STATE CAN DO BETTER THAN `FAIR SHARE'.

Byline: GARY M. GALLES

FOR years, California has paid far more in federal taxes than it has received in federal expenditures -- 79 cents in spending for each dollar of taxes, by one recent estimate. Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, has long promised to fix this imbalance, if given the chance. So the Democratic takeover of Congress has reinvigorated hopes that California will soon get its ``fair share'' for its tax contributions.

However, demographics and a progressive income tax make that a false hope.

California is home to a disproportionate number of high-income people, who contribute very heavily to federal revenues, and a much smaller proportion of retirees, who are large net recipients of federal funds. No change in Congress' political makeup will ``fix'' that. As a result, ``fair share'' rhetoric will mainly serve to justify a larger share of political pork for Californians.

Unfortunately, what is missing from all the ``fair share'' discussion of redistributing federal tax dollars is how clearly it indicates America's abandonment of the Constitution's federalism.

Those attending the Constitutional Convention could never have anticipated battles over state shares of federal spending, because the federal government they created did not have extensive enough authority or sufficient taxing power to substantially redistribute income among the states.

Our Constitution's framers designed a carefully limited federal government, in which, as James Madison's Federalist 45 emphasized, ``The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State Governments are numerous and indefinite...(including) all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people; and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.''

The framers also knew that the Constitution's limitations on federal power were mere words on paper without institutional reinforcement. That is why they buttressed those words with checks and balances, described by Madison's Federalist 51 as ``so contriving the interior structure of the government as that its several constituent parts may, by their mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places.'' Then each of these parts, including state governments, was given ``the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others.''

As a result of this federal design, Alexander Hamilton's Federalist 17 argued that state governments ``will ... be able effectually to oppose all encroachments of the national government.''

Today, America is very far from that situation.

We now have every level of government micromanaged from Washington, because no government body is beyond the tentacles of federal redistribution or federal funds (raised from states' taxpayers) that can be held back for failing to fall in line with Washington's desires (e.g., threats to withhold highway funds led to the adoption of 55 mph speed limits).

Many like the results of some of that micro-management, but our constitutional federalism and its protections against government abuse have been lost. The resistance of state and local governments jealous to maintain their powers against federal overreaching beyond its constitutional authority has been thoroughly undermined. Instead of successfully resisting federal abuses of their power, states go beyond cooperating with them to demanding them, to ensure they get a large enough share of beltway plunder.

The efforts of representatives whose primary focus is robbing Peter more successfully to give more to Paul trigger an important question: What's more important -- adhering to the Constitution, or our politicians' scramble for every penny and every ounce of power that can be extracted from participating in the Constitution's erosion?

Do Americans really believe we benefit from federalizing every issue, including many plainly state and local concerns? And do our state and local representatives really believe that it is worth continuing the erosion of constraints on Washington's power to impose its will on us, in exchange for a few additional pieces of federal silver?