State fiscal decisions have a significant impact on the US economy. Taken together, subnational governments employ more than one out of every eight workers and provide the bulk of all basic governmental services consumed by individuals and businesses. Sustaining the States: The Fiscal Viability of American State Governments will give you a basic understanding of trends in, current status of, and future prospects for the fiscal sustainability of state governments. After reading this book, you should have a great appreciation for the reach and multiple contributions of state governments to individuals and communities across the nation. The book examines the broad range and depth of state revenues, responsibilities, and activities. It begins with an assessment of executive budgeting in the states, then presents the experiences of states with strong executive-driven systems and the various rules and institutions that impact state government budget discipline. The book goes on to examine state revenue sources, debt, pensions, and spending, honing in on vital state functions including education, transportation, health services and public safety. It concludes with an assessment of the challenges that will test the fiscal vibrancy of US state governments going forward: vulnerability to future economic downturns, growing dependence on an increasingly austere federal government, the obsolescence of state tax systems and an ever more coercive system of federalism. Edited by experts, with a hand-picked panel of contributors, the book delineates the resources that states generate and use to conduct the business of government. The chapters outline the very real and significant constraints on the ability of the states to fulfill their responsibilities and introduce several challenges that state governments face and are actively addressing as they strive for fiscal sustainability. These features provide a clear, realistic understanding of state operations and financing in the United States, today. The book should also leave you with a sense of optimism for the capacity of state governments to advance forward.

How can the United States craft a sustainable national security strategy in a world of shifting threats, sharp resource constraints, and a changing balance of power? This volume brings together research on this question from political science, history, and political economy, aiming to inform both future scholarship and strategic decision-making.

“Keep your government hands off my Medicare!” Such comments spotlight a central question animating Suzanne Mettler’s provocative and timely book: why are many Americans unaware of government social benefits and so hostile to them in principle, even though they receive them? The Obama administration has been roundly criticized for its inability to convey how much it has accomplished for ordinary citizens. Mettler argues that this difficulty is not merely a failure of communication; rather it is endemic to the formidable presence of the “submerged state.” In recent decades, federal policymakers have increasingly shunned the outright disbursing of benefits to individuals and families and favored instead less visible and more indirect incentives and subsidies, from tax breaks to payments for services to private companies. These submerged policies, Mettler shows, obscure the role of government and exaggerate that of the market. As a result, citizens are unaware not only of the benefits they receive, but of the massive advantages given to powerful interests, such as insurance companies and the financial industry. Neither do they realize that the policies of the submerged state shower their largest benefits on the most affluent Americans, exacerbating inequality. Mettler analyzes three Obama reforms—student aid, tax relief, and health care—to reveal the submerged state and its consequences, demonstrating how structurally difficult it is to enact policy reforms and even to obtain public recognition for achieving them. She concludes with recommendations for reform to help make hidden policies more visible and governance more comprehensible to all Americans. The sad truth is that many American citizens do not know how major social programs work—or even whether they benefit from them. Suzanne Mettler’s important new book will bring government policies back to the surface and encourage citizens to reclaim their voice in the political process.

The history of public policy in postwar America tends to fixate on developments at the national level, overlooking the crucial work done by individual states in the 1960s and ’70s. In this book, Nicholas Dagen Bloom demonstrates the significant and enduring impact of activist states in five areas: urban planning and redevelopment, mass transit and highways, higher education, subsidized housing, and the environment. Bloom centers his story on the example set by New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, whose aggressive initiatives on the pressing issues in that period inspired others and led to the establishment of long-lived state polices in an age of decreasing federal power. Metropolitan areas, for both better and worse, changed and operated differently because of sustained state action—How States Shaped Postwar America uncovers the scope of this largely untold story.

"Devoting particular emphasis to Bolivia, Chile, and Mexico, proposes a theory of civil society to explain the economic and political challenges for continuing democratization in Latin America"--Provided by publisher.

The balance between state and federal health care financing for low-income people has been a matter of considerable debate for the last 40 years. Some argue for a greater federal role, others for more devolution of responsibility to the states. Medicaid, the backbone of the system, has been plagued by an array of problems that have made it unpopular and difficult to use to extend health care coverage. In recent years, waivers have given the states the flexibility to change many features of their Medicaid programs; moreover, the states have considerable flexibility to in establishing State Children's Health Insurance Programs. This book examines the record on the changing health safety net. How well have states done in providing acute and long-term care services to low-income populations? How have they responded to financial incentives and federal regulatory requirements? How innovative have they been? Contributing authors include Donald J. Boyd, Randall R. Bovbjerg, Teresa A. Coughlin, Ian Hill, Michael Housman, Robert E. Hurley, Marilyn Moon, Mary Beth Pohl, Jane Tilly, and Stephen Zuckerman.

