The new politics of oversight
When money gets tight, good intentions don’t cover the gap
The more admirable a program’s purpose, the harder it is to evaluate honestly. Good aims become insulation. In a hostile media environment and hyper-partisan culture, it’s all too easy to recast oversight as bad faith.
Ask whether a program is being administered well, and opponents may imply you’re attacking the people it’s meant to help. Ask for an audit, and the pushback is often moral, not operational.
North Carolina state Rep. Grant Campbell calls it the “feel-good defense.”
“If we started a program to protect puppies, and all of a sudden we find out that it’s inefficient, or people are getting money when they shouldn’t, and we’re questioning how that’s being done,” he said in a recent video, “people will push back and say, ‘You must hate puppies.’”
For years, that insulation was reinforced by a widespread attitude that federal money was somehow different. Perhaps not literally free money, but easier to spend with less friction. A county will often fight over pennies when it’s spending property tax dollars. But when the check traces back to Washington, the instinct to scrutinize can soften, even in the most frugal municipality.
This year, both bad habits are starting to break. That opens a real lane for healthier federalism.
As states absorb the consequences of recent changes in federal policy—especially the shift away from open-ended support for programs like SNAP and Medicaid—the stakes are becoming clearer.
States have long been responsible for administering these benefits, but now, increasingly, they’re also on the hook for the mistakes. Nearly every state exceeds the new 6 percent error threshold that will trigger financial penalties in the food stamp program. Medicaid audits in Minnesota have raised questions that are still echoing nationally.
At the same time, state budgets are getting tighter. The period of pandemic windfalls and record tax revenues is ending. States that added major new spending in recent years are now confronting structural deficits. Analysts in Missouri and Kansas have already warned that general fund spending is outpacing revenue projections.
This combination of tighter budgets and greater state exposure has given oversight a different kind of political relevance. It’s no longer just a cleanup tool after a scandal. It’s becoming a frontline question of state capacity: Can states handle the responsibilities they’ve been given?
That helps explain why the idea of DOGE briefly caught fire in 2025. At the federal level, the Department of Government Efficiency offered a brand that was easily translated into state efforts. Florida introduced a bill to create a state-level version. Georgia’s regulatory reform package, pitched as a DOGE-style check on bureaucracy, gained early traction. South Carolina debated whether it needed a new agency at all or simply better use of the audit structures already in place.
But the federal momentum didn’t last. DOGE was quietly shuttered before the end of the year. And in many statehouses, the appetite to build out new structures cooled, too. Some of that is for the best. The point isn’t to create more bureaucracy to fight bureaucracy.
Why this matters
As household budgets tighten and state revenue growth slows, oversight is becoming more than a budget tool — it’s a legislative opportunity. When voters feel the pressure of rising costs, their tolerance for waste shrinks. Lawmakers looking to govern responsibly without defaulting to tax hikes or blunt service cuts are rediscovering oversight as a way to protect trust and reassert control.
The structure of federal spending complicates this. Many programs are funded in Washington, administered by state agencies, and delivered through local contractors or nonprofits. Each handoff adds distance. The dollars become harder to trace. The results become harder to measure. And any attempt to ask whether something is working runs into the familiar wall of good intentions.
This isn’t a new problem. The Great Society launched some of the most expansive domestic programs in American history. Many still carry moral weