare-earth-resources/]

Environmentalists are horrified by the impact of global warming on the Greenland ice sheet.
Keep up to date on everything going on in the world of trade and tariffs via MetalMiner’s Trade Resource Center.

According to the Financial Times, temp erature s have rise n more than twice as fast in Greenland as the rest of the
planet because the Arctic sea ice is retreating and pollution is darkening the arctic ice, reducing its ability to reflect sunlight.

Greenland is blanketed in an ice sheet about a mile deep that covers 81% of its land area — four times the
size of California, the Financial Times reported.

The environmental impact of a melting Greenland ice is not the topic today for a MetalMiner article, however significant implications will be for
low-lying areas such as Florida and Bangladesh.

They say every cloud has a silver lining . For Greenland, as the ice retreats and the land is
exposed , the vast island’s natural resources hold the potential for significant new sources of
minerals and hydrocarbons (albeit from an environment that still holds considerable challenges).
President Donald Trump’s interest in Greenland was not misplaced, merely the approach he used.

A recent report by the Brookings Institution explores both the opportunities and challenges in exploiting an area rich in iron ore, lead, zinc,
diamonds, uranium, oil and, crucially, rare earth minerals .
The population’s decision to support autonomous self-rule government in June 2009 was based in part on the belief that the country could
move beyond fishing and tourism to generate enough GDP to replace the financial support of Denmark.

That such an assessment was made at a time of sky-high commodity prices is now history. Since then, both mineral and oil prices have halved;
what appeared to be a potentially economically viable opportunity in 2008 seems not so viable today.

As the map from the Brookings Institute shows, there are significant potential reserves of oil and gas offshore. Nonetheless, despite the
shortening winter season, the technical challenges of operating offshore oil rigs in such a hostile arctic environment make exploitation in the
short-term economically unviable.

Quantifying Greenland’s mineral resource potential is still so sketchy that the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) still consolidates Greenland’s
results with Denmark’s, but the country already has a successful gold mine in Nalunaq and a ruby mine opened in 2015.

As some 80% of the landmass is still covered in ice, there is of course a vast area still unsurveyed, but the most attractive resource, from a
strategic perspective, is undoubtedly rare earths.

A recent Financial Times report estimates Greenland holds 38.5 million metric tons of rare earth oxides,
compared to total reserves for the rest of the world of 120 million tons.
It is no secret — and the cause of considerable anxiety in Western boardrooms — that China dominates the
global production of these rare earths. More than 70% of rare earths are mined, and an even higher percentage processed, in
China.

Beijing has used the threat of cutting off or restricting supplies in recent standoffs with Japan and clearly
would not be above doing the same with the U.S. or Europe .
Two companies are already active in Greenland. One, Greenland Minerals, with extensive Chinese involvement, is making some progress. The
other, Tambreez, a privately held Australian miner, has had its license application bogged down for years in bureaucratic delays but remains
optimistic it has a viable resource (free of the contaminants so often found in Chinese deposits).

The Chinese have shown themselves willing to play the long game, investing now for a return much further down the road or for the sake of
strategic positioning (as opposed to purely economic calculation).

Looking for metal price forecasting and data analysis in one easy-to-use platform? Inquire about MetalMiner Insights today!

The U.S. has signed a memorandum to cooperate with Greenland on rare earth mining . However, the
U.S. is playing catch-up and probably needs deeper government pockets than those available to U.S. rare earth miners, who have struggled to
make a success out of U.S. resources in much more benign locations.

Extracting Greenland’s REEs prevents global supply chain disruptions---extinction.

Gupta ’20 [Gauri; 2020; Master’s Degree in International Relations at the Fletcher School of Law and
Diplomacy, Bachelor of Arts in Economics and French from the University of Michigan Ann Arbor,
Former Staff at the Future of Privacy Forum; Tufts, “Hidden Gems: The Race for Rare Earth Metals in
Greenland,” https://sites.tufts.edu/fletcherrussia/files/2020/05/Gauri_Gupta_Capstone.pdf]
Executive Summary

Despite being the largest island in the world, Greenland is often overlooked as a player of key strategic
significance on the global geopolitical stage . Lately however, this quiet, remote and starkly beautiful land
finds itself increasingly in the midst of a flurry of international attention. This renewed interest in
Greenland stems from the presence of special, largely obscure minerals found in its depths that
hold the key to the production of some of the most powerful and profitable tech nologies in the
world. These minerals, also known as Rare Earth Elements (REE, or rare earths) have innumerable technological
applications that literally form the bedrock of modern society , while also providing a potential roadmap to
Greenland’s independence. While the availability of rare earths is not as rare as the name would suggest, the extraction process is costly as
these minerals are naturally found in combination with larger minerals or oxides. China currently dominates the various
stages of the supply chain globally, from mining the minerals found in their national reserves to downstream processing and
refining REE for commercial use. However, given the ubiquitous use of rare earths, such a monopoly on the production of
rare earths may be disastrous to global supply chains in the event of a disruption.

This paper therefore seeks to explore the possibility of alternately sourcing rare earths through mining projects in
Greenland, an option which has increasingly viable potential as melting polar ice has made it
possible to access previously remote sites. While the prospect of newfound development will open the door to increased
competition over resource development in the region, China and the United States will likely be pitted against each other as key contenders in a
competition of soft power over Greenland’s resources. China’s Arctic footprint can already be seen through its existing soft power
engagements, strong business partnerships with Russia, scientific and cultural exports, and commercial diplomacy in Greenland, indicative of its
broader strategic interests in the Arctic. These initiatives are worthy of the national attention of the United States, which has thus far lacked a
proactive and aggressive Arctic policy.
Due to the critical need for REE in defense technologies, it is in the best interests of the national
security of the U nited S tates to shift away from its reliance on a singular source for their supply of
REE. It may achieve this by strengthening its relations with Greenland, while also engaging Denmark and other NATO
allies in providing a counterweight to the commercial diplomacy of China. One way to do this may be through public-private partnerships and
collaborative investments in Greenland infrastructure projects. In order to straddle the complex geopolitical dynamics at play and in order to be
sensitive to Greenlandic identity, this should be accompanied by strategic initiatives crafted to directly benefit Greenland’s economy, including
projects that employ locals, use environmentally friendly technologies, and respect the independence and cultural heritage of the indigenous
Inuit community that make up the majority of Greenland’s population. This will achieve the multiple aims of strengthen ing U.S.
national security , establishing a greater American presence in the Arctic and critically, cement ing American leadership
in the geopolitical landscape of Great Power Competition that will inevitably emerge in the after math of
COVID -19 and beyond.
 Warming---1NC
Warming will be gradual---predictions are exaggerated and don’t assume natural
variability.
Wade ’21 [Robert H.; 2021; Professor of Global Political Economy at the London School of Economics,
DPhil and MPhil in Social Anthropology from Sussex University, Master’s in Economics from Victoria
University, BA in Economics from Otago University; Global Policy Journal, “What is the Harm in
Forecasting Catastrophe Due to Man-Made Global Warming?”
https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/22/07/2021/what-harm-forecasting-catastrophe-due-man-
made-global-warming]
Conclusion

I have argued that the “plausible” risks of climate change are commonly exaggerated within the climate community. Recall
for example, Christiana Figueres, 2020, “The scary thing is that after 2030 it basically doesn’t really matter what humans do”; Kevin Drum, 2019,
“[The Green New Deal] would only change the dates for planetary suicide by a decade or so”; Frank Fenner, 2010, “We’re going to
become extinct . Whatever we do now is too late.” Many more in the same doomsday vein.

We have seen that the standard global warming models have a powerful built-in bias to exaggerate the
rate of future temp erature rise, as seen in (most of) them “hindcasting” temperature rises several times
faster than actually observed. We have seen that forecasters commonly take “ worst-case scenarios” as
“ likely scenarios in the absence of radical action” (eg reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050), to the point where Nature recently
published a paper sub-titled, “Stop using the worst-case scenario for climate warming as the most likely outcome”.

The dismaying thing is that scientists and advocates have been making catastrophising global warming forecasts of this
kind for decades past, normally dated some 10 to 30 years into the future. The due date comes without
catastrophe , but never a retrospective holding to account. Rather, on to the next catastrophising forecast
another 10 to 30 years ahead. Scientists-writers-activists know the catastrophe forecasts get the attention, the clicks ,
the research funding. We saw the exaggeration mechanism spelled out by Richard Betts of the BBC, Holman Jenkins of the Wall St Journal, and
climate scientist Judith Curry.

The built-in exaggeration of the costs of climate change blunts the parallel with nuclear power plants. We know with high certainty the costs of
nuclear explosions. We know the costs of global temperature going above 1.5 C above “pre-industrial” much less certainly, and we can see the
mechanisms by which the likely costs are being systematically exaggerated.

On the other hand, there is abundant evidence that even without the doomsday exaggerations the plausible risks of climate change could be very serious, in particular because of the inherent
political economy difficulty of getting needed global or regional cooperation when political action is mostly at the level of sovereign nation states (see the G20).

Coal power generation is the single biggest source of GHG emissions, and emissions from coal consumption will probably not fall fast, whatever the promises. First, coal is cheap, accessible and
generates reliable power for many developing countries; in Asia, coal alone generates 40 percent of energy consumption, much higher than the world average of 29 percent. (12) Second,
developing countries, including China, assert a strong claim on carbon space to power their economic development. They see it partly as a matter of fundamental justice, since developed
countries emitted most of the CO2 that is already in the atmosphere and seas as the necessary condition for them becoming developed. Developed countries promise finance and technical
assistance on a massive scale to accelerate the energy transition in developing countries – and have a long track record of leaving promises as promises. (See the global distribution of Covid
vaccines. See the results of vaunted “voting reform” in the World Bank, leaving the US with 17% and China with 6%.) What is more, the Japanese government plans up to 22 new coal power
plants, as it closes nuclear plants in the wake of Fukushima.

Then comes a question: does drawing attention to the doomsday exaggerations of the CCC – “disaster”, “catastrophe”, “extinction”, “fiddling while the planet burns” - serve to reduce the
political and public pressures for necessary ameliorative action, in a world where powerful fossil lobbies seek to block or delay such action for reasons independent of “evidence”? Should
“Third Way” essays like this one not be published, because “give them (deniers, sceptics) an inch and they will take a mile”? To what extent must mass publics be “panicked” in order to induce
enough collective political and business action – national, international – to substantially slow the growth of GHG emissions? If we can sustain emission- and temperature-curbing action only
by holding up the certainty of disaster, catastrophe, extinction, then better to let the doomsday exaggerations continue as the necessary condition for that ameliorative action. What is the
harm, when the alternative is ruin for humanity and the biosphere?

The danger is that the repeated wild exaggerations produce a public backlash, a discrediting, and a strengthening of the many “deniers” who see “leftists, governments, and the United
Nations” as the source of malevolence in the world. A more accurate accounting of the evidence would (hopefully) produce a more calibrated and sustained public and business response.

What to do? (13)

The IPCC should allocate some 10% of its budget to a Red Team, dedicated to independent scrutiny of its evidence and conclusions (especially the Summary for Policymakers). (14) The IPCC
should revise its mandate to require it explicitly to focus on interactions between natural forces and human actions, as it is now almost required not to, biassing its assessment of the state of
scientific knowledge towards “man-made global warming” as an almost separate system.

Learned societies should more actively seek to understand and publicize the reasons for repeated large-scale discrepancies between “hindcasts” and “forecasts” on the one hand and actual
observations on the other, discrepancies strongly biased towards “disaster”.

It is particularly important that the knee-jerk attribution of extreme weather events to global warming be challenged with reference to evidence. Judith Curry explained – quoted earlier -- why

CCC advocates have a powerful incentive to attribute cases of extreme weather to global warming, tout
court. She has recently written, “Apart from the reduced frequency of the coldest temperatures, the signal of global
warming in the statistics of extreme weather events remains much smaller than that from natural
climate variability, and is expected to remain so at least until the second half of the 21rst century .” She goes
on to amplify a point made earlier about the limits of the climate models used for the IPCC assessment reports: they are driven

mainly by predictions of future GHG emissions. They do not include predictions of natural climate
variability arising from solar output, volcanic eruptions or evolution of large-scale multi-decadal ocean
circulations. They do a particularly poor job of simulating regional and decadal-scale climate variability.
(15)
 Economy---1NC
Economic decline doesn’t cause war.
Walt 20 – Stephen Walt, International Relations Professor at Harvard University. [Will a Global
Depression Trigger Another World War? 5-13-20, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/13/coronavirus-
pandemic-depression-economy-world-war/]

On balance, however, I do not think that even the extraordinary economic conditions we are witnessing today are going to
have much impact on the likelihood of war . Why? First of all, if depressions were a powerful cause of war, there
would be a lot more of the latter . To take one example, the United States has suffered 40 or more recessions
since the country was founded, yet it has fought perhaps 20 interstate wars , most of them unrelated to the state
of the economy. To paraphrase the economist Paul Samuelson’s famous quip about the stock market, if recessions were a powerful cause
of war, they would have predicted “nine out of the last five (or fewer).”

Second, states do not start wars unless they believe they will win a quick and relatively cheap victory . As
John Mearsheimer showed in his classic book Conventional Deterrence, national leaders avoid war when they are convinced
it will be long , bloody , costly , and uncertain . To choose war, political leaders have to convince themselves they can
either win a quick, cheap, and decisive victory or achieve some limited objective at low cost. Europe went to war in 1914 with each side
believing it would win a rapid and easy victory, and Nazi Germany developed the strategy of blitzkrieg in order to subdue its foes as quickly and
cheaply as possible. Iraq attacked Iran in 1980 because Saddam believed the Islamic Republic was in disarray and would be easy to defeat, and
George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 convinced the war would be short, successful, and pay for itself.

The fact that each of these leaders miscalculated badly does not alter the main point: No matter what a country’s
economic condition might be, its leaders will not go to war unless they think they can do so quickly , cheaply ,
and with a reasonable probability of success .

Third, and most important, the primary motivation for most wars is the desire for security, not economic gain . For this
reason, the odds of war increase when states believe the long-term balance of power may be shifting against them, when they are convinced
that adversaries are unalterably hostile and cannot be accommodated, and when they are confident they can reverse the unfavorable trends
and establish a secure position if they act now. The historian A.J.P. Taylor once observed that “every war between Great Powers
as a preventive war , not as a war of conquest ,” and that remains true
[between 1848 and 1918] … started
of most wars fought since then.

The bottom line: Economic conditions (i.e., a depression) may affect the broader political environment in which decisions for war or
peace are made, but they are only one factor among many and rarely the most significant . Even if the COVID-19
pandemic has large, lasting, and negative effects on the world economy—as seems quite likely—it is not likely to affect the

probability of war very much , especially in the short term.

 Heg---1NC
No impact to complete heg collapse.
Fettweis 18 Christopher J. Fettweis, Political Science Professor at Tulane University. [Psychology of a
Superpower: Security and Dominance in US Foreign Policy, Columbia University Press]
How would the system respond? Could the New Peace survive without its policeman? Good counterfactual analysis minimizes the number of
both assumptions and alterations of reality. It is also obviously wise to choose relatively simple cases, ones that do not involve many potentially
confounding variables. 127 The ramifications of an actual supervolcanic blast would not be contained in the United States; the massive amount
of material ejected into the atmosphere would blot out the sun and cause global temperatures to drop for years. To keep this thought
experiment manageable, let
us imagine a natural disaster that only affects the United States, one resulting in the effective
disappearance of U.S. military and political engagement with the rest of the world. The effect of an aloof United States on
some regions need not be imagined because it already exists. In South America, the U.S. Southern Command has a minuscule
operating budget and no troops to speak of, despite its theoretical “responsibility” for the entire continent. The United States

maintains no significant physical presence in Africa or large swaths of Asia. A Yellowstone supereruption would
presumably not change security calculations in these areas much at all. Europe would be similarly unaffected , sat least in the short
term. The United States currently maintains 95,000 troops from all services in its European Command, none of whom are tasked
with maintaining the internal stability of its allies. During the Cold War, U.S. troops did not involve themselves in the domestic
conflicts of their host states, unlike their Soviet counterparts. Their job was always to protect Europe from without, not within. The

continent is the world’s most stable , its countries the most cooperative , and its people the least martial. It would
probably take more than the removal of U.S. troops for ash-cleaning duties to bring back security dilemmas, arms races, and conflict. Borders
have hardened, as have norms of conflict resolution. No one can know for sure, of course, but Europe does not seem to be a good
candidate for chaos in the absence of the United States. Without the presence of U.S. forces, much of the Middle East would be
unstable and chaotic. With the presence of U.S. forces, much of the Middle East is unstable and chaotic. A supervolcano erupting in Wyoming
would not have much impact on the security of the world’s most dangerous region. Israel would be just as safe as it was before, since its
marked military superiority over all potential rivals is the ultimate guarantor of its security, not U.S. troops or ships. Without the prospect of
help from Uncle Sam, the failing governments of Iraq and Libya, as well as the rebels in Syria and our allies in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Jordan, and
elsewhere, would learn to become more self-sufficient. Perhaps they would even make long-term deals with their rivals. It might be good to
throw them out of the U.S. nest and encourage them to fly on their own or crash. Fears of a resurgent Iran would be articulated by the usual
suspects, no doubt, but both history and the realities of power suggest Tehranwould find it hard to dominate its
neighbors, even if it had the will to do so. The regions that would be of most concern in such a scenario would be the peripheries of
those once and potentially future great powers, Russia and China. To believers in the “deterrence model,” first described by Robert Jervis
four decades ago, weakness is provocative, and the post-U.S. world would seem everywhere weak. 128 Moscow and Beijing would attempt to
expand their influence, and ultimately perhaps their borders, once they were assured that they would face no pushback from Washington.
Perhaps gradual interference in their near-abroads, such as we have already seen in eastern Ukraine, northern Georgia, and the South China
Sea, would occur with increasing frequency in the vacuum left by a U.S. withdrawal. While such expansion cannot be ruled out, especially in the
long run, large border adjustments would probably not occur in the absence of U.S. power, for least two reasons.
removal of American troops would not alter the calculations regarding the costs and benefits of
First, the
conquest in the twenty-first century. Although absorbing neighbors sometimes paid substantial dividends in the pre–information age,
today territory is unrelated to wealth. 129 The people of larger states are not automatically better off
than those of small ones. India is not richer than Singapore; Russia would not benefit from invading Ukraine; China
would hardly be materially better off if it ruled Taiwan. The other members of the international system might not be able to
stop such adventurism militarily, but they can certainly punish it economically. The costs related to invasion and the inevitable problems that
arise during occupation would outweigh any possible benefits that may accrue. Conquest in a trading system is profoundly
irrational , and the incentives for peace are strong . Rational calculations are not the only motivations for cross-border
violence. As Norman Angell argued a century ago, people have to believe that war is not worth the cost before they will forswear it. 130 The
quest for glory and prestige has sent many an army into motion over the centuries; Alfred Thayer Mahan responded to Angell’s rationalism a
century ago by pointing out that “nations are under no illusion as to the unprofitableness of war itself” but honor often compels them to fight
anyway. 131 By 2017, however, those calculations have changed. It is not at all clear that glory still automatically accompanies conquest. The
second reason to believe that Russia and China might not dominate their near-abroads in an essentially U.S.-free world is that the
behavioral norms of the New Peace discourage aggression . Imperialism invites opprobrium, not
admiration . This does not mean that such assaults could not happen—Genghis Khan was unconcerned about opprobrium, for instance,
and Vladimir Putin might be too—but surely it is significant that conquest has been all but absent since the Second World War. The unipole is
not the only thing restraining potential combatants; both their material and reputational interests do so as well. If and when a catastrophic
supervolcanic eruption weakens the United States, other countries would still have substantial interest in maintaining the overlapping network
of international economic and political institutions that serve the interests of all members. All would want to see free trade and
investment continue unmolested, whether or not the global policeman could punish violators. Most would continue to place some
value on international law , human rights, and the UN system. Why any state would want to move backward
to a mercantilist time of pure self-help and violence would be difficult to imagine. It is 2017, not 1717. Volcanologists assure us that
someday Yellowstone will awaken with terrifying fury. The human and material cost will be immense, but the ramifications for international
security may not be as dramatic. While it might take that kind of event to settle the questions concerning hegemonic-stability theory once and
for all, we can still use our imaginations to anticipate the kind of reaction that the system would have if the global 911 is taken off the hook.
Even more decisively than a Trump superpresidency, a supervolcano eruption would test the New Peace and settle forever debates over the
importance of unipolarity. Until then, one can only imagine what the system would be like without the United States. And the smart money
would be with those who say that it would probably look pretty much the same, with very small amounts of conflict and warfare, even if few
people seem to notice. In the end, what can be definitely said about the relationship between U.S. power and international stability? Probably
not much that will satisfy partisans. The pacifying virtue of U.S. hegemony will remain largely an article of faith in some circles in the policy
world. Like most beliefs, it will resist alteration by logic and evidence. Beliefs rarely change, so debates rarely end. For those not yet fully
converted, however, perhaps it will be significant that corroborating evidence for the relationship is extremely hard
to identify . If indeed hegemonic stability exists, it does so without leaving much of a trace . Neither
Washington’s spending, nor its interventions, nor its overall grand strategy seem to matter much to the levels of armed
conflict around the world (apart from those wars that Uncle Sam starts). The empirical record does not contain much support for the notion
three common psychological phenomena suggest
that unipolarity and the New Peace are related. At the same time,

that hegemonic stability is particularly susceptible to misperception . U.S. leaders probably exaggerate
the degree to which their power matters. Researchers will need to look elsewhere to explain why the world has entered the
most peaceful period in its history.

Leadership’s inevitable and resilient.

Beckley 18 Michael Beckley, International Relations Professor at Tufts University, PhD at Columbia.
[Unrivaled: Why America Will Remain the World's Sole Superpower, an addition to the series Cornell
Studies in Security Affairs, edited by Robert J. Art, Robert Jervis, and Stephen M. Walt, Cornell University
Press]

By most measures, the United States is a mediocre country. It ranks seventh in literacy, eleventh in infrastructure, twenty-eighth
in government efficiency, and fifty-seventh in primary education. 1 It spends more on healthcare than any other country, but ranks forty-third
in life expectancy, fifty-sixth in infant mortality, and first in opioid abuse. 2 More than a hundred countries have lower levels of income
inequality than the United States, and twelve countries enjoy higher levels of gross national happiness. 3 Yet
in terms of wealth and
military capabilities—the pillars of global power—the United States is in a league of its own. With only 5 percent of the
world’s population, the United States accounts for 25 percent of global wealth, 35 percent of world
innovation, and 40 percent of global military spending. 4 It is home to nearly 600 of the world’s 2,000 most
profitable companies and 50 of the top 100 universities. 5 And it is the only country that can fight major wars
beyond its home region and strike targets anywhere on earth within an hour, with 587 bases scattered across 42
countries and a navy and air force stronger than that of the next ten nations combined . 6 According to Yale
historian Paul Kennedy, “Nothing has ever existed like this disparity of power; nothing.” The United States is, quite
simply, “the greatest superpower ever.” 7 Why is the United States so dominant? And how long will this imbalance of power last? In the
following pages, I argue that the United States will remain the world’s sole superpower for many decades, and probably
throughout this century . We are not living in a transitional post–Cold War era. Instead, we are in the midst of what could be called
the unipolar era—a period as profound as any epoch in modern history. This conclusion challenges the conventional wisdom among pundits,
policymakers, and the public. 8 Since the end of the Cold War, scholars have dismissed unipolarity as a fleeting “moment” that would soon be
swept away by the rise of new powers. 9 Bookstores feature bestsellers such as The Post-American World and Easternization: Asia’s Rise and
America’s Decline; 10 the U.S. National Intelligence Council has issued multiple reports advising the president to prepare the country for
multipolarity by 2030;11 and the “rise of China” has been the most read-about news story of the twenty-first century. 12 These writings, in
turn, have shaped public opinion: polls show that most people in most countries think that China is overtaking the United States as the world’s
leading power. 13 How can all of these people be wrong? I argue that the current literature suffers from two shortcomings that
distort peoples’ perceptions of the balance of power. First, the literature mismeasures power. Most studies size
up countries using gross indicators of economic and military resources, such as gross domestic product (GDP) and military spending. 14 These
indicators tally countries’ resources without deducting the costs countries pay to police, protect, and provide services for their people. As a
result, standard indicators exaggerate the wealth and military power of poor, populous countries like
China and India—these countries produce vast output and field large armies, but they also bear massive welfare and
security burdens that drain their resources. To account for these costs, I measure power in net rather than
gross terms. In essence, I create a balance sheet for each country: assets go on one side of the ledger, liabilities go on the other, and net
resources are calculated by subtracting the latter from the former. When this is done, it becomes clear that America’s economic
and military lead over other countries is much larger than typically assumed—and the trends are mostly in its favor. Second,
many projections of U.S. power are based on flawed notions about why great powers rise and fall. Much of the literature assumes that great
powers have predictable life spans and that the more powerful a country becomes the more it suffers from crippling ailments that doom it to
decline. 15 The Habsburg, French, and British empires all collapsed. It is therefore natural to assume that the American empire is also destined
for the dustbin of history. I argue, however, that the laws of history do not apply today. The United States is not like other
enjoys a unique set of geographic , demographic , and institutional advantages
great powers. Rather, it
that translate into a commanding geopolitical position. The United States does not rank first in all sources of national
strength, but it scores highly across the board, whereas all of its potential rivals suffer from critical weaknesses. The United States thus has the
best prospects of any nation to amass wealth and military power in the decades ahead.
 Naval Power---1NC
Naval power fails.
Hooda ’18 [DS; 7-25-2018; Lt. Gen., former Northern Commander, Indian Army, under whose
leadership India carried out surgical strikes against Pakistan in 2016; “Navy, Air Force Are Key But Land
Power Will Decide Victory in Future Wars,” News 18, https://www.news18.com/news/opinion/opinion-
navy-and-air-force-key-fronts-but-land-power-will-decide-indias-victory-in-future-wars-writes-lt-gen-ds-
hooda-1822721.html]

history and
None of these arguments are completely incorrect, but in questioning the primacy of land power, they ignore both

geography , as well as the psychological aspect of warfare. There is no example in military history where a
major conflict between strong powers has been decisively won only on the basis of a naval or air
campaign.
The Allied strategic bombing campaign against Germany in World War 2 was unprecedented in scale. According to The United States Strategic
Bombing Survey, published after the war, almost 2,700,000 tons of bombs were dropped, with more than 1,440,000 bomber sorties and
2,680,000 fighter sorties being flown. An estimated 300,000 civilians were killed and 780,000 wounded while almost 7,500,000 were rendered
homeless. However, as the survey pointed out, “The mental reaction of the German people to air attack is significant…Their morale, their belief
in ultimate victory or satisfactory compromise, and their confidence in their leaders declined, but they continued to work efficiently as long as
the physical means of production remained.” Ultimately it required a ground offensive for Germany to capitulate.

There is a similar trend in the employment of naval power. For Alfred Mahan, the imposition of a blockade to choke a
country’s economy was the ultimate manifestation of sea power . However, as John J. Mearsheimer
points out in his book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, “First, blockades alone cannot coerce an enemy into
surrendering . The futility of such a strategy is shown by the fact that no belligerent has ever tried it …
Second, blockades rarely do much to weaken armies, hence they rarely contribute in important ways to the success of a
ground campaign.”

Julian Corbett, a famous British naval strategist, reinforces this view when he writes, “Since men live upon the land and not upon the sea, great
issues between nations at war have always been decided…either by what your army can do against your enemy’s territory and national life, or
else by the fear of what the fleet makes it possible for your army to do.”

There are two more domains of modern warfare, space and cyber. While important, these are by themselves are not sufficient to force victory.
Non-contact warfare is a good term to use, and while countries would like to win victories without much cost, it would be poor strategy to plan
our force structure on this assumption.

War is essentially a human endeavour and a clash of wills between two adversaries. Past campaigns have shown that air or sea power
has rarely impacted morale of the population to an extent that they force the government to submit. It is only when
territories are conquered, and population subjugated that governments surrender. Mearsheimer makes a critical observation, “Armies are of
paramount importance in warfare because they are the main military instrument for conquering and controlling land, which is the supreme
political objective in a world of territorial states. Naval and air forces are simply not suited for conquering
territory .”
2NC
Con Con
K
Federalism
S -- 2NC
 NB -- ! -- 2NC
<<FOR REFERENCE>>

There is so much power concentrated at the Fed eral level, and in particular in the hands of one person (the President) that it
makes Washington politicians constant targets of special interests and lobbying organizations, makes negotiations
for compromise impossible because there is so much at stake, and it has created a highly unbalanced system (where “checks
and balances” are not fully implemented and more often can’t work effectively).

Washington gridlock, dysfunction, polarization, and partisanship have led to the inability to pass a budget (balanced or otherwise), or address
the need for immigration reform, or provide for adequate healthcare coverage and affordable prescription drugs, or even implement proper tax
reform. Therefore, unless we address these ‘ systemic ’ failures of our system of governance, unless we implement
institutional changes and fix the process , we will never get lasting solutions to our current and future societal
challenges .

Pandemics, terror, mass migration, populism, and eco-collapse all cause extinction --
strengthening subnational autonomy solves.
Palermo ’20 [Francesco; May 13; Professor of Comparative Constitutional Law at the University of
Verona, Head of the Institute for Comparative Federalism at Eurac Research in Bolzano;
Verfassungsblog, “Is there a space for federalism in times of emergency?” https://verfassungsblog.de/is-
there-a-space-for-federalism-in-times-of-emergency/]
What is at stake? Federalism as part of constitutionalism

critical situations
Emergency is not a friend of constitutions. Whether or not constitutions regulate emergency powers, when

occur the overall trends are always the same: fundamental rights are limited and a centralization of power takes place,
both horizontally (from parliaments to governments) and vertically (from the subnational to the central level). All that can of course happen to
different degrees, for longer or shorter periods of time, with heavy or limited stress on the system of the sources of law. In democratic
societies, the divide between acceptable and intolerable limitations rests in the preservation of the rule of law , in the
first place of judicial review, and of pluralism. One of the main lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic for the community of constitutional lawyers is
that constitutions were generally little prepared to face the unexpected and unprecedented situation. Like most health care systems were. And
like health care systems, also constitutions will probably need some adjustment to better cope with similar
challenges .

All constitutions are in principle “good weather constitutions” (Schönwetter-Verfassungen). Some more, some less. The challenge is to
better prepare them in order to tame more difficult conditions , be they a pandemic , but also
terrorism , economic crises , the balance between mass migration and fundamental rights, secession ,
the climate change , the populist challenge. All that has already popped up in the first two decades of the new millennium,
challenging the constitutional order, and is likely to spill over in future. Shall we conclude that constitutions are simply overstressed (as the
scholarly debate often describes the Weimar Republic – die überforderte Republik) and accept that this can happen, or shall we acknowledge
that the historical raison d’être of constitutionalism is to, step by step, constitutionalize phenomena that were previously in the exclusive realm
of politics, progressively subjugating them to legal (more: constitutional) regulations? If so, there is a lot of work ahead in order to reinforce the
banks of the river and to avoid floods in case of bad weather. Probably, as it has been appropriately argued, “ small emergencies ”
need more attention than big ones.

One of the constitutional areas more severely affected by emergencies in general, and by the Covid-19 pandemic in
particular, is that of the vertical division of powers. Call it federalism , to simplify, although no one can really define what federalism
means beyond the generally accepted and quite vague formula of “self-rule plus shared rule” (Elazar). What we are talking about here is simply
all the countries where at least two entities are part of a larger union, while at the same time enjoying political autonomy. Something much
broader than the countries whose constitutions define them as “federations”. What is at stake is precisely the political
autonomy of the subnational entitie s , be they called states, Länder, cantons, regions, provinces, entities, territories, and the
like.

Fighting a pandemic requires quick and coordinated action. The reason why horizontal and vertical centralization happens is because national governments are better suited to take such
action. This is what has happened everywhere. Some commentators and political figures even rediscovered Carl Schmitt and his simplistic approach to sovereignty being vested where the
power to decide on the state of exception lies and went as far as to praise the Chinese model (well, so far for the quick response…) in tackling the virus: strong, centralized power in the hand of
the national government, even better if of its leader only. An approach that has had some followers in Europe too, to a more or less degree of intensity.

In such a context, deconcentration of powers has a hard time. Why have separate health care systems with different authorities introducing potentially different regulations? How is it
acceptable to come up with different solutions in different parts of the territory if “we are all in the same boat”? How is it even thinkable that the protection of rights, including the more
existential one, the right to life, can vary based on the territory where people live? (Of course, people means persons belonging to the same “nation”, who cares about the others?). More
levels of government mean negotiation and dialogue: why bother with that in times of crisis? And why bother with that at all, if it is ultimately “all talk and no action”? Isn’t a centralized,
unitary response much more effective after all? Such criticism has been voiced not only in countries where the “federal spirit” (Burgess) is lacking, i.e. a rooted culture, tradition and acceptance
of federalism, but also where this is undoubtedly present. Is the pandemic going to kill federalism?

What has happened so far

Are forms of pluralism such as territorial pluralism really inefficient in times of crisis? Is the fact that they require dialogue and deconcentrate power something negative? If so, why should this
be negative in times of crisis and cease to be so when the crisis is over? So, better doing away with pluralistic decision-making at all, using the emergency situation as a Trojan horse for a long
awaited decision? And hey, is there such thing as a “regional virologist”? If complex political decisions are (partly or totally) to be outsourced to experts, this means putting into question the
role of politics overall, let alone at subnational level. Scientific responses are supposedly identical in each place and therefore at odds with territorial divergence: the rules to contain the virus
must be the same everywhere, as a matter of logic.

Such objections are widespread in the public debate and in several countries also among scholars. In many legal cultures, federalism is the real “F word”. It stands for inequality, privileges,
inefficiency. For many, there seems to be an inherent contradiction between the obvious requirement of a coordinated line of command in case of emergency and a pluralistic territorial
structure. The growing conflicts in many countries between the central and the subnational governments as to the measures to be taken to fight the pandemic and – especially – to lift
restrictions are seen as a confirmation of the damage a multilevel structure may cause.

Such assumptions are however undemonstrated. In fact, they simply apply old scepticism about (or even fear of) territorial pluralism to the new reality. A closer look at the comparative
practice shows a different picture. Has federalism really been an obstacle to effective decision-making? Or rather the opposite?

First of all, every country, including federal or highly decentralized ones, has sufficient means to concentrate powers in case of emergency, thus avoiding inconsistent regulations and
uncoordinated action. A few federal or quasi-federal countries declared the state of emergency, such as Australia, Ethiopia, Mexico, or to a certain extent Spain (state of alarm) and South
Africa, which declared a state of disaster. Such rules obviously allow the centre to take control and the federal structure does not represent an obstacle to such procedure.

Interestingly, however, most federations did not make use of the state of emergency, but rather used the ordinary legislation.
In Canada, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Brazil, Argentina, India, Pakistan, Russia, and others, action was taken under the regular constitutional provisions, making use of ordinary
legislation on epidemy, disaster management, civil protection and the like. The intensity of the centralization of powers obviously varies from country to country and so does the degree of
conflict that such centralization sparked.

In other words, federal structures per se do not pose a legal hurdle when certain urgent decisions have to
be made with the overarching purpose of protecting public health and national security. More importantly, one can
probably conclude that while it is always possible to streamline procedures and to shorten the line of
command in exceptional cases, in federal systems this tends to be possible in a more regular way rather than
derogating from the constitutional order.

Second, while federal structures occasionally witness conflicts between the centre and subnational entities, the reasons behind such conflicts
need to be carefully pondered. Not infrequently, conflicts arise for reasons that have very little or nothing to do with federalism and a lot with
political opposition. When armed people stormed the Governor’s office in Michigan (apparently lawfully following some weird interpretation of
the first amendment and of the right to bear arms), to protest against the lockdown declared in the state, this is not a federal, but rather a
political (if not a criminal) conflict. And so is it when President Trump, after neglecting the pandemic for quite some time and omitting to take
leadership to control the spread (including declaring a national state of emergency without attaching real measures to it), blames the states
(notably those ruled by democrats) to be delinquent in their responsibility, without providing them with the necessary resources to meet the
slow U.S. response was not due to constitutional infirmities of
federal criteria for reopening. Therefore, “the

federalism but to party polarization and lack of preparation” (Kincaid and Lackrone). Admittedly, the risk of
scapegoating does exist when a conflictive and rather less responsible political culture prevails. But again, is this due to the federal structure or
is the federal structure rather misused for political conflicts that would take place anyway?

Third, it is actually far more frequent that a federal or anyhow territorially composed structure increases the
quality of decisions rather than the opposite. A glaring example in the Covid-emergency is Brazil ,
where the governors in 24 of the 27 states rebelled to President Bolsonaro and refused to lift the restrictions, constructively proposing a list of
coordinated measures to fight the pandemic. In response, the President issued a provisional act to enlarge his powers. Also in Mexico
governors have used their relative autonomy as a defense mechanism against fed eral government s
that have been reluctant , at least initially, to take decisive measures to contain the spread of the disease.

Subnational unit s might be more suited to tailor the solutions to specific needs , especially in very
diverse countries. In Italy, the government initially seized all power from the regions based on the state of emergency, but as the progression of
the infection slowed down, many regions started to push for a differentiated solution. The conflict became harsh at times, but in the end the

national government gave up its rigid position and an agreement was found allowing regions to move on
asymmetrically , based on the respective needs and situations.

This is an interesting case in point. In Italy, like in many other countries, regional differences are immense not only in
economic and social terms, but also regarding the capacity of the regional health care systems. Even more relevant in
this case, the impact of the pandemic is extremely different among the regions (see here), with a few regions hit dramatically and others to a
much lesser degree. Isn’t it in that case meaningful to tailor the response to the different reality of different territories? A unitary
response , i.e. the same rule for all, cannot but be tailored to the needs of the more affected areas. Is
this necessarily the best approach?

The case for a pluralistic response

As constitutions will most likely face some adjustment in the aftermath of the pandemic, it is essential to reflect on
territorial division of powers has to be included in such changes, and if so, to what extent and in
whether the

which direction .
The growing scepticism about federalism is nothing else than one part of the growing scepticism towards pluralism. Simplistic messages are
easy to spread, such as the equation of more actors and more confusion. But the equally simplistic equation of more actors and more control is
not made. Especially during the pandemic, federalism has often been described as a patchwork (Flickenteppich has become a slogan in the
German debate) but the general assumption is that patchworks be negative instead of beautiful pieces of art or useful textiles in certain
circumstances. The point is that effectiveness or failure of responses to the pandemic does not depend on the federal structure nor on the
degree of decentralization of each country, although this can at times be a comfortable excuse to sell politically. It depends on the quality of
governance. The question is therefore to what extent the quality of governance depends on the territorial setting.

To measure the effectiveness and the performance of institutions is not an easy job for lawyers. It is not part of our training. But other
methodologies can help and need to be looked at. In this context, for example, it has been argued, based on the comparative observation of
the responses to the pandemics in Switzerland and in the UK, that there are some factors of multi-level arrangements that can
contribute, when combined, to greater chances of positive practical outcomes in times of crisis : central
capacity; decentralized capacity; mutual learning and its institutionalization; celebration of differences.

This is in the end the old debate about the (pre)conditions for a functioning federal system and when it can be an asset. Strong institutions
and a cooperative political culture can enhance trust and minimize the risk of abusing a pluralistic decision-making for political purposes.
Effective cooperation through intergovernmental relations and established procedures can integrate more voices into common decision-
making, like singing as a choir. In the few cases when single voices stand out, this is not necessarily dystonic, but might improve the quality of
subnational unit s (states) can serve as “ lab oratorie s
the music: as famously stated as early as in 1932 by Justice Brandeis,

of democracy ” and “try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the
country ”.
And federal decision-making does not mean that decisions must be different. It means that they might be different when and where this proves
meaningful. Uniform decisions are certainly necessary to contrast a pandemic. Without opening the Pandora’s box of the more appropriate
level for uniform decisions (and of the dominant assumption that it has to be the nation state instead of, for instance, the EU), the key point is
how to reach uniform decisions. The comparative observation of what is happening around the (federal) world shows that the quality of
responses does not depend on the amount of powers vested in the subnational entities: as health care is almost everywhere a decentralized
power, why did some system manage well and others not? Rather, the effectiveness of responses is proportional to the (political, institutional,
procedural) quality of the cooperation among the levels of government.
Federalism (broadly understood) is in the end an accelerator . It tends to increase efficiency when this is already
given, and it adds to confusion when this is the prevailing mood. Like any other constitutional tool, it cannot stand alone. For the same

reason, limiting it might endanger the whole constitutional construct. If the virus will kill federalism, pluralism will
die with it. Together with the essence of constitutionalism.
 Perm -- AT: Do Both -- 2NC
2. BARGAINING -- states must triumph in a policy conflict -- the perm vaporizes
opposition both by preempting the condition AND aligning the states with the fed.
Leonard ’10 [Elizabeth; Fall 2010; Professor of Law at the University of Kansas and Visiting Professor
of Law at the University of Georgia, J.D. from the University of Georgia; Hofstra Law Review, “Rhetorical
Federalism: The Value of State-Based Dissent to Federal Health Reform,” vol. 39]
A. Uncooperative Federalism

Uncoop erative federalism, a theory articulated by Jessica Bulman-Pozen and Heather Gerken, suggests that even when
states actively refuse to cooperate with the fed eral government, their resistance may be beneficial. To
understand uncooperative federalism, it is helpful to place the theory in the context of other federalism theories. Bulman-
Pozen and Gerken offer the following matrix , which I slightly modify, in their footnote 18.

The vertical axis represents the normative position of what states should do: either they should serve as
rivals or challengers to the federal government, or they should serve as friends or allies with the
federal government. The horizontal axis identifies two strategies to facilitate healthy federal-state relations: either the power of states
as sovereigns, or the power of states as servants. The authors note that most existing scholarship falls in Box 1, the state autonomy or dual
sovereignty view of federal-state relations, or Box 4, the cooperative federalism view. Their theory fills Box 2, the affirmative
case for states as rivals and challengers from the posture of servants .
For Box 3, Bulman-Pozen and Gerken suggest Roderick Hills's "functional theory." Hills favors state autonomy not so that states can operate as dual or separate sovereigns, but so that they can
bargain effectively for their role within a cooperative, integrated federal regime. States, under their reserved powers, hold a property right to refuse to lend state administrative processes to
implement federal policies, which right they can sell in a freely negotiated trade, like any other private contractor. Cooperation is a good thing, but only when the federal government
"purchases" state services through voluntary agreements.

Dual sovereignty or state autonomy, like uncooperative federalism, urges states to rival and challenge the federal government but from the posture of sovereign powers. Values associated
with the dual sovereignty view include providing alternative, more accessible forums for citizen participation in the political process. In addition, different territories may have different tastes
and needs, especially on social policy matters. The diversity of approaches creates a "political market," allowing citizenry a choice of "laws, customs, and attitudes," and ultimately, exit rights.
States also serve as laboratories of democracy, experimenting and crafting solutions to problems, which approaches can be borrowed by other states and the federal government.

The dual sovereignty scholarship recognizes the value of dissent , especially state-level dissent, within the federal system.
Dissent "contributes to the marketplace of ideas, engages electoral minorities[,] … and facilitates self-expression." The Framers

envisioned friction , clashes, and jarring as part of the constitutional design. States may act as lobbyists and litigants,
challenging federal policies and laws. Objections may be voiced by states qua states, or by states as spokespersons for individuals.

Cooperative federalism, by contrast , envisions the federal government and states working
together as partners to address common problems or implement legislation. States serve as supportive allies, freely and
voluntarily, albeit often with strong encouragement, implementing federal policies. Conditional spending programs, such as Medicaid, are prime examples of cooperative federalism. Under its
spending power, Congress entices states to enact laws or implement programs by conditioning federal funding on states' compliance with broad federal requirements, even though the federal
government cannot directly regulate states or "commandeer" state regulatory authorities to implement, administer, or enforce federal programs. ACA employs several cooperative federalism
strategies, including conditional spending, conditional preemption, grants, and contracts, to engage state cooperation in implementing the massive package of health care reforms.

Uncooperative federalism focuses on the power that states wield precisely because of their subservient
posture vis-a-vis the federal government. The theory emphasizes the "power of the servant" and "the ways in which integration can serve as a distinct source
of strength." Lacking adequate financial resources or regulatory reach to implement comprehensive programs, the federal government often depends on states to implement and administer
federal policies. Because Congress cannot simply mandate states to administer federal programs, it must offer carrots, such as conditional funding or block grants, or sticks, such as conditional
preemption or threats to usurp state implementation. In so doing, the federal government cedes considerable power and discretion to states. For example, under Medicaid, states must
comply with broad federal requirements but otherwise are free to tailor their state plans to meet their citizens' particular needs, still receiving federal matching dollars for every state dollar
spent. Even though the federal government ultimately holds the threat of revoking federal funds or taking over state programs, financial, political, and practical realities may render that threat
an empty one.
States' power as servants also derives from their integration into federal program implementation. State
regulators and policymakers have regular interaction with federal authorities in administering complex,
cooperative programs. State actors may develop subject-matter specialization within certain areas, such as environmental or health policy, which transcends federal and
state lines of authority. A related source of power derives from the fact that states serve two masters: the federal government and their state constituents. Voters' dissenting views give states
the political will and capital to challenge federal policies.

Bulman-Pozen and Gerken conclude that uncooperative federalism can be useful within a well-functioning federal
system. Friction between the federal government and states fosters a rich dialogue , clarifies
accountability , and encourages political participation . Doctrinal implications of the uncooperative federalism
theory suggest that commandeering, which is considered unacceptably intrusive on state autonomy to Box 1 adherents, perhaps should be
allowed or encouraged under Box 2 because it engenders dissent. Uncooperative federalism, like state autonomy or dual
sovereignty, prefers narrow preemption but not because state power should be interpreted as broadly as possible but, rather, as a way to
create larger overlapping spheres of federal and state regulatory authority thereby ensuring ongoing conflict
and jarring .
The authors are equivocal on the value of conditional spending programs like Medicaid in advancing the uncooperative federalism thesis. The
amount of power that states wield as servants under conditional spending schemes depends on how badly states need the federal money. If
states have no real choice but to accept the federal funds, conditional spending essentially becomes commandeering, sparking various

forms of beneficial state resistance and dissent. But if states can freely decline the federal government's offer or
bargain for additional terms, little meaningful dialogue remains . States that freely opt-out of cooperative federalism
programs have little reason to object, while states that bargain effectively may have their objections appeased .

3. SIGNAL -- the public image will be mutual agreement, not strong defiance.
Gardner ’18 [James; 2018; Distinguished Professor at the University of Buffalo School of Law at the
State University of New York, J.D. from the University of Chicago, B.A. in Economics and Political Science
from Yale University; William & Mary Law Review, “The Theory and Practice of Contestatory
Federalism,” vol. 60]
3. Defiance

Defiance, as I use the term here, is the nonviolent refusal of subnational governments to accept specific exercises
of power by the central government. Defiance can take many forms, but it is useful to distinguish
between strong and weak forms of defiance.
A. Strong Defiance

What I will call strong defiance consists of the open , nonviolent refusal by a subnational government to accede to
some policy or action of the national government. A subnational government may defy national power by passive
refusal to comply with disliked national policies, or by taking more elaborate, affirmative steps to undermine the
operation or success of the national policy or action at issue within its borders.
The states under study furnish many examples of strong defiance. In the United States, southern states engaged in a lengthy period of open
defiance of national enforcement of the political rights of African-Americans, including outright disregard of the Fifteenth Amendment, which
prohibits states from denying the right to vote on account of race. Some U.S. states repeatedly defy national constitutional protection of the
right to abortion by enacting highly restrictive laws. In Argentina during the 1990s, the government of Santa Cruz province refused repeatedly
to comply with orders of the Argentine Supreme Court requiring reinstatement of a provincial Attorney General who had been removed from
office after embarking on investigations into the activities of provincial government officials. In another incident, provincial courts in San Luis
province refused to enforce a national law regulating methods of determining the surnames of newborns. In 2017, the Catalan government
defied a series of court orders designed to prevent a referendum on independence from Spain.

Subnational units engage from time to time in strong defiance even in states, such as Germany and Switzerland, that have a reputation for
amicable intergovernmental relations, and in which, my interlocutors assured me, such tactics would never be used. For example, the German
Land of Bavaria in 1983 enacted a law requiring the display of a crucifix in every public school classroom. Upon challenge, the Constitutional
Court ruled the law unconstitutional, but Bavaria has since refused to comply with the order. In Switzerland, the canton of Appenzell refused
for nearly two decades to implement a 1971 national law mandating female suffrage until forced to do so by the federal courts. Similarly, the
canton of Nidwalden has refused repeatedly to comply with a national law requiring cantons to share in the storage of nuclear waste.

B. Weak Defiance

Weak defiance, as I use the term here, refers to actions intended to thwart, undermine, or diminish the force or success of
national policies to which the subnational unit objects, but which do not rise to the level of open refusal . Use of the tactic
exploits the margin of discretion afforded to subnational units in the implementation of national policies. The tactic can be invoked
by cultivating a public appearance of compliance and cooperation with a disliked national policy,
but then implementing or following it so half-heartedly, or even downright uncooperatively, as to undermine the policy's force and effect
within the jurisdiction.

4. GRIDLOCK -- the perm relieves interest group pressure for state power by easing
federal gridlock.
Scott ’13 [Dylan; June 2013; Policy reporter, B.S. from Ohio University; Governing, “Could Gay
Marriage, Guns and Marijuana Lead to a Fragmented United States of America?”
https://www.governing.com/gov-fragmented-united-states-of-america.html]

This is more than just party polarization . It is part of a tectonic shift away from federal authority and
toward power in the states. While the divided Congress es that have followed the 2010 Tea Party insurgency have
been among the least productive in U.S. history, rife with partisan bickering and a chronic inability to
compromise, robust action is common at the state level. Connecticut’s quick and seamless movement from tragedy to
statute is one of countless examples. In turn , ideologues and interest groups increasingly view states as the most
promising venues for policymaking. Why waste your time in Washington -- where you might pass a watered-
down, largely impotent bill if you’re lucky -- when you can head to Austin or Sacramento and advance your

agenda intact and with relative ease ?

And while states pass legislation with an almost industrial efficiency, America, as is often noted these days, is becoming a more and more
splintered nation. Red states are redder; blue states are bluer.

Take a look at a U.S. map colored by state party control. In the upper right-hand corner down to the Mid-Atlantic, it’s all blue. In the South and
across the Great Plains, you see a blanket of red. That crimson sea begins to break at the Rocky Mountains until you reach a stretch of blue
along the West Coast. In a way, we are returning to our roots as a loose confederation of culturally and geographically distinct governments.

States led by Democrats are moving toward broader Medicaid coverage, stricter gun laws and a liberalized drug policy. They’ve legalized gay
marriage, abolished the death penalty and extended new rights to undocumented immigrants. Republican strongholds are working quickly to
remove government from the business sphere -- reducing taxes, pushing anti-union right-to-work laws and rebelling against the Affordable Care
Act (ACA). They’re also pressing forward on some of their most valued social issues, promoting pro-life abortion policies and protecting the
rights of gun owners.

The divisions generate fundamental questions about the nature of federalism. The sweeping national
interventions of the New Deal and the comprehensive federal social legislation of the 1960s have been replaced by a more decentralized
approach to governance. States are openly defying federal law and resurrecting the concept of nullification.
These are not merely legal or rhetorical exercises. They are fostering real change and real consequences for average Americans. If one bill that’s
currently pending in the Mississippi legislature is upheld by higher courts, the state will have effectively outlawed abortion altogether. In New
York, meanwhile, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has introduced legislation that would make abortions easier for women in his state to obtain. Income
taxes may go up this year in California and Massachusetts; several Republican governors say they want to abolish income taxes completely.
Illinois will insure nearly 1 million additional people next year by expanding its Medicaid program under the federal health law, while Texas is
expected to leave up to 2 million people without coverage because Gov. Rick Perry has steadfastly refused to do the same.

“Polarization has result ed in this changing relations hip between the states and the federal
government. There’s a clear connection ,” says Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University. “It’s leading to
gridlock at the federal level, which in turn is lead ing to many issues being decided at the state level
because the federal government seems to be incapable of deciding anything .”

“That’s the hydraulics of political power . Power always seeks an outlet ,” agrees Heather Gerken, a law
professor at Yale University. “When Congress is no longer doing anything , people are going to go to the
states and localities.”
 Perm -- AT: Do CP -- 2NC
The “United States federal government” is the three branches -- not the states.
U.S. Legal ’16 [U.S. Legal; 2016; Organization offering legal assistance and attorney access; U.S. Legal, “United States Federal
Government Law and Legal Definition,” https://definitions.uslegal.com/u/united-states-federal-government/; RP]

The United States Federal Government is established by the US Constitution . The Federal Government shares
sovereignty over the United Sates with the individual governments of the States of US. The Federal
government has three branches : i) the legislature, which is the US Congress, ii) Executive, comprised of the President and Vice
president of the US and iii) Judiciary. The US Constitution prescribes a system of separation of powers and ‘checks and
balances’ for the smooth functioning of all the three branches of the Federal Government. The US Constitution limits the powers of the
Federal Government to the powers assigned to it; all powers not expressly assigned to the Federal Government
are reserved to the States or to the people.

