3.5

In section 3.5 the key learning objective is to identify new trends in federalism. In 1980 Ronald Reagan was elected and he began to work on what he called New Federalism. New Federalism was the return of power to the states. One of the ways Reagan did that was to give out block grants. Block grants are large amounts of money given to the states with only general spending guidelines. this gave states the authority to do what they please with the funding to a certain extent. An example of a block grant is a grant is given for transportation and you decide to fix the road systems. The Republicans  issued something called unfunded mandates. Unfunded mandates are national laws or regulations in which the states have to meet without government funding. This gives the states the responsibility to meet these requirements under their own terms. An example of this is meeting national air quality standards throughout the state. The final trend was preemption. This gave the national government the power to override state and local government. These new trends in federalism gave many new aspects and responsibilities for the governments to take on.