Developing the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), which includes both the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police, is one of the U.S.¿s top priorities in Afghanistan. The purpose of the ANSF Development Program is to grow the capacity and capability of the ANSF in line with internationally agreed benchmarks solidified in the 2006 Afghanistan Compact. The desired end state is a professional, capable, respected, multi-ethnic ANSF, with competent ministries and staffs and sustaining institutions, capable of directing, planning, commanding, controlling, training and supporting the ANSF.

The miracles of modern medicine have created scenarios in which patients remain dependent on life-sustaining treatments for years. Possibly, one of the most dramatic examples of such a clinical scenario is the vegetative state (VS), a clinical condition that occurs when an individual enters a neurological state marked by periods of wakefulness and arousal but without associated demonstrable awareness/consciousness. There is extensive debate as to whether assisted nutrition and hydration (ANH) should be withdrawn from patients in VS, permanent or otherwise. This book will provide cutting edge information to many scientists and clinicians interested in this clinical topic. It could also be a source of anthropological, philosophical and ethical reflection. The many dilemmas raised by the medical, religious, ethical and societal response to persons in VS go well beyond the clinical condition itself and have profound implications for the fundamental values in our global society.It is for this reason that the authors thought it was important to also provide a vehicle, not only for scientific and bioethical reflections, but also for the religious views and tenants of Judeo-Christian thought on the controversial topic of VS and, inherent in that conversation, the controversy of withdrawal and withholding of care.

Why did trade with the United States prolong Spanish colonial rule during the Venezuelan independence struggles? From 1790 to 1815, much of the Atlantic World was roiled by European imperial wars. While the citizens of the United States profited from the waste of blood and treasure, Spanish American colonists struggled to preserve their prosperity on an imperial periphery. Along the Caribbean coast of South America, colonial elites and officials fought to secure Venezuela from threats of foreign invasion, slave rebellion, and revolution. For these elites, trading with the United States and other neutral nations was not a way to subvert colonial rule but to safeguard the prosperity and happiness of loyal subjects of the Spanish Crown. Food insecurity, deprivation, and political uncertainty left Venezuela vulnerable to revolution, however. In Sustaining Empire, Edward P. Pompeian lets readers see liberal free trade just as colonial Venezuelans did. From the vantage point of the slave-holding elite to which revolutionary figures like Simón Bolívar belonged, neutral commerce was a valuable and effectual way to conserve the colonial status quo. But after Spain's crisis of sovereignty in 1808, it proved an impediment to Venezuelan independence. Analyzing the diplomatic and economic linkages between the new US republic and revolutionary Latin American governments, Pompeian reminds us that the United States did not, and does not, exist in a vacuum, and that the historic relationships between nations mattered then and matters now. Examining an overlooked region, Pompeian offers a novel interpretation of early United States relations with Latin America, showing how US merchants executed government contracts and established flour, tobacco, and slave trading monopolies that facilitated the maintenance of colonial rule and the Spanish Empire. Trading with the United States, Pompeian argues, kept both colony and empire under a tenuous hold despite revolutionary circumstances. A fascinating revisionist history, Sustaining Empire challenges long-standing assertions that this commerce served primarily as a vector for the one-way transmission of revolutionary, liberal ideas from the North to South Atlantic.

"Afghanistan has come a long way since emerging from major conflict in late 2001. The economy has recovered strongly, growing by nearly 50% cumulatively in the last two years (not including drugs). Some three million internally and externally displaced Afghans have returned to their country. More than four million children, a third of them girls, are in school, and immunization campaigns have achieved considerable success. The Government has supported good economic performance by following prudent macroeconomic policies and it has made extraordinary efforts to develop key national programs and to revive social services like education and health. Nevertheless, Afghanistan remains one of the poorest countries in the world in terms of both per-capita incomes and social indicators, with large gender gaps. The difficult challenge of poverty reduction is made even more difficult by continuing insecurity, weak rule of law, and narcotics. Afghanistan - State Building, Sustaining Growth, and Reducing Poverty provides a greater understanding of the core challenges that lie ahead for Afghanistan and key priorities for national reconstruction. The Afghan economy has been shaped by more than two decades of debilitating conflict and has some very unusual features which this study analyzes. The authors argue that the country must break out of the vicious cycle that would keep it insecure, fragmented politically, weakly governed, poor, dominated by the illicit economy, and a hostage to the drug industry. The study presents key elements for a breakthrough in the next two years but the daunting agenda will require strong commitment, actions, and persistence on the part of the Government and robust support from the international community."