Competition should solely involve mandates -- permuting effects kills ground because
any action could cause the plan.
Wood ’13 [Jamie; June 10; Writer; Avatel EVP, “The Butterfly Effect – What a Fascinating Theory!”
https://avatel.wordpress.com/2013/06/10/the-butterfly-effect-what-a-fascinating-theory/]

Every action or decision has some kind of effect on something or someone, if only in an indirect way. How
we approach these decisions or actions we take can have a huge impact, not just on those directly involved, but on others we could hardly
fathom would be affected. You never know what little action may be the tipping point for another action and or reaction.

When you hear the words “The Butterfly Effect”, most of you will probably think of the movie. That was about the chaos theory, meaning one
series of events leads to another and the effect of changing the course of those events.

Actually the term “The Butterfly Effect”, was a phenomenon proposed in a doctoral thesis written in 1963 by Edward Lorenz. It states that a

butterfly, by flapping its wings in one place and time is able to create a major weather event in another place and
time , eventually having a far-reaching ripple effect on subsequent events.

cause and effect are applicable in the universe even if the pattern is
The butterfly effect suggests that

indecipherable and the precise cause of our predicaments, rooted far away in time and space, are ultimately
unfathomable. More than just an esoteric science, the chaos theory works off the concept that the relation between any two things is
rarely linear in nature, that any reaction is usually the result of an accumulation of causative factors small and large, intentional and accidental.
Perm: Other Issues---2NC
 Solvency---AT: Bipartisanship
POLITICS -- gridlock makes politicians depend on states for their agenda. They’ll
capitulate for political gain.
Metzger ’16 [Gillian and Jessica Bulman-Pozen; May 21; Harlan Fiske Stone Professor of Constitutional
Law at Columbia University, J.D. from Columbia Law School; Betts Professor of Law and a director of the
Center for Constitutional Governance at Columbia Law School, J.D. from Yale Law School; Publius, “The
President and the States: Patterns of Contestation and Collaboration under Obama,” vol. 46]
Current accounts portray President Obama’s tenure as dominated by executive policymaking and vigorous challenges from the states. We
argue that such accounts overlook how federal–state collaboration has been critical to achieving Obama Administration ends. Partisan

polarization has gridlock ed Congress and made the President depend ent on the states to advance
his central policy initiatives . As a result, these initiatives are both more responsive to state demand s
and more bipartisan than they might appear. After exploring tools by which the President works with the states, we discuss implications for
state role in shaping federal regulation
federalism, the separation of powers, and partisan polarization. In particular, the

raises the possibility that states are both aggrandiz ing and check ing pres idential power.
If popular reports and political attacks are any guide, President Obama’s second term has been marked by presidential policymaking and sharp
state opposition. With Congress incapacitated by polarization, the President has turned to administrative action to achieve his goals, pushing
his agenda on the nation under a justificatory “We Can’t Wait” mantra. Meanwhile, states have led the opposition to such executive action.
Governors refuse to participate in Administration initiatives, and state attorneys general sue the federal executive branch for overreach in a
variety of areas.

There is much truth to this account. Congress is gridlocked and unable to enact substantive laws on major policy issues. A number of political
and structural factors contribute to legislative paralysis, but the widening ideological divide between the parties and the parties’ split control of
Congress and the presidency are leading culprits. In the absence of congressional action, federal agencies have employed their powers
assertively, often stretching, if not violating, underlying statutes ( Freeman and Spence 2014 ; Metzger 2015 ). And the White House has been
closely involved in administrative initiatives, with the President publicly instructing agencies to act and claiming ownership of the resulting
decisions ( Watts 2016 ). Examples of such presidentially instigated, assertive agency actions include the Department of Education’s grant of No
Child Left Behind (NCLB) waivers, the Department of Homeland Security’s deferred action immigration programs, the Internal Revenue Service’s
waiver of the employer mandate in the Affordable Care Act ( ACA 2012 ), and the Clean Power Plan by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

A number of states have opposed these and other admin istrative undertaking s . Many governors and
state legislatures have refused to expand Medicaid pursuant to the ACA; more than half of the states have
filed suit over the Administration’s executive actions on immigration; in a nearly unprecedented move, twelve states
challenged the C lean P ower P lan in court before the Environmental Protection Agency had even finalized it, and more than two
dozen states are now challenging the final plan ( Texas v. United States ; In re Murray Energy Corp. v. EPA ; West Virginia v. EPA ). Just as

partisan polarization provides the critical explanation for congressional inaction, it also furnishes the key to
such state resistance . Today’s Democratic and Republican parties are thoroughly integrated across the state–federal divide, so
Republican-led states are leading the challenges to a Democratic President ( Bulman-Pozen 2014).

Looked at more closely, however, central initiatives of the Obama Administration are more collaborative, and indeed more bipartisan, than they
first appear. Many federal exec utive undertaking s depend on state participation . If for no other
reason than to achieve that participation, the Obama Admin istration has been sensitive to state
interest s and concerns, including those of Republican-led states. Waivers granted by the Administration have allowed some states to
expand Medicaid in ways that deviate from traditional Medicaid and incorporate Republican policy preferences. The Administration’s Clean
Power Plan incorporates state policy choices into its substantive standards, as does its rule setting out minimum essential benefits for health
insurance under the ACA. NCLB waivers were a response to state requests for regulatory relief and built on educational assessment metrics
devised by red and blue states alike. And, in declining to enforce the federal Controlled Substances Act with respect to
marijuana offenses in Colorado and Washington, the Administration has accommodated those states’ decisions to
legalize recreational marijuana use.

Even as the President sets policy without Congress and a subset of states vigorously opposes his decisions, then, federal–state

collaboration is critical to realizing Administration ends. National policy is increasingly determined by

presidentially instigated executive branch action, but it is executive action taken in conjunction with the states. The result ant
national policy is responsive to state demands , often accommodating state policy preferences
from across the political spectrum. Against a background of polarized national politics and a gridlocked Congress, the
state role in shaping federal regulation and federal programs is thus particularly significant . It raises the
possibility that states are simultaneously enabling and checking federal executive branch initiatives, it means that federal policy may be
nonuniform and differentiated by state, and it lends the President’s initiatives more of a bipartisan character than popular accounts allow.
 NB – IL – EPA/State Partnerships
The United States federal government should not repeal severability clauses or the
legislative veto.
The result is a feedback loop that guides other cases.
Fallon ’17 [Richard; November 14; Professor of Law at Harvard University; Arizona State Law Journal,
“Federalism as a Constitutional Concept,” vol. 49]
3. Disruptive or Uncooperative Federalism

The idea of disruptive or uncoop erative federalism, and in particular its characterization as potentially attractive or
beneficial, has emerged in recent, imaginative writing by Heather Gerken and others. In the view of defenders of this conception, federalism-
based elements of the Constitution's design not only limit federal power; they also create a feedback loop in which states and
state officials can resist or temper otherwise lawful assertions of fed eral authority in potentially creative,
informative , and productive ways.
Like the states' rights and experimentalist conceptions, a conception of disruptive or uncooperative federalism could not purport to capture the
full complexity of the concept of constitutional federalism. It could only plausibly aspire to guide constitutional or statutory
interpretation in some range of contested cases--and to do so without specifying in detail how the values that it serves
relate to, cohere with, or in some instances possibly trump other constitutional values. Leading proponents of uncooperative federalism so
acknowledge. For example, Dean Gerken and Professor Bulman-Pozen write that they do not "offer a single, authoritative account of
federalism," that they "do not mean to suggest that contestation will always be desirable," and that they "merely argue that the benefits
of uncooperative federalism have not been fully appreciated in the literature."

Initial victories spill over to state agenda-setting.

Gerken ’17 [Heather; Summer 2017; Professor of Law at Yale University, J.D. from the University of
Michigan, A.B. from Princeton University; Hofstra Law Review, “Distinguished Scholar in Residence
Lecture: A User's Guide to Progressive Federalism,” vol. 45]

We should value the role that cities and states play in our democracy no matter what our politics. Uncoop erative federalism may
sound antithetical to certain legal values, but it's not antithetical to democratic ones. It is good to have a source of friction,

dissent, and debate inside the behemoth we call the "Fourth Branch." Moreover, federal dependence on states and

localities creates incentives for moderation and compromise . Just ask President Obama, who had to compromise a
great deal to bring Obamacare to the red states. President Trump may not have to cooperate with Democrats on the Hill, but he's going
to need the support of blue states and cities if he wants to get things done.

We should also value spillovers . To be sure, it is uncomfortable to recognize that we are all sometimes forced to live under
someone else's law. But there are many democratic virtues associated with spillovers. For example, in today's heated political environment,
state officials lack incentives to compromise with those from the other side. But when a blue policy spills over into a red state (or vice versa),
legislators can't ignore the opposition. They must reach across state (and party) lines to fix the problem. Spillovers thus force state and local
officials to do what they are supposed to do: politic, find common ground, and negotiate a compromise that no one likes but everyone can live
with.

The most important role that federalism plays is in furthering change. Free speech is a precondition for democracy to function. These days,
however, dissenters have little problem getting their message out; they have trouble getting it across. Federalism and localism matter to
anyone trying to get a message across. Federalism and localism supply different platforms and different forms of advocacy for would-be
dissenters. By giving social movements a chance to "dissent by deciding" - converting abstract appeals into concrete policies - decentralization
confers a variety of benefits on democracy's outliers that the First Amendment, standing alone, cannot supply.
Decentralization also facilitates agenda setting . When those seeking change put in place a real-life
instantiation of their ideas, the majority can't ignore them, as majorities are wont to do.
Decentralization thus helps social movements shift the burden of inertia and force the majority to
engage. Federalism and localism also give those who seek change a chance to move from the abstract to the
concrete . They don't have to talk about how a policy would work in theory. They can show that it does work
in practice . Better yet, it allows advocates of change to build their movement one step a time . It is
hard to jumpstart a national movement. That's why virtually every national movement began as a local one.

It’ll be modeled due to the demonstration effect.

Dinan ’11 [John; Summer 2011; Professor of Political Science at Wake Forest University, Ph.D. from the
University of Virginia; Albany Law Review, “Contemporary Assertions of State Sovereignty and the
Safeguards of American Federalism,” vol. 74]
Recent state statutes and constitutional amendments challenging federal health care legislation and other federal laws have attracted
significant attention, both from critics who view them as nullification acts that are inconsistent with the Supremacy Clause and from some
supporters who have been equally willing to embrace the nullification label for the purpose of defending such legislation. Upon closer
examination, it becomes possible to view these measures as falling short of invoking the clearly repudiated doctrine of nullification and as
assertions of state
capable of contributing under certain conditions to safeguarding federalism principles. An analysis of these recent

sovereignty - whether regarding health care, guns, drivers' licenses, or medical marijuana - can contribute to a better
understanding of the range of opportunities for states to wield influence in the U.S. federal
system by showing that state statutes challenging federal law can play a role , alongside of, and
occasionally in place of , traditional mechanisms by which states can advance their interests in
the national political process.
Theory -- AT: Process -- 2NC
Advantage 1
 Inequality---2NC
Census data proves.
Gramm ’21 [Phil and John Early; March 23; a former chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and a
visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute; served twice as assistant commissioner at the
Bureau of Labor Statistics; Wall Street Journal, “Incredible Shrinking Income Inequality,”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/incredible-shrinking-income-inequality-11616517284;]

Twice over the past 50 years, the Census Bureau has significantly changed how it collects and records
income statistics. In 1993 and 2013 the Census Bureau changed its methods in an effort to collect better
information from high-income households. These changes created two major discontinuities and distorted the

time-series so that the change in measured income inequality in those years was as much as 15 times
the average annual change found for the entire 50-year period. At the time, the Census Bureau

explained in detail what it had done. It also explained the limitations the changes imposed on the use
of its income-inequality measure to look at changes over extended periods . In subsequent use of the
data by the Census Bureau and others, however , those warnings have been neglected .

The simple solution would have been to isolate the distortions caused solely by the changes in data-
collection techniques and adjusted the previous years’ measures to reflect the effect of the changes. We
made these adjustments and they are shown in the nearby figure. The blue line is the actual reported Census
Bureau measurement of income inequality. The yellow line eliminates the effects of the 1993 and 2013
discontinuities caused solely by changes in measurement technique. The black line shows income inequality
when the value of all transfer payments received is counted as income, income is reduced by taxes paid, and the two technical corrections are
made.

Lo and behold— income inequality is lower than it was 50 years ago.

The raging debate over income inequality in America calls to mind the old Will Rogers adage: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into
trouble. It is what you do know that ain’t so.” We are debating the alleged injustice of a supposedly growing social problem when—for all the
reasons outlined above—that problem isn’t growing, it’s shrinking . Those who want to transform the greatest
economic system in the history of the world ought to get their facts straight first .

Including rental and self-income data shows inequality hasn’t changed in nine
decades.
Atkinson ‘21 [Robert; 3/10/21; Founder and President of the Information Technology and Innovation
Foundation, Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina; "How
Progressives Have Spun Dubious Theories and Faulty Research Into a Harmful New Antitrust Doctrine,"
https://itif.org/publications/2021/03/10/how-progressives-have-spun-dubious-theories-and-faulty-
research-harmful-new]
Myth 7: Market Concentration Has Caused Labor’s Share of Income to Fall26

Neo-Brandeisians have argued that increased market concentration has reduced the share of national
income going to labor. The idea is that as companies gain more market power, they take an increased
share of economic output, with workers getting less.
But according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, virtually none of labor’s lost share of income
goes to increased profits , as a theory of market power might predict. Rather, the gains are almost
totally from increases in both rental income —imputed rent (the value an owner would get from renting the home they
occupy at market rates) homeowners receive and actual rent renters pay— and to some extent the mismeasurement
of self-
employment income. And when looking at the change in combined worker, rental, and self-employment
income as a share of net national income , versus combined profits and net interest income, the
former ratio is essentially unchanged over the last 90 years. (See figure 4.) In other words, the declining
share of labor income has almost nothing do with monopoly power .
 Innovation---2NC
US manufacturing is higher now than anytime since 2008 – graph inserted
James Politi et al 23, Washington bureau chief, covering the White House and managing
a team of reporters focused on American politics, economics, regulation and foreign
policy, Colby Smith, Sam Learner, 7/8/2023, “US manufacturing jobs at highest levels
since 2008 but growth is slowing,” https://www.ft.com/content/8cd73c44-d47f-4541-
a630-c824a0fc1b1d, RS

Manufacturing is up and rising

Kate Marino 23, business editor at Axios, 3/7/2023, “U.S. manufacturing growth
outpaces the rest of the world,” https://www.axios.com/2023/03/07/us-manufacturing-
growth-outpaced-world, RS
American manufacturing growth started outpacing the rest of the world 's growth at the end of last
year — for the first time in recent memory.

The big picture: The reasons for the surprising flip-flop are primarily energy and COVID-related, according to the
Atlantic Council GeoEconomics Center.

Production of renewable energy equipment saw a big uptick in the U.S. last year, and oil exports soared, too.

Also: Domestic production of medical equipment like masks, gloves and pharmaceuticals grew.
Meanwhile, China’s manufacturing growth was muted because of its zero-COVID policies, while the eurozone’s production has been impacted
by higher energy prices.

“While the rest of the world grew a little, the US surged ,” the Atlantic Council wrote.
Details: The chart shows the difference between the U.S. and the world's (excluding the U.S.) industrial production year-over-year percent
change. The Atlantic Council calculations are based on data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

What’s next: The Fed's rate-hiking campaign could still slow down manufacturing, as the WSJ reports.

But, but, but: One

potential tailwind is the Inflation Reduction Act's massive incentives for clean energy
production — which haven’t even kicked in yet.
Advantage 2
Regulatory Regimes---2NC
 Warming D---2NC
The ev is cherry-picked anecdotes or predictive models off by several orders of
magnitude.
Zycher ’21 [Dr. Benjamin; 2021; Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Doctorate in
Economics from UCLA, Master in Public Policy from the University of California, Berkeley, and Bachelor
of Arts in Political Science from UCLA, Former Senior Economist at the RAND Corporation, Former
Adjunct Professor of Economics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and at the California
State University Channel Islands, and Former Senior Economist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory;
California Institute of Technology, “The Case for Climate Change Realism,”
https://www.aei.org/articles/the-case-for-climate-change-realism/]
CLIMATE TRENDS

Beyond exhibiting extreme overconfidence in a cherry-picked analysis of climate-change causes,

politicians and activists frequently ground their alarmism in frightening predictions about consequences
that are likewise far from certain . This is not only true within the very new (and still quite unreliable) field of predictive climate
science; it is true even in the context of ongoing climate phenomena. Indeed, politicians and journalists frequently characterize

dramatic or unusual climate phenomena as the product of anthropogenic climate change, yet there is little
ev idence to support those claims.

For one thing, there

is no observable upward trend in the number of “hot” days between 1895 and 2017; 11
of the 12 years with the highest number of such days occurred before 1960 . Since 2005, NOAA has
maintained the U.S. Climate Reference Network, comprising 114 meticulously maintained temperature stations spaced more or
less uniformly across the lower 48 states, along with 21 stations in Alaska and two stations in Hawaii. They are placed to avoid heat-island
effects and other such distortions as much as possible. The reported data show no increase in average
temperatures over the available 2005-2020 period. In addition, a recent reconstruction of global
temp erature s over the past 1 million years — created using data from ice-sheet formations — shows
that there is nothing unusual about the current warm period.

Rising sea levels are another frequently cited example of impending climate crisis. And yet sea levels have been rising since at
least the mid-19th century . This rise is tied closely with the end of the Little Ice Age that occurred not long before, which led to a
rise in global temperatures, some melting of sea ice, and a thermal expansion of sea water. There is some evidence showing an acceleration in
sea-level rise beginning in the early 1990s: Satellite measurements of sea levels began in 1992 and show a sea-level rise of about 3.2 millimeters
per year between 1993 and 2010. Before 1992, when sea levels were measured with tidal gauges, the data showed an increase of about 1.7
millimeters per year on average from 1901 to 1990.

But because the datasets are from two different sources — satellite measurements versus tidal gauges — they are not directly
comparable, and therefore they cannot be interpreted as showing an acceleration in sea-level rises. Moreover, the
period beginning in 19 93 is short in terms of global climate phenomena. Since sea levels have risen at a constant
rate, remained constant, or even fallen during similar relatively short periods, inferences drawn from them are problematic .
It is of course possible there has been an acceleration in sea-level rise, but even still, it would not be clear whether such a development
stemmed primarily from anthropogenic or natural causes; clearly, both processes are relevant.

A study of changes in Arctic and Antarctic sea ice yields very different inferences. Since 1979, Arctic sea ice
has declined relative to the 30-year average (again, the degree to which this is the result of anthropogenic factors is not known). Meanwhile,
Antarctic sea ice has been growing relative to the 30-year average, and the global sea-ice total has remained roughly
constant since 1979.

Extreme weather occurrences are likewise used as evidence of an ongoing climate crisis, but again, a
study of the available data undercuts that assessment. U.S. tornado activity shows either no increase or a
downward trend since 1954. Data on tropical storms, hurricanes, and accumulated cyclone energy (a wind-speed index
measuring the overall strength of a given hurricane season) reveal little change since satellite measurements of the

phenomena began in the early 19 70s . The number of wildfires in the United States shows no upward trend since
1985, and global acreage burned has declined over past decades. The Palmer Drought Severity Index shows no trend since 1895. And the
IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, published in 2014, displays substantial divergence between its discussion of the historical evidence on droughts and the projections
on future droughts yielded by its climate models. Simply put, the available data do not support the ubiquitous assertions about the causal link between greenhouse-
gas accumulation, temperature change, and extreme weather events and conditions.

Unable to demonstrate that observed climate trends are due to anthropogenic climate change — or even that these events are particularly unusual or concerning

— climate catastrophists will often turn to dire predictions about prospective climate phenomena. The problem with such
predictions is that they are almost always generated by climate models driven by highly complex sets of
assumptions about which there is significant dispute . Worse, these models are notorious for
failing to accurately predict already documented changes in climate. As climatologist Patrick Michaels of the Competitive
Enterprise Institute notes:

During all periods from 10 years (2006-2015) to 65 (1951-2015) years in length, the observed temp erature trend lies
in the lower half of the collection of climate model simulations, and for several periods it lies very
close (or even below) the 2.5th percentile of all the model runs. Over shorter periods, such as the last two decades, a
plethora of mechanisms have been put forth to explain the observed/modeled divergence, but none do so completely and many of the explanations
are inconsistent with each other.

Similarly, climatologist John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville observes that almost all of the 102 climate models incorporated
overstate past
into the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) — a tracking effort conducted by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory —

and current temperature trends by a factor of two to three , and at times even more . It seems axiomatic to
say we should not rely on climate models that are unable to predict the past or the present to make predictions about the distant
future.

The overall temperature trend is not the only parameter the models predict poorly. As an example, every CMIP climate
model
predicts that increases in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gas should create an enhanced
heating effect in the mid-troposphere over the tropics — that is, at an altitude over the tropics of about 30,000-40,000 feet. The
underlying climatology is simple: Most of the tropics is ocean, and as increases in greenhouse-gas concentrations warm the Earth slightly, there
should be an increase in the evaporation of ocean water in this region. When the water vapor rises into the mid-troposphere, it condenses,
releasing heat. And yet the satellites cannot find this heating effect — a reality suggesting that our
understanding of climate and atmospheric phenomena is not as robust as many seem to assume.

The poor predictive record of mainstream climate models is exacerbated by the tendency of the
IPCC and U.S. government agencies to assume highly unrealistic future increases in greenhouse-gas
concentrations. The IPCC’s 2014 Fifth Assessment Report, for example, uses four alternative “representative concentration pathways” to
outline scenarios of increased greenhouse-gas concentrations yielding anthropogenic warming. These scenarios are known as RCP2.6, RCP4.5,
RCP6, and RCP8.5. Since 1950, the average annual increase in greenhouse-gas concentrations has been about 1.6 parts per million. The average
annual increase from 1985 to 2019 was about 1.9 parts per million, and from 2000 to 2019, it was about 2.2 parts per million. The largest
increase that occurred was about 3.4 parts per million in 2016. But the assumed average annual increases in greenhouse-gas concentrations
through 2100 under the four RCPs are 1.1, 3.0, 5.5, and an astounding 11.9 parts per million, respectively.
The studies generating the most alarmist predictions are the IPCC’s Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C and the U.S. government’s
Fourth National Climate Assessment, both of which were published in 2018. Both assume RCP8.5 as the scenario most relevant for policy
average annual g reen h ouse- g as increase under RCP8.5 is over five times the annual average for 2000-
planning. The
2019 and almost four times the single biggest increase on record. Climatologist Judith Curry, formerly of the Georgia

Institute of Technology, describes such a scenario as “borderline impossible.”

RCP6 is certainly more realistic. It predicts a temperature increase of 3 degrees Celsius by 2100 in the average of the CMIP models. But on
average, those CMIP models overstate the documented temperature record by a factor of at least two. Ultimately, models with a
poor record of successfully accounting for past data and highly unrealistic future greenhouse-gas
concentrations should not be considered a reasonable basis for future policy formulation.

‘Existential’ warming is the worst case that even the IPCC thinks is highly unlikely AND
every model is ruined by systemic upward bias.
Wade ’21 [Robert H.; 2021; Professor of Global Political Economy at the London School of Economics,
DPhil and MPhil in Social Anthropology from Sussex University, Master’s in Economics from Victoria
University, BA in Economics from Otago University; Global Policy Journal, “What is the Harm in
Forecasting Catastrophe Due to Man-Made Global Warming?,”
https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/22/07/2021/what-harm-forecasting-catastrophe-due-man-
made-global-warming]
Upward Bias in Temperature Forecasting Models

The prospect of a coming catastrophe for humanity and the biosphere rests heavily on outputs of
climate forecasting models . But as David Legates and co-authors argue, these models “exhibit a strong
exaggeration in their results even when narrowly adopting atmospheric carbon dioxide as the sole
driver of climate responses…. [General circulation models, such as those of the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change] have consistently overestimated the climate sensitivity to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide.”

Ross McKitrick (2020) begins his assessment, “Two

new peer-reviewed papers from independent teams confirm that
climate models overstate atmospheric warming, and the problem [of overstatement] has gotten worse
over time, not better”. One of the papers (by McKitrick and John Christy) examined 38 models, the other, 48 models, used by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the various US “National Assessments”, the EPA’s “Endangerment Finding”, and more.

looked at ‘hindcasts’ , which are reconstructions of recent historical

McKitrick continues, “Both papers
temperatures in response to observed greenhouse gas emissions and other changes (eg aerosols and solar forcing). Across the two papers
it emerges that the models overshoot historical warming from the near-surface through the upper troposphere, in the tropics and
globally.” The study based on 48 models for 1998 to 2014 found that they warm on average 4 to 5 times faster than the
observations.

McKitrick concludes, “modelling the climate is incredibly difficult, and no one faults the scientific community for finding it a tough
problem to solve. But we are all living with the consequences of climate modelers stubbornly using generation after
generation of models that exhibit too much surface and tropospheric warming, in addition to
running grossly exaggerated forcing scenarios (eg RCP8.5).
“[W]hen the models get the tropical troposphere wrong, it drives potential errors in many other features of
the model atmosphere. Even if the original problem was confined to excess warming in the tropical mid-troposphere, it has now expanded into
a more pervasive warm bias throughout the global troposphere.

“If the discrepancies in the troposphere were evenly split across models between excess warming and cooling we could
chalk it up to noise and uncertainty. But that is not the case: it’s all excess warming …. That’s bias , not
uncertainty, and until the modelling community finds a way to fix it, the economics and policy making community are justified in assuming
future warming projects are overstated, potentially by a great deal….”

The strong upward bias in temperature forecasts relative to observations compromise the models’
forecasting impacts on ecosystems, including agriculture, by exaggerating the probability of catastrophic
effects.

The IPCC makes projections of future global temperatures to the end of century based on various models. They range from a
low of 1.4 C to a high of 5.6 C over pre-industrial temperature (roughly 1900). The wide range makes them almost
meaningless . The IPCC explains that the wide range results from uncertainty about the magnitude of the feedback between warming
and increased rates of evaporation – and David Seckler adds, also about the effects of evaporation on clouds and precipitation. (5)

It is astonishing to learn that the climate models miss a critical component of the climate system -- the hydrological cycle, and specifically
clouds, which the IPCC calls the “wild card” in the climate system.

The IPCC’s Worst Case Scenario is commonly used as the Business as Usual without a Radical Policy Action’
Scenario
The IPCC’s Assessment Report 5 (AR5), published in 2014, presented a range of forecasts of global climate out to 2050 and 2100, based on
different assumptions about radiative forcing (a measure of how much of the sun’s energy the atmosphere traps). The most extreme –
the worst case – was called Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5. It assumes ominous
reversals in several basic, long-standing trends , all heading in the extremely wrong direction to
2100:

 high population growth to reach more than 12 billion people

 slow tech nology development
 coal consumption increases by 500 % between 2005 and 2100 (no account taken of supply constraints)
 slow GDP growth
 fast rise in world poverty
 high energy use
 high GHG emissions.
 temp erature forecast: 5 C rise between 2005 and 2100.

RCP 8.5’s vision is horrifying , as worst-case scenarios should be.

A whole wave of lit erature, in peer-reviewed journals as well as in media, even by IPCC authors, has
since presented this worst-case as either “the most likely case” or “the baseline case – business as usual without policy action”.
This misleading assumption provoked a recent paper in Nature subtitled: “Stop using the worst-case scenario for climate warming as the
most likely outcome” (see also, Chrobak, 2020).
Greenland---U---2NC
 Greenland---U---AT: Extraction Now---2NC
REE extraction is limited AND further melting makes transportation feasible.
Yanes ’21 [Dr. Javier; 2021; PhD in Immunology and Biology; BBVA, “Arctic Shipping Routes, the New
Suez Canal?,” https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/science/environment/arctic-shipping-routes-new-
suez-canal/]

Companies and governments have expressed their intent ion to develop the Arctic routes for all-season
use, using vessels capable of breaking through moderate ice thicknesses. And these desires are facilitated by the
progressive decline in the ice mass due to climate change: September 2012—the month when the ice shrinks the
most each year—saw the historic low in Arctic ice cover, at 3.41 million km2, 18% lower than in 2007, the previous record, and almost half the
1979-2000 average. September 2020 was the second lowest in history. The data indicate that the Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest
of the planet, as melting ice exposes dark surfaces that absorb more solar radiation.

But in addition to the expected opposition to the opening of these potential new routes by those with a vested interest in the traditional ones,
this is not just a battle for commercial sea lanes. The Arctic hides immense deposits of hydrocarbons and
minerals that have so far scarcely been exploited : according to estimates, the region could contain some 90
billion barrels of oil and a fifth of the world’s natural gas, as well as precious metals and rare earths —materials used in new

technologies and for which China now has a near monopoly . This is driving a new gold rush among northern nations
competing to get their hands on these valuable resources. Analysts already speak of an “Arctic cold war” that is fuelling military escalation in
the region and ratcheting up international tensions.
 Greenland---Link---2NC
Greenland has a third of the world’s supply but they’re frozen---warming thaws it,
giving the U.S. access to break dependence.
Northham ’19 [Jackie; 2021; International Affairs Correspondent at NPR; NPR, “Greenland Is Not For
Sale. But It Has Rare Earth Minerals America Wants,”
https://www.npr.org/2019/11/24/781598549/greenland-is-not-for-sale-but-it-has-the-rare-earth-
minerals-america-wants]

The southern Greenland town of Narsaq is just a speck of place. About 1,200 people live in colorful A-frame houses along a fjord, and it's a

good hour's boat ride from the nearest community. While it may be remote, Narsaq has strategic importance .

The craggy hills surrounding the town are estimated to hold about a quarter of the world's rare earth minerals .
With names such as cerium and lanthanum, rare earths contain key ingredients used in many of today's
technologies — from smartphones to MRI machines, as well as electric cars and military jets .
A bumpy ride up the hills delivers you to the Kvanefjeld project, one of two major rare earth mineral deposits in Greenland. The rocky plateau
at the base offers majestic views of this corner of the vast Arctic island. It is empty and silent out here; the mine is not yet up and running.

Across the plateau there are large piles of dull, gray rocks. When you shine an ultraviolet light on them, they explode with vivid pink and orange
hues, revealing the rare earths inside the rocks.

When President Trump made the surprise suggestion in August that the U.S. should buy Greenland, which is a semi-autonomous territory of
Denmark, it drew an immediate rejection from the leaders of both areas. The news caused widespread confusion and speculation about
Trump's motivations. But mining experts have a hunch about one possible reason: Greenland holds rare earth minerals
America wants — but which it largely relies on China to get.

Jorgen Waever Johansen, a former mining minister of Greenland, says the U.S. needs to find a way to be less reliant on
China. "When you are so dependent on natural resources coming from one place then you are making yourself more
vulnerable than you ought to be," he says.

The U.S. was once the world's top producer of rare earths. Now China is. China also has most of the world's capacity to
process the elements. The Trump admin istration has labeled rare earth elements essential to national
defense , and Washington is working to bolster the national industry.

In June, the U.S. signed a m emorandum o f u nderstanding with Greenland to help develop its energy and mining sectors,
including r are e arth m inerals.

Access to Greenland 's resources could help break U.S. dependency on China for rare earths. But
already a Chinese state-owned company has more than a 12% stake in the Kvanefjeld deposit.

Kvanefjeld is owned by Greenland Minerals, an Australian company, and China's Shenghe Resources is its largest shareholder and strategic
partner.

The other major deposit in Greenland is owned by another Australian company, Tanbreez. Both firms are waiting for Greenland's government
to give them the go-ahead to start mining.
Much of Greenland is buried under a sheet of ice , more than a mile thick in some places. But
warming temperatures in the Arctic are making some of Greenland's riches, including gems, iron and
zinc, more accessible , creating a geopolitical competition for new transportation routes and natural resources.
"We are happy that the crazy idea of buying Greenland was made into a global news thing because of all the ... attention that Greenland got as a result of it," says Johansen, now the CEO of Greenland Invest, a private investment
company focusing on shipping and seafood. That's even though Greenlanders don't agree with Trump's offer. "We are not for sale, but we are open for business," Johansen says, echoing remarks by government leaders.

For years, Greenland appeared to be virtually ignored by world powers, according to Rasmus Nielsen, an associate professor of international relations at the University of Greenland. Now it receives a steady stream of officials from
the U.S. Geological Survey, the State Department and the Pentagon. Nielsen says it's clear that Greenland is strategically important for the U.S.

"The last couple of years we can see a bigger focus and also involvement that the U.S. wants to have [in Greenland]," he says. "You can feel that the U.S. is really waking up to Arctic reality — partly because of Russia, partly because
of China."

Russia is building up its military capability in the Arctic. China also has clear designs on the region. It calls itself a near-Arctic nation even though it's about 900 miles away. Beijing wants to extend its massive infrastructure project,
the Belt and Road Initiative, to create what it calls a Polar Silk Road by developing shipping lanes and investment opportunities across the Arctic.

Greenland is bigger than Mexico with a sparse population of just 56,000 people. Its economy is heavily dependent on fishing, agriculture and subsidies from Denmark. China sees the Arctic — with its shortage of infrastructure — as
ripe for investment.

"China's really tried to approach the region as a potential partner to say that we're here to help set up joint ventures, we're here to provide potential finance for new economic endeavors," says Marc Lanteigne, a political science
professor at the University of Tromso in Norway. Beijing is trying to "play up the idea that we're here to help rather than here to kind of throw weight around," he says.

The University of Greenland's Nielsen agrees China has been using a "hearts and minds" kind of diplomacy in Greenland. "They have a [scientific] research collaboration with some Greenlandic research projects," he says. There was
a Chinese film festival last year, and other cultural events in the capital city, Nuuk.

China's efforts to invest in Greenland have hit some hurdles. In 2016, the Danish government in Copenhagen turned down an offer by a Chinese company to buy an abandoned naval base in the south of Greenland.

The state-owned Chinese Communication Construction Company was on a short list to help build new airports in Nuuk and Ilulissat, a popular tourist destination. Currently, the airports, built during World War II, can only
accommodate small prop planes.

That became a problem. The U.S. has a key military installation in northern Greenland, Thule air base. It is the United States' northernmost military base and includes a radar station that is part of a ballistic missile early warning
system. University of Tromso's Lanteigne says there was concern that China could get a major foothold on transportation in the Arctic with its involvement in the Greenland airports. Denmark, a strong ally of the U.S., pulled the
Chinese construction bid.

"The United States has been pushing on Denmark — not even subtly anymore — to say, 'Look, do whatever you need to do to ensure that China does not set up some kind of security presence or any kind of dual-use operation that
could affect American security,'" Lanteigne says.

Greenland may be semi-autonomous, but Copenhagen has the final word when it comes to national security issues. University of Greenland professor Nielsen says many in Greenland felt Denmark had overstepped its authority.

"You often hear the argument from Greenlandic diplomats and Greenlandic politicians that they don't really understand why Denmark can have pretty close cooperation with China and Greenland is not allowed to," he says.
"Because Greenland in many ways sees this is a commercial issue."

Andbusiness opportunities — as well as geopolitical competition — are likely to grow as the polar ice
continues to melt and Greenland opens up .
 Greenland---Impact---REE---2NC
It’s existential AND the risk’s high.
Dunn ’21 [Craig; 2021; Former Chairman of the Howard County Republican Party, Investment Officer
at the Liberty Financial Group, BS in Management and Finance, from Ball State University; Howey Politics
Indiana, “The Ironies of Our Chip Shortage,”
https://howeypolitics.com/Content/Columns/Columns/Article/Craig-Dunn-The-ironies-of-our-chip-
shortage/10/20/28100]

The U nited S tates faces a crisis of massive importance and one that could easily pose an existential
threat to our way of life if something is not done soon. The blame for the computer chip crisis should be equally shared by the
short-sighted avarice of American industry and by a clueless string of both Republican and Democrat presidential administrations dating back to
George H. W. Bush. In addition, Congress has been completely AWOL from the steady deterioration of our computer chip status.
Ronald Reagan identified the critical importance of the United States maintaining our industrial independence in the world of microprocessors. In April 1987, the Reagan Administration imposed 100% tariffs on Japanese firms that
were dumping cheap microchips on the American market at below cost and thereby jeopardizing American chip manufacturers.

The problem with Reagan’s strategy was that it failed to understand that Japanese government and industry work hand in hand as opposed to the American model of our industry being viewed as the enemy by Democrat-led
Congresses. At the time, Japan subsidized a substantial piece of our national debt through the purchase of long-term treasury securities. In the first auction of treasury securities after the tariff implementation, no Japanese
securities firm participated in the auction and in the wink of an eye, long-term treasury bond interest rates rose by 3%.

When you are trying to finance trillions in debt, that 3% rise in rates is an economy killer. Quickly, the United States was forced to drop the punitive tariffs and our lower rates returned. I remember thinking at the time how easy it
was for a foreign entity to blackmail our country. The adage is darn accurate, “Owe the bank a little and the bank owns you. Owe the bank a lot and you own the bank.”

The first Bush Administration had a different attitude about the exportation of microchip production. Michael Boskin, an economic adviser to President George H.W. Bush, famously said, “Potato chips, computer chips, what’s the
difference?”

Well, the short answer Mr. Boskin, is to try to build an electronics system for an automobile with a package of Lays potato chips and you’ll get no further than those pickup trucks stacking up at the old Delphi Automotive plant.

The sad fact is that in 1990 the United State manufactured 37% of all the microchips in the world. Today, that percentage has dropped to 12% and it is heading lower. The direct impact on our automobile industry is that our
American automobile manufacturers are expected to make nearly 4 million fewer vehicles this year compared to 2020 all because of the lack of those elusive teeny tiny microprocessors. Bureaucratic tools such as Mr. Boskin
should be forced to take public transportation everywhere they go.

The dominant players in the world when it comes to microprocessor manufacturing today are Taiwan and South Korea. Does anyone see the potential problem of the world’s production of such a critical industrial component being
so close to China’s doorstep?

The Chinese Army could swim to Taiwan and South Korea’s Samsung’s chip manufacturing is located within spitting distance of the Korean DMZ. In addition, China has stated their objective to be the world’s largest producer of
microchips by 2030. While South Korea plans to spend $450 billion on new microprocessor production facilities over the next 10 years, the Biden Administration’s investment in microchip infrastructure is a paltry $50 billion. This is
a financial drop in the bucket in a world where a new computer chip plant can cost up to $20 billion and take three years for the environmental approval process alone.

The Biden Administration’s overriding objective is to convert the majority of United States auto production to electric vehicles by 2035 and therein lies the critical folly of an industrial policy that does not put the interests of our
American economy first. Not only will the Biden Administration strategy move the United States from energy independence with our abundant supply of oil and gas, but it will be moving us to the production of vehicles that utilize
a component that is rarer than a microchip, rare earth minerals.

hangman’s
If you think we have a supply problem with microprocessors and Chinese dominance, then just wait until you see the

noose that is being held by China. E lectric v ehicles are totally depend ent on r are e arth m inerals and
China controls nearly 90% of the rare earth market. There is a big reason that Chinese engineers invaded Afghanistan as
fast as we cut and ran from the country. They view Afghanistan as a possible new source of rare earth minerals and they want to dominate that
market.

The situation that the United States faces today is quite simple and simply frightening. Our largest economic and military competitor controls a
major hunk of our ever-growing national debt. They will be the overwhelmingly dominant manufacture of a key
component that makes today’s modern vehicles, appliances and electronics function. China almost
completely controls the production of rare earth minerals.

It is time for our enfeebled president, his handlers and those who run the zoo that we call Congress to form a national strategic council that will
ensure that the United States has the resources to sustain our economy , finance our own debt and protect the
military superiority that we have enjoyed. We have been slipping backward for nearly 40 years and it is now time that our national
interests take top priority.
Exclusive Chinese control causes conflict with the United States---World War III.
Anthony ’21 [Sebastian; 2021; Editor of Ars Technica UK at Condé Nast, ExtremeTech's Senior Editor,
Owner of SA Holdings, Columnist at Tecca, Engineering at the University of Essex; Extreme Tech, “Rare
Earth Crisis: Innovate, or be Crushed by China,” http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/111029-rare-
earth-crisis-innovate-or-be-crushed-by-china]
Many rare earths are also geochemically rare — they can only be mined in a handful of countries. This is simply down to Mother Nature being a
results in massively skewed
tempestuous so-and-so: Some countries have deposits of rare earths, and some don’t. This
production (China famously produces 97% of the world’s rare earth metals), and, as you can imagine, a lot of
national security and geopolitical troubles , too.
It doesn’t stop with rare earths, either: Many other important elements, such as platinum, are only available from one or two mines in the
entire world. If South Africa sustained a huge earthquake — or was on the receiving end of a thermonuclear bomb, perhaps — the world’s
supply of platinum would literally dry up over night. The continued existence of technologies that rely on platinum, like car exhaust catalytic
converters and fuel cells, would be unlikely.

If geochemistry and politics weren’t enough, though, we even have to factor in ethical concerns: Just like blood/conflict diamonds — diamonds
that originate from war-torn African nations, where forced labor is used and the proceeds go towards buying more weapons for the warlord —
some rare metals could be considered “blood metals.” Tantalum, an element that’s used to make the capacitors found in almost every modern
computer, is extracted from coltan — and the world’s second largest producer of coltan is the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the home of
the bloodiest wars since World War II. Not only do the proceeds from coltan exports get spent on weapons, but the main focus of the wars
were the stretches of land rich in diamonds and coltan.

Also along the same humanist vein, it’s important to note that extracting these rare elements is usually a very expensive and disruptive activity.
Indium, probably the single most important element for the manufacture of LCDs and touchscreens, is recovered in minute quantities as a
byproduct of zinc extraction. You can’t just set up an indium plant; you have to produce zinc in huge quantities, find buyers and arrange
transport for that zinc, and then go to town on producing indium. In short, extracting rare elements is generally a very intensive task that is
likely to disrupt or destroy existing settlements and businesses.

The doomsday event that everyone is praying will never come to pass, but which every Western nation is currently planning for, is
the eventual cut-off of Chinese rare earth exports. Last year, 97% of the world’s rare earth metals were produced in China —
but over the last few years, the Chinese government has been shutting down mines, ostensibly to save what resources it has, and also reducing
the amount of rare earth that can be exported. Last year, China produced some 130,000 tons of rare earths, but export restrictions meant that
only 35,000 tons were sent to other countries. As a result, demand outside China now outstrips
supply by some 40,000 tons per year,
and — as expected — many countries are now stockpiling the reserves that they have.

China owns the world's rare earth deposits Almost every Western country is now digging around in their backyard for rare
earth-rich mud and sand, but it’ll probably be too little too late — and anyway, due to geochemistry, there’s
no guarantee that explorers and assayers will find what they’re looking for. The price of rare earths are already
going up, and so are the non-Chinese-made gadgets and gizmos that use them. Exacerbating the issue yet further, as tech nology grows

more advanced, our reliance on the strange and magical properties of r are e arth s increases — and China, with
the world’s largest workforce and a fire hose of rare earths, is perfectly poised to become the only real producer of solar power
photovoltaic cells, computer chips, and more.

In short, China has the world by the short hairs, and when combined with a hotting-up cyber front , it’s not
hard to see how this situation might devolve into World War III . The alternate, ecological point of view, is that
we’re simply living beyond the planet’s means. Either way, strategic and logistic planning to make the most of scarce metals and minerals is
now one of the most important tasks that face governments and corporations. Even if large rare earth deposits are found soon, or we start
recycling our gadgets in a big way, the only real solution is to somehow lessen our reliance on a finite resource. Just like oil and energy, this will
probably require drastic technological leaps. Instead of reducing the amount of tantalum used in capacitors, or indium in LCD displays, we will
probably have to discover completely different ways of storing energy or displaying images. My money’s on graphene.
 Naval Power---2NC

Naval heg inevitable.

Easterbrook 18 Gregg Easterbrook, fellow in economics and government studies at the Brookings
Institute and a fellow in international affairs at the Fulbright Foundation. [It’s Better Than It Looks: The
Case for Optimism in An Age of Fear, First Edition, New York: PublicAffairs, Hachette Book Group]

For a half-century, no nation has even attempted to contest US naval dominion. The all-electric,
stealth-hull cruisers the United States builds are so advanced —nicknamed “arsenal ships” for their firepower—that
no other nation has even experimented with a vessel of this general type. The supercarrier strike groups that
America deploys—full-deck, nuclear-powered carriers bearing long-range jets, protected by guided-missile destroyers and screened by nuclear
submarines—are so potent , to say nothing of so expensive (naval hegemony cost the United States
$155 billion in 2017), that no other nation has tried to build one . China and Russia possess no
nuclear supercarriers , and have none under construction. The limited-deck, diesel-powered carriers China
began laying down in 2015 will be suitable for patrolling coastal areas but not for the open ocean, while
everything the US Navy builds is intended to travel beyond the horizon .
 Econ Decline---2NC

Err against crisis:

1. Finance – pundits have an incentive to sell doom and gloom.
Drezner 16 Daniel W. Drezner, International Politics Professor at Tufts University. [The System
Worked: How the World Stopped Another Great Depression, Oxford University Press, Reprint Edition
(2016), Chapter 7: Where Do We Go from Here?]

In the world of international affairs punditry , pessimism sells . Professionally, it is less risky to
predict doom and gloom than to predict that things will work out fine. 300/452 Warning about a disaster
that never happens carries less cost to one's credibility than asserting that all is well just before a
calamity. History has stigmatized optimistic prognosticators who turned out to be wrong. Beginning with Norman
Angell's errant prediction a century ago that war would soon become obsolete, to Francis Fukuyama's proclamation that history has ended,
errant optimists have been derided for their naivete. Policymakers prematurely declaring "mission accomplished" have
suffered even more embarrassment.

2. Geography – experts bias against developing countries.

Drezner 16 Daniel W. Drezner, International Politics Professor at Tufts University. [The System
Worked: How the World Stopped Another Great Depression, Oxford University Press, Reprint Edition
(2016), Chapter 7: Where Do We Go from Here?]

Why, then, is the expert consensus just the opposite? One explanation has to do with where the pundits "live." Since 2008,
there has been a disjuncture between where most of the people who write about the global economy are
located and where many of the global economy's growth locomotives are found. The bulk of the actual economic growth
has taken place in emerging markets —but emerging-market analysts have yet to affect the tenor of discourse
on the global political economy. The bulk of intellectual output emanates from the countries of the developed
world, places that have not exactly thrived since the start of the Great Recession. It is therefore natural that
some analysts extrapolate from their downbeat local circumstances a downbeat assessment of
global circumstances .

3. Predictions fail.
DeVeaux 19 Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, a senior writer for FiveThirtyEight, citing Prakash Loungani, an
economist at the International Monetary Fund, and Tara Sinclair, a professor of economics at George
Washington University. [Economists Are Bad at Predicting Recessions, 8-21-2019,
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/economists-are-bad-at-predicting-recessions/]

But take a deep breath before you spend a lot of time trying to figure out how a recession would change Trump’s reelection chances:
Although the economy does have a big effect on an incumbent president’s odds of winning a second term, economists have a

terrible track record when it comes to predicting recessions. “ Very, very few recessions have been
predicted nine months or a year in advance,” Prakash Loungani, an economist at the I nternational M onetary
F und, told me. This doesn’t mean a recession won’t strike in the near future. Over the past few weeks and months, there have been some
worrisome signals about the country’s economic health, fueling broader concerns about an impending recession. But exactly when the
next economic downturn will come — and specifically whether it will interrupt the 2020 election cycle — is extremely
uncertain . “There’s no economic data or research or analysis that suggests we can look 12 months
into the future and predict recessions with any confidence ,” said Tara Sinclair, a professor of
economics at George Washington University. Instead, and despite the recent rash of stories about economists’ predictions,
economic downturns usually come as a surprise . A 2018 study conducted by Loungani and others looked at
153 recessions in 63 countries between 1992 and 2014 and found that the vast majority were missed by
economists in both the public and private sector. This was painfully true in the case of the global financial
crisis in 2008 , which wasn’t officially declared a recession until it had been going for almost a year. Other studies have found that in
general, forecasters are too sunny about economic growth. Part of the problem, according to Loungani, was that in the past, economists were
unwilling to risk their reputations by predicting an imminent recession that never came to pass. So it might actually be a good thing, he said, if
more economists were now willing to sound the alarm. But Sinclair noted that even now, relatively few are pointing to an
the share of economists who said they were expecting a recession
immediate crisis. In one of the polls, for instance,

this year fell from 10 percent in February to 2 percent in July. And even if economists are more willing to be
wrong these days than they were a decade ago, the task of predicting recessions itself hasn’t become easier.
We have plenty of clues about how the economy is doing, but a system that’s so big , complex and deeply

intertwined with human psychology and actions will always be difficult to predict.
1NR
DA
PIK
 Primacy---Internal---2NC
Failure to pass a CR collapses hegemony---past shutdowns assume different budgetary
allotments.
McCusker ’8/28 [Elaine and John Ferrari; August 28, 2023; senior fellow at the American Enterprise
Institute and former acting undersecretary of defense (comptroller); retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen., senior
nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and previously served as a director of program
analysis and evaluation for the Army; Breaking Defense, “Budget endgame scenarios: From acceptable
to apocalypse,” breakingdefense.com/2023/08/budget-endgame-scenarios-from-acceptable-to-
apocalypse/]
The doomsday scenario (Scenario C) is even worse than the simple math indicates for three very important reasons. First, the 5.2 percent
military and civilian pay raise is mandatory, so the funding would actually have to be resourced from within the caps to pay the estimated $15
billion needed for the military pay raise, while the civilian pay raise, estimated at roughly $10 billion, would come at the expense of readiness
within the operating accounts. Second, military construction cannot be funded with a c ontinuing r esolution, therefore those
funds disappear under Scenarios B and C. And finally, with inflation running about 3% per year, that effectively cuts another $24 billion in
spending power below the FRA caps. Taking those three issues into account yields the following:

230824_ferrari_oped_graph3

(Provided by the authors)

This doomsday scenario results in an actual defense budget that is 8.6 percent below the PB 2024 request or
nearly $ 50 billion below current spending in a single year. It should also be noted that under the FRA, the required cuts
do not need to start until April 2024, , packing the budget reductions into an even smaller window of execution.

Timing is very important . There is little chance Congress can pass appropriations by the end of the fiscal year and as such, they
will have to rely on a series of short-term c ontinuing r esolutions. And, if history is any guide, these will go until the December
holiday recess. During this October-December timeframe, DoD would be spending at the Scenario B reality adjusted level, losing close to $17
billion in buying power during just those three months. And, keep in mind, the White House has also submitted a $40.1 billion supplemental, of
which $13.1 billion represents DoD requirements, further straining cash flow at the same time buying power is dwindling.

If Scenario C occurs and DoD loses $50 billion during FY24, a continuing resolution for FY25 would likely follow, given that it is an
election year. That will exponentially compound the national security deficit, putting the United States in similar
circumstances to those under the Budget Control Act from which we have never fully recovered.

With a war in Europe and continued escalating tensions with China , failing to approve budgets on
time and at the FRA-agreed upon levels could be catastrophic for the readiness of the force. Maybe, if the
appropriations are not completed on time, Congress should not get paid rather than taking our national defense hostage. That would be one
reform on which most of America might agree.

Shutdown in the contemporary geopolitical environment ensures diminished

credibility, collapsing hegemony.
Stier ’8/21 [Max; August 21, 2023; Washington Post, “A US Government Shutdown Should Never Be
an Option,” https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/08/21/a-us-government-shutdown-
should-never-be-an-option/f9240512-4018-11ee-9677-53cc50eb3f77_story.html]
The highly contentious partisan fight in Congress over federal spending is creating a strong possibility of a government shutdown on Oct. 1, an
all-too-familiar situation that is forcing federal agencies to confront serious budget uncertainties and the prospect of large-scale furloughs.

For most businesses, operating under the constant threat of a shutdown would be unthinkable — none could tolerate the effects of such
instability on their workforces and on their ability to serve their customers.

Yet today, these are the exact conditions facing our nation’s largest employer, which directly serves millions of people each day and is relied on
by the public to meet its basic needs.

While some would welcome a shutdown to solve long-standing policy differences and argue that it would hardly affect the country, keeping our
government open and operating is a fundamental responsibility of Congress and the White House. Doing the opposite would seriously harm the
American public and the nation’s public servants.

A lapse in federal funding, particularly if a shutdown was governmentwide and dragged on for many weeks, would result in the
suspension of vital public services, prevent agencies from fulfilling critical missions , deprive federal workers of their
livelihoods, damage the economy and further erode public trust in the government. A 2019 Senate report found that the government
shutdowns in 2013, 2018 and 2019 cost taxpayers nearly $4 billion.

If the past is prologue, federal employees who ensure the safety of the food and drug supply could be sidelined, small-business loans and new
public stock offerings could be put on hold, immigration courts could be closed, scientific research could be halted and air travel could be
adversely affected.

A shutdown could also stall some FBI criminal investigations, further drain the federal government’s disaster relief fund as it confronts severe
climate emergencies and deprive people with disabilities of services. Passport offices, already deluged with applications and facing an
enormous backlog, could be closed while the IRS, which is just now getting its head above water, could face a shutdown in tax processing and
help lines.

In addition, a drawn-out shutdown would run the risk of diminishing America’s standing abroad, making it
harder for the country to respond to international threats and undermining its influence in the midst of
the war in Ukraine and our dealings with China, Russia and other nations.
While the House and Senate debates over important issues are often contentious and frequently fueled by strong ideological and partisan
Intrinsicness
 Link---2NC
The plan can be popular with most of America, but that doesn’t come close to
answering the link.

The plan was proposed and republicans said no. This is THERE 2ac
<<FOR REFERENCE>>

Indeed we may have to earmark the estate tax in order to save it . Repeal this year was prevented only
because the Republican-dominated Senate fell three votes short of the needed to prevent a
filibuster and thus make passage of the proposal possible. Carving a modest tax on large estates out of general
revenues to help pay off part of the cost of establishing a universal system of basic economic
security would be a highly progressive and desirable way partially to offset the legacy cost .
Moreover, to allow the transfer of huge estates from one generation to another without exacting a

contribution to the common good is undemocratic in principle (as Tom Paine, among other early advocates of an
inheritance tax, recognized). In almost all cases, the accumulation of huge estates cannot be attributed solely to

the efforts of the estate owners; wealth also derives from the general productivity of the American
economy and its infrastructure. Thus, a tax for the common good is a fair, partial payback for the common
contribution to estate building.

Cx was nonsense their card is generic and there’s no reason for why the tax is different
from anything else they had the chance to explain in cross and didn’t which means
new explanation should not be allowed.
They inevitably see the plan as rank socialism
Triggs ’20 [Adam; August 24; a director within Accenture Strategy, a Visiting Fellow in the Crawford
School at the Australian National University, and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Brookings Institution;
Inside Story, "Is a job guarantee the answer?,", https://insidestory.org.au/is-a-job-guarantee-the-
answer/]
This strikes me as a tall order. Governments are pretty good at one-size-fits-all. But when we want something more tailored and individualised,
we usually leave it to markets, where the role of government is to shape incentives and top up incomes. It’s hard to think of
examples where the government has successfully delivered tailored, individualised solutions to the
public on a large scale. The government’s response to Covid-19 is a case in point.

This brings us to the political challenge. Advocates of a job guarantee are the first to acknowledge that it occupies a
difficult space in politics. Many on the political left see it as work-for-the-dole on steroids: a right-
wing, neoliberal conspiracy to undermine and destroy the safety net by stealth. Many on the
political right see it as nothing more than rank socialism : a massive expansion of government and
the abandonment of free markets.
Perhaps these attitudes will change. But the fact that neither side of politics is currently willing to champion an idea
that has been around for generations suggests a job guarantee’s political feasibility is far from
guaranteed.

That ensures conservatives accept a shutdown and refuse to pass a CR.

Hawkins ’23 [Ari; April 6, 2023; Politico, “The unlikely alliance that’s reshaping Washington,”
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-nightly/2023/04/06/the-unlikely-alliance-thats-
reshaping-washington-00090816]
What’s Speaker McCarthy’s next move?

Speaker Kevin McCarthy is keeping everyone waiting on his next move. He’s been noncommittal on a quick
House vote on the measure, meaning they might instead be attached to an annual defense policy
bill or other must-pass legislation. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas) has instead pitched a repeal-
and-replace plan for both the 1991 and 2002 measures as well as a broad one passed in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

After almost denying him the speakership, how much of a problem could the Freedom Caucus be on other issues that could come before
Congress?

The miniscule margin in the House means the Freedom Caucus, or really any bloc , can emerge as a major force to
disrupt the best-laid plans . And the Freedom Caucus has signaled they want to take a hard line against
other government spending and have laid down their own markers too amid debt negotiations. Civil libertarians in the bloc also
found common ground with the left with raising concerns about government surveillance ahead of a reauthorization deadline at the end of the
year.

2. FLOORTIME. Even if the plan’s popular, negotiations over funding and

implementation sap up crucial floor time that overshoots the deadline for avoiding
shutdown. Any major legislation will have to wait
Groves ’9/5 [Stephen and Mary Clare Jalonick; September 5, 2023; correspondent for AP News based
in South Dakota; covers Congress for the Associated Press in Washington; PBS NewsHour, “GOP weighs
impeachment inquiry as Congress tries to avert shutdown,” PBS NewsHour,
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/gop-weighs-impeachment-inquiry-as-congress-tries-to-avert-
shutdown]

“The last thing the American people deserve is for extreme House members to trigger a government
shutdown that hurts our economy, undermines our disaster preparedness, and forces our troops to work without guaranteed pay,” said White House
spokesman Andrew Bates.

focus when the Senate returns Tuesday will be

In a letter to his colleagues Friday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote that the

“ funding the government and preventing House Republican extremists from forcing a government
shutdown .”
It leaves McCarthy desperate to get the votes to keep government offices running and avoid the political blowback. As he tries to persuade Republicans to go along
with a temporary fix, McCarthy has been arguing that a government shutdown would also halt Republican investigations into the Biden administration.

“If we shut down, all of government shuts it down — investigations and everything else — it hurts the American public,” the speaker said on Fox News last week.

Impeachment inquiry
Since they gained the House majority, Republicans have launched a series of investigations into the Biden administration, with an eye towards impeaching the
president or his Cabinet officials. They have now zeroed in on the president’s son, Hunter Biden, and his overseas business dealings, including with Ukrainian gas
company Burisma.

The inquiries have not produced evidence that President Biden took official action on behalf of his son or business partners, but McCarthy has called impeachment a
“natural step forward” for the investigations.

An impeachment inquiry by the House would be a first step toward bringing articles of impeachment. It is not yet clear what that may look like, especially because
the speaker does not appear to have the GOP votes lined up to support an impeachment inquiry. Moderate Republicans have so far balked at sending the House on
a full-fledged impeachment hunt.

But Donald Trump, running once again to challenge Biden, is prodding them to move ahead quickly.

“I don’t know how actually how a Republican could not do it,” Trump said in an interview on Real America’s Voice. “I think a Republican would be primaried and lose
immediately, no matter what district you’re in.”

Ukraine and disaster funding

The White House has requested more than $40 billion in emergency funding, including $13 billion in military aid for Ukraine, $8 billion in humanitarian support for
the nation and $12 billion to replenish U.S. federal disaster funds at home.

The request for the massive cash infusion comes as Kyiv launches a counteroffensive against the Russian invasion. But support for Ukraine is waning among
Republicans, especially as Trump has repeatedly expressed skepticism of the war.

Nearly 70 Republicans voted for an unsuccessful effort to discontinue military aid to Ukraine in July, though strong support for the war effort remains among many
members.

It is also not clear whether the White House’s supplemental request for U.S. disaster funding, which also includes funds to bolster enforcement and curb drug
trafficking at the southern U.S. border, will be tied to the Ukraine funding or a continuing budget resolution. The disaster funding enjoys wide support in the House,
but could be tripped up if packaged with other funding proposals.

Legislation on hold

The Senate is expected to spend most of September focused on funding the government and confirming
Biden’s nominees, meaning that major policy legislation will have to wait . But Schumer outlined some priorities for
the remaining months of the year in the letter to his colleagues.

Schumer said the Senate would work on legislation to lower the costs of drugs, address rail safety and provide disaster relief after floods in Vermont, fires in Hawaii
and a hurricane in Florida.

Senators will also continue to examine whether legislation is needed to address artificial intelligence. Schumer has convened what he is calling an “AI insight forum”
on Sept. 13 in the Senate with tech industry leaders, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, the CEO of X and Tesla, as well as former Microsoft CEO Bill
Gates.

Republicans will feign opposition to everything---that requires horse-trading.

Chappel ’23 [James; February 13; Associate Professor of History at Duke University; Boston Review,
“The Frozen Politics of Social Security,” https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-frozen-politics-of-
social-security/]
The discussion has moved on, some, since the 1970s. Privatization, with some exceptions, has ceased to be a rallying cry for conservatives.
Republicans are more likely, now, to call for
George W. Bush tried to do it in his second term with disastrous results.

benefit cuts and a higher retirement age. Democrats, for their part, are still talking like Cohen: exasperated
with Republicans and claiming the moral high ground by fending off Republican cuts. That strategy,
fundamentally defensive in nature, may have made sense in an era of bipartisanship and program solvency. It

no longer does .
Indeed, even as the bipartisan, consensus-seeking spirit of technocracy becomes increasingly irrelevant to U.S. politics, it remains the dominant
register for thinking about Social Security. Both Fixing Social Security and The Retirement Challenge exemplify this state of affairs: each presents
sensible proposals to reform the retirement system, but each has an air of political unreality about it. Recognizing that
Democrats as currently constituted can’t solve the matter on their own, they end up placing the onus of responsibility on the two institutions
most incapable of meeting the challenge: congressional Republicans, who have lost touch with legislative reality, and the American family,
already ground down by decades of austerity and wage stagnation.

The call for Republican action comes from Fixing Social Security, an excellent study of the recent history of Social Security and the reasons for
Congressional inaction. Arnold has been thinking and writing about Social Security for decades, and he is a steady guide for anyone seeking to
understand the system. He is rightly skeptical of privatization as a workable plan and indeed of the private retirement system as a whole. He
clearly believes, too, in the legitimacy of Social Security, and in the idea that robust public support is the only way to create something
approaching justice for older Americans.

Yet his political analysis remains bound by an outdated pragmatism. He convincingly argues that fixing Social Security, by which he means
making it solvent, is not difficult: a series of tweaks to tax rates, retirement ages, and levels of taxable income could do it. The emotional motor
of the book is Arnold’s frustration that the U.S. political system can’t deliver these reforms that are so transparently urgent and so
transparently popular. (Many of the book’s pages are spent analyzing poll data to this effect.) He does call for a campaign of letter-writing and
activism from the AARP. But Arnold is laser-focused on congressional politics, so he gives most of the impetus for solving the problem to
Republicans. Because they avoid putting an actual policy on the table, Arnold argues, they have not been forced, as a
party, to make the hard choices about taxes and benefits. Once they finally do so, the actual horse-trading with the
more reasonable Democrats can begin—and, most likely, end somewhere between the modest expansion of Social Security 2100
and the modest cuts desired by many conservatives.

3. BOLT-FROM-THE-BLUE. The plan’s sudden nature shocks Senators and lobbyists;

fearing Democrats and fellow GOP Senators have gone unhinged, they’ll drag their
feet OR demand draconian cuts. Avoiding unrelated policy fights is crucial.
Groves ’9/5 [Stephen and Mary Clare Jalonick; September 5, 2023; correspondent for AP News based
in South Dakota; covers Congress for the Associated Press in Washington; PBS NewsHour, “GOP weighs
impeachment inquiry as Congress tries to avert shutdown,” PBS NewsHour,
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/gop-weighs-impeachment-inquiry-as-congress-tries-to-avert-
shutdown]

WASHINGTON (AP) — After months of struggling to find agreement on just about anything in a divided Congress, lawmakers are returning to
Capitol Hill to try to avert a government shutdown , even as House Republicans consider whether to press forward with an
impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

A short-term funding measure to keep government offices fully functioning will dominate the
September agenda , along with emergency funding for Ukraine, federal disaster funds and the Republican-driven probe into Hunter Biden’s overseas
business dealings.

Time is running short for Congress to act. The House is scheduled to meet for just 11 days before the
government’s fiscal year ends on Sept. 30, leaving little room to maneuver . And the deal-making will play out as
two top Republicans, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, deal with health issues.

The president and congressional leaders , including Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, are focused on passage of
a months-long funding measure , known as a continuing resolution, to keep government offices
running while lawmakers iron out a budget. It’s a step Congress routinely takes to avoid stoppages, but McCarthy faces
resistance from within his own Republican ranks, including from some hardline conservatives who openly embrace the idea of a
government shutdown.

“Honestly, it’s a pretty big mess ,” McConnell said at an event in Kentucky last week.
Here are the top issues as lawmakers return from the August break:
Keeping the government open

When Biden and McCarthy struck a deal to suspend the nation’s debt ceiling in June, it included provisions for topline spending numbers. But under pressure from
the House Freedom Caucus, House Republicans have advanced spending bills that cut below that agreement.

Republicans have also tried to load their spending packages with conservative policy wins. For example, House Republicans added provisions blocking abortion
coverage, transgender care and diversity initiatives to a July defense package, turning what has traditionally been a bipartisan effort into a sharply contested bill.

Senators are crafting their spending

But Democrats control the Senate and are certain to reject most of the conservative proposals.

bills on a bipartisan basis with an eye toward avoiding unrelated policy fights .

Capital’s key:
It’ll take arm twisting and pressure to forge agreement. It’s likely, but not
guaranteed---that’s on uniqueness.
Consensus agrees.
Byers ’20 [Jason, et al; 2020; PhD in Political Science at the University of Georgia, Postdoctoral Fellow
at the University of Michigan, BA from the College of Charleston, Congress and the Presidency,
“Policymaking by the Executive: Examining the Fate of Presidential Agenda Items,” vol. 47]

A number of studies have show n that Congress considers current levels of presidential approval
when passing legislation (Brady and Volden 1998; Cohen et al. 2000; Edwards 1980, 1989). Early studies were able to find
correlations between approval ratings and success in Congress (see, e.g., Edwards 1980; Ostrom and Simon 1985).
However, later research depicts the relationship between approval ratings and legislative success as more conditional (Canes-Wrone and De
Marchi 2002; Edwards 1989). Supporting a piece of legislation championed by an unpopular president could
ultimately result in negative consequences for members of Congress . If presidents propose legislation to
Congress that is salient with the mass electorate and has higher levels of approval, however, then members stand to gain from supporting the
president.9

On a similar note, the honeymoon period of a president’s initial time in office has been shown to increase
the likelihood of legislative success (Beckmann and Godfrey 2007; Brace and Hinckley 1991; Farnsworth and Lichter 2011;
McCarty 1997). Presidents lose their favorability with the public and with Congress the longer that they are in office (McCarty 1997), which is
why they often push for significant legislative accomplishments early in their term. Members of Congress are uniquely aware
of the public’s sentiments after a presidential election, especially because they share a common
constituency with the president and are more likely to capitulate to a president’s agenda.10 Therefore,
a president should receive more cooperation from members of Congress for their legislative agenda items earlier in his term.

We should also expect the president to have varying levels of success depending on the policy in question (Ragsdale 2014). One area where the
president is more likely to succeed in Congress is in foreign policy. The amount of knowledge the president possesses in matters of foreign
policy, compared to members of Congress, is usually much greater (Canes-Wrone, Howell, and Lewis 2008; Wildavsky 1966). This information
asymmetry in foreign policy leads Congress to be relatively deferential to the president’s proposals, therefore often negating their need to act
unilaterally in order to achieve the president policy goals (Marshall and Pacelle 2005).11 Furthermore, members of Congress often have little
incentive to get involved in foreign policy as there is little or no direct electoral return for them (Mayhew 1974).12

A president’s ability to pursue policies with Congress is also affected by institutional features such as unified government, polarization, filibuster
or veto pivots, and the partisan composition of the chambers (Bond and Fleisher 1990; Howell 2005; Krehbiel 1998; Mayhew 2011). Much of
the previous work on presidential success in Congress has focused on the distinction between unified versus divided government and has found
that presidents are more likely to shift policy when there is unified government, which makes intuitive sense (Barrett and Eshbaugh-Soha 2007;
Bond and Fleisher 1990; Mayhew 2011). If the same party controls the presidency and both chambers of Congress, then it is reasonable to
assume that a majority of the legislation that is proposed by the president will at least make it onto the legislative agenda. It also follows that
during times of divided government, the president would have a harder time getting legislation passed through Congress as a result of more
divergent policy preferences, which therefore impedes their ability to form the necessary coalition needed to move the status quo (Mayhew
2005; Ragusa 2010).13 The effect of divided government is likely to be exacerbated with greater polarization as well. As the parties’ ideologies
diverge, fewer opportunities exist for bipartisan compromise on issues, therefore potentially hampering the president’s ability to move policy.

Beyond simple majority status, the actual size of the president’s party within Congress also matters. Prior research demonstrates that the size
of the coalition that the president has within Congress affects the likelihood that policy change is enacted (Bond and Fleisher 1990; Deering and
Maltzman 1999). A bare majority is insufficient unless there is no diversity among members’ ideologies, and even substantial majorities may not
suffice if one faction holds substantially different policy preferences from the rest of the party (such as the Southern Democrats during the
1950s and 1960s). Therefore, simple majority status is not sufficient for understanding policy changes. Instead, one must consider the size of
the president’s coalition and its ideological homogeneity as well (Rohde 1991). Increasing the size of the coalition the president has in Congress
should result in an easier path in passing legislation.14 This should be especially true during times of distinctly different ideological preferences
between the majority and minority parties.

A variety of factors could influence the success of a president’s legislative proposal in Congress. Based
on the president’s proclivity to have legislative proposals realized through law, the previous factors will influence the
success or failure of a president’s ability to have proposals make it through Congress . Although
presidents may not witness a specific proposal become law, this does not mean their initiatives will necessarily remain unrealized. Allowing an
issue to remain at its status quo is indeed an option; however, the president may also decide (or be forced) to move policy unilaterally.15 There
are a multitude of reasons that a legislative proposal would receive no action by Congress or the president. At times it is unclear why no action
is initially taken in Congress, because it is difficult to ascertain a legislator's motivations in not pursuing a particular course of action. In addition,
the use of the Hastert Rule in the House and the filibuster in the Senate could result in no action taken on specific policy proposals. Gridlock is
an issue that must be addressed before legislation moves out of either chamber, which would stall progress and result in no action taken by the
legislative body. Unpopular presidents usually struggle to have their legislative proposals acted on by
Congress (Canes-Wrone and De Marchi 2002); based on the fact that the public does not support the president, Congress will
decide not to act . When dealing with legislative proposals, there are two specific endings—either the status quo is changed (i.e.,
Congress or the president creates a policy shift) or the status quo remains the same and the proposal receives no action.

It overwhelms ideology.
Lebo ’11 [Matthew and Andrew O’Geen; August 2011; Associate Professor in the Department of
Political Science at Stony Brook University, PhD in Political Science from the University of North Texas;
PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science at Stony Brook University; Journal of Politics, “The
President’s Role in the Partisan Congressional Arena,” vol. 73]
In many ways, the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches in the constitution is mirrored in the way the two
institutions are studied. Even as the study of parties in Congress continues to deepen our understanding of that branch, the role of the
president is usually left out or 3 marginalized. At the same time, research that centers on the president’s success has developed in parallel with
little crossover. The result of this separation is that well developed theories of parties in Congress exist but we know much less about the
important interactions between the executive and the legislature and the parties that connect them. For example, between models of
conditional party government (Rohde 1991; Aldrich and Rohde 2001), cartel theory (Cox and McCubbins 1993, 2005), and others (e.g. Lebo,
McGlynn and Koger 2007; Patty 2008), we have an advanced understanding of how parties are important in Congress, but little knowledge of
where the president fits. As the head of his party, the president’s role in the partisan politics of Congress
should be central . Keeping this centrality in mind, we use established theories of congressional parties to model the president’s role as
an actor within the constraints of the partisan environment of Congress. We also find a role for the president's approval level, a variable of
some controversy in the presidential success literature. Further, we are interested in both the causes and consequences of success. We develop
a theory that views the pres ident’s record as a key component of the party politics that are so important
to both the pass age of legislation and the electoral outcomes that follow. Specifically, theories of partisan politics
in Congress argue that cross-pressured legislators will side with their parties in order to enhance the collective
reputation of their party (Cox and McCubbins 1993, 2005), but no empirical research has answered the question: "of
what are collective reputations made?" We demonstrate that it is the success of the president – not
parties in Congress – that predicts rewards and punishments to parties in Congress. This allows us to neatly
fit the president into existing theories of party competition in Congress while our analyses on presidential success enable us to fit existing
theories of party politics into the literature on the presidency.
 Internals---PC Key---2NC
Capital’s key:
It’ll take arm twisting and pressure to forge agreement. It’s likely, but not
guaranteed---that’s on uniqueness.
Consensus agrees.
Byers ’20 [Jason, et al; 2020; PhD in Political Science at the University of Georgia, Postdoctoral Fellow
at the University of Michigan, BA from the College of Charleston, Congress and the Presidency,
“Policymaking by the Executive: Examining the Fate of Presidential Agenda Items,” vol. 47]

A number of studies have show n that Congress considers current levels of presidential approval
when passing legislation (Brady and Volden 1998; Cohen et al. 2000; Edwards 1980, 1989). Early studies were able to find
correlations between approval ratings and success in Congress (see, e.g., Edwards 1980; Ostrom and Simon 1985).
However, later research depicts the relationship between approval ratings and legislative success as more conditional (Canes-Wrone and De
Marchi 2002; Edwards 1989). Supporting a piece of legislation championed by an unpopular president could
ultimately result in negative consequences for members of Congress . If presidents propose legislation to
Congress that is salient with the mass electorate and has higher levels of approval, however, then members stand to gain from supporting the
president.9

On a similar note, the honeymoon period of a president’s initial time in office has been shown to increase
the likelihood of legislative success (Beckmann and Godfrey 2007; Brace and Hinckley 1991; Farnsworth and Lichter 2011;
McCarty 1997). Presidents lose their favorability with the public and with Congress the longer that they are in office (McCarty 1997), which is
why they often push for significant legislative accomplishments early in their term. Members of Congress are uniquely aware
of the public’s sentiments after a presidential election, especially because they share a common
constituency with the president and are more likely to capitulate to a president’s agenda.10 Therefore,
a president should receive more cooperation from members of Congress for their legislative agenda items earlier in his term.

We should also expect the president to have varying levels of success depending on the policy in question (Ragsdale 2014). One area where the
president is more likely to succeed in Congress is in foreign policy. The amount of knowledge the president possesses in matters of foreign
policy, compared to members of Congress, is usually much greater (Canes-Wrone, Howell, and Lewis 2008; Wildavsky 1966). This information
asymmetry in foreign policy leads Congress to be relatively deferential to the president’s proposals, therefore often negating their need to act
unilaterally in order to achieve the president policy goals (Marshall and Pacelle 2005).11 Furthermore, members of Congress often have little
incentive to get involved in foreign policy as there is little or no direct electoral return for them (Mayhew 1974).12

A president’s ability to pursue policies with Congress is also affected by institutional features such as unified government, polarization, filibuster
or veto pivots, and the partisan composition of the chambers (Bond and Fleisher 1990; Howell 2005; Krehbiel 1998; Mayhew 2011). Much of
the previous work on presidential success in Congress has focused on the distinction between unified versus divided government and has found
that presidents are more likely to shift policy when there is unified government, which makes intuitive sense (Barrett and Eshbaugh-Soha 2007;
Bond and Fleisher 1990; Mayhew 2011). If the same party controls the presidency and both chambers of Congress, then it is reasonable to
assume that a majority of the legislation that is proposed by the president will at least make it onto the legislative agenda. It also follows that
during times of divided government, the president would have a harder time getting legislation passed through Congress as a result of more
divergent policy preferences, which therefore impedes their ability to form the necessary coalition needed to move the status quo (Mayhew
2005; Ragusa 2010).13 The effect of divided government is likely to be exacerbated with greater polarization as well. As the parties’ ideologies
diverge, fewer opportunities exist for bipartisan compromise on issues, therefore potentially hampering the president’s ability to move policy.

Beyond simple majority status, the actual size of the president’s party within Congress also matters. Prior research demonstrates that the size
of the coalition that the president has within Congress affects the likelihood that policy change is enacted (Bond and Fleisher 1990; Deering and
Maltzman 1999). A bare majority is insufficient unless there is no diversity among members’ ideologies, and even substantial majorities may not
suffice if one faction holds substantially different policy preferences from the rest of the party (such as the Southern Democrats during the
1950s and 1960s). Therefore, simple majority status is not sufficient for understanding policy changes. Instead, one must consider the size of
the president’s coalition and its ideological homogeneity as well (Rohde 1991). Increasing the size of the coalition the president has in Congress
should result in an easier path in passing legislation.14 This should be especially true during times of distinctly different ideological preferences
between the majority and minority parties.

A variety of factors could influence the success of a president’s legislative proposal in Congress. Based
on the president’s proclivity to have legislative proposals realized through law, the previous factors will influence the
success or failure of a president’s ability to have proposals make it through Congress . Although
presidents may not witness a specific proposal become law, this does not mean their initiatives will necessarily remain unrealized. Allowing an
issue to remain at its status quo is indeed an option; however, the president may also decide (or be forced) to move policy unilaterally.15 There
are a multitude of reasons that a legislative proposal would receive no action by Congress or the president. At times it is unclear why no action
is initially taken in Congress, because it is difficult to ascertain a legislator's motivations in not pursuing a particular course of action. In addition,
the use of the Hastert Rule in the House and the filibuster in the Senate could result in no action taken on specific policy proposals. Gridlock is
an issue that must be addressed before legislation moves out of either chamber, which would stall progress and result in no action taken by the
legislative body. Unpopular presidents usually struggle to have their legislative proposals acted on by
Congress (Canes-Wrone and De Marchi 2002); based on the fact that the public does not support the president, Congress will
decide not to act . When dealing with legislative proposals, there are two specific endings—either the status quo is changed (i.e.,
Congress or the president creates a policy shift) or the status quo remains the same and the proposal receives no action.

It overwhelms ideology.
Lebo ’11 [Matthew and Andrew O’Geen; August 2011; Associate Professor in the Department of
Political Science at Stony Brook University, PhD in Political Science from the University of North Texas;
PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science at Stony Brook University; Journal of Politics, “The
President’s Role in the Partisan Congressional Arena,” vol. 73]
In many ways, the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches in the constitution is mirrored in the way the two
institutions are studied. Even as the study of parties in Congress continues to deepen our understanding of that branch, the role of the
president is usually left out or 3 marginalized. At the same time, research that centers on the president’s success has developed in parallel with
little crossover. The result of this separation is that well developed theories of parties in Congress exist but we know much less about the
important interactions between the executive and the legislature and the parties that connect them. For example, between models of
conditional party government (Rohde 1991; Aldrich and Rohde 2001), cartel theory (Cox and McCubbins 1993, 2005), and others (e.g. Lebo,
McGlynn and Koger 2007; Patty 2008), we have an advanced understanding of how parties are important in Congress, but little knowledge of
where the president fits. As the head of his party, the president’s role in the partisan politics of Congress
should be central . Keeping this centrality in mind, we use established theories of congressional parties to model the president’s role as
an actor within the constraints of the partisan environment of Congress. We also find a role for the president's approval level, a variable of
some controversy in the presidential success literature. Further, we are interested in both the causes and consequences of success. We develop
a theory that views the pres ident’s record as a key component of the party politics that are so important
to both the pass age of legislation and the electoral outcomes that follow. Specifically, theories of partisan politics
in Congress argue that cross-pressured legislators will side with their parties in order to enhance the collective
reputation of their party (Cox and McCubbins 1993, 2005), but no empirical research has answered the question: "of
what are collective reputations made?" We demonstrate that it is the success of the president – not
parties in Congress – that predicts rewards and punishments to parties in Congress. This allows us to neatly
fit the president into existing theories of party competition in Congress while our analyses on presidential success enable us to fit existing
theories of party politics into the literature on the presidency.

It's perception based---politicians believe it’s real and act accordingly.

Schier ’11 [Steven; December 2011; Professor of Political Science at Carleton; Presidential Studies
Quarterly, “The Contemporary Presidency: The Presidential Authority Problem and the Political Power
Trap,” vol. 41]
The concept of political capital captures many of the aspects of a president's political authority. Paul Light defines several components of
p olitical c apital: party support of the president in Congress, public approval of the president's conduct of his job, the president's electoral
margin, and patronage appointments (Light 1999, 15). Light derived this list from the observations of 126 White House staff members he
interviewed (1999, 14). His indicators have two central uses. First, Light's research reveals that they are central to the
“ players' perspective ” in Washington. That is, those “ in the game ” view these items as crucial for
presidential effectiveness. Second, they relate to many central aspects of political authority as defined by Skowronek. So on both
theoretical and practical levels, the components of p olitical c apital are central to the fate of presidencies .
The data here will reveal that presidents over the last 70 years have suffered from a trend of declining levels of

p olitical c apital, a trend that is at the heart of their political authority problem.
 U---2NC
Spending bill passes now and avoids shutdown---Congressional leaders are mollifying
GOP hardliners and toeing the line to unite both parties, but it’s fragile and requires
sustained focus and avoiding controversy.
Progress now
Lauren Sforza '9-17 [Lauren Sforza; 9-17-2023; ;Hill, "McCarthy insists ‘good progress’ made in
shutdown talks," https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4208835-mccarthy-insists-good-progress-made-
in-shutdown-talks/]

“I feel we made some good progress this weekend. When Republicans took the majority, we wanted
to change Washington,” he told Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures.” “We make
members show up for work, no more proxy voting, bills have to go through committee, no more of these
omnibuses where bills — the appropriation bills get jam to us on Christmas time. But what we’re trying
to do is pass them individually .”

He also discussed the move by House GOP leaders to halt a Department of Defense appropriations
bill over pressure from a subsection of conservative members. Hard-line conservatives have been
battling with GOP leadership for months over top-line spending levels, but McCarthy said he hopes
they will not stop them from getting their work done.

“Unfortunately, I had a handful of members last week — that literally the Republicans stopped the
Department of Defense appropriations from coming forward,” he said. “None of them can complain.
This is giving our troops a pay raise, making our military strong against China, getting the wokeism that
the Democrats have put in, out.”

“And so I’m trying to get that to move forward to stop — make sure that the Republicans aren’t
stopping us from being able to get our work done before the 30th,” he said.

McCarthy’s comments demonstrate a struggle to unite his caucus as a government shutdown looms and
a potential motion to vacate threatens his Speakership.

Their card says they don’t have votes for shutdown.

Bernstein ‘9-14 [Jonathan, Bloomberg political reporter, “We’re Headed for a Government
Shutdown,” Washington Post Business,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/0’9-14/government-shutdown-mccarthy-s-
republicans-are-headed-the-wrong-way/14ad310a-52f7-11ee-accf-88c266213aac_story.html] Blitz

Get ready . We’re headed for a government shutdown , quite possibly a long one, probably beginning on Oct. 1.

Nothing is ever certain, and it takes very little for Congress to avoid a shutdown — just a short bill extending funding after the
annual spending bills expire at the end of September. But House Republicans are far too dysfunctional to produce
anything like that. Right now they can’t even manage to pass their own version of spending bills ,
let alone something that the Democratic majority in the Senate would pass and President Joe Biden
would sign.
Extended government shutdowns — longer than a long weekend — don’t happen by accident or
because good-faith negotiations don’t get done by the deadline. Extended government shutdowns only
happen when the group with the votes or the leverage to make it happen want a shutdown.

Right now, the more extreme conservatives among House Republican are threatening a shutdown if
they don’t get their way . It’s true that a “ clean ” spending extension bill that would keep the
government running while negotiations continue would almost certainly pass the House and easily
pass the Senate. For that matter, the bipartisan annual spending bills that the Senate is passing would also almost certainly pass in the House.
extremists — members of the House Freedom Caucus and others — don’t have the votes, they do have the
But while the

leverage . They’re threatening to oust Kevin McCarthy from his position as speaker if he brings
those bills to the House floor. McCarthy believes they’re serious and is willing to go to great lengths to appease them, whatever
the costs to his party and the nation.

Shutdown isn’t inevitable. Action now can stop it. Most recent evidence.
Larkin ‘9/9 [Lilly; 9-9-2023; Reporter; Thaiger, “Senate Dares House Republicans to Oppose Priorities,
Risk Government Shutdown,” https://thethaiger.com/world/news/547065/]

The Senate is set to take the lead in the fall legislative session , with a bipartisan group of senators
daring House Republicans to oppose their priorities and risk a government shutdown. The Senate aims
to use its unified position as leverage to push for their preferred agency funding outlines and dominate
negotiations over the annual Pentagon funding policy legislation. Senate Republicans are more diplomatic in their
approach, aware of the challenges faced by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy from his hard-right flank. However, if McCarthy manages to pass a
partisan bill in the House, the Senate plans to send back a more sweeping bill with broad bipartisan support.

The Senate’s decision to assert its traditional role in shaping major policy matters is a response to the debt debate earlier this year, where they
felt they had to accept a bad deal negotiated by the House. Senate Republicans want to avoid a repeat of that situation and voluntarily cede
their negotiating power. The upcoming battle between Republicans in the House and Senate will play out over the next three months, with
deadlines to pass a stopgap bill, approve detailed agency budgets, and reconcile differences between the House and Senate’s Pentagon policy
bills.

Senators have made it clear that they will not sit on the sidelines this time and have already agreed to additional emergency funding, which
would go above the spending limits set by the Biden-McCarthy deal. They are united in their belief that their position, along with the signature
of a Democratic president, gives them leverage in negotiations with House counterparts. House Speaker McCarthy, on the other hand, faces
challenges from his hard-right faction and has been ordering conservative bills that are met with opposition from House Democrats.

The Senate’s strategy involves building bipartisan bridges across the Capitol and engaging in coalition
building in both the House and Senate. They want to avoid a situation where the House is at a
disadvantage when negotiating with the Senate . In the past, Senate Democrats held a filibuster-proof majority and dictated
outcomes, causing frustration among House Democrats. House Speaker Pelosi, however, had several wins over the Senate during her second
stint as speaker. The recent Biden-McCarthy deal has given Senate Republicans a sense of déjà vu and a renewed desire to shape legislation.

The next move will come from House Speaker McCarthy , who must decide how to pass a bill to keep the
government open. The Senate expects him to cater to the hard right and load up the bill with conservative
riders . The Senate plans to pass its version of the stopgap bill, which includes funding for Ukraine, back to McCarthy, likely with only a day
or two to spare before a government shutdown. Senators believe McCarthy will have to accept their version of the
bill to avoid a shutdown , similar to the 2010 showdown over healthcare.

We’ll narrowly avoid it---BUT, avoiding contentious economic policies is key.

Lemire ’9/4 [Jonathan; 2023; reporter for Politico; Adam Cancryn; Holly Otterbein; “Why
the White House thinks impeachment may prove risky for Republicans,” Politico,
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/04/white-house-biden-impeachment-
00113824]
TheWhite House in the meantime plans to sharpen messaging throughout the month that aims to cast the
president as fixated on critical economic issues while Republicans flirt with a shutdown.

In addition to promoting his domestic efforts to lower costs and boost the economy , allies hope Biden’s travel
schedule will give him added gravitas. The president will soon attend the economic-focused G-20 summit in India before traveling to Vietnam as
part of the administration’s effort to push back on China’s influence in the region. He’ll also meet with world leaders at the U.N. General
Assembly toward the end of the month.

Still, officials conceded that there remains an unnerving number of unknowns heading into the next few pivotal weeks —
McCarthy, the GOP leader whose actions remain out of the West Wing’s control. While
and that chief among them is

Biden officials came to view McCarthy as something of a good-faith partner during the debt ceiling talks, they also
concluded he was a weak speaker. Since then, his standing with conservatives has only eroded further, raising questions among many
Democrats about what drastic action he may feel the need to take to protect his job.

“My hope is we can work together to avoid a shutdown , but there are a number of their conference who would just as
soon see the government shut down,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democratic appropriator. “The Freedom Caucus is making
demands that would be untenable.”

If McCarthy greenlights spending cuts, no risk of shutdown.

Brown ‘9/9 [Stacy; 9-9-2023; Journalist, City University of New York-Queens College; New York
Amsterdam News, “Washington bracing for federal government shutdown,”
https://amsterdamnews.com/news/2023/09/09/washington-bracing-for-federal-government-
shutdown]
As Congress reconvened after their routine summer break, there was nothing to suggest what many Washington insiders and pundits have
believed all along: a federal government shutdown will happen. “The questions flying around the Capitol come in two
categories . Top of mind are the logistical ones: When will the government shut down? And for how long ?”
Philip Elliott wrote for TIME.

issue is the passage of a short-term spending bill to stave off the looming government
The critical

shutdown scheduled for October 1. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy , caught in the crossfire of a political
maelstrom , finds himself in a most precarious position. According to CNN, during a recent private conference call, the
Speaker urged his colleagues to support a short-term spending deal to avert an impending shutdown .
He proposed postponing the larger funding fight until later in the fall, a strategy that some view as

prudent to ensure the government continues to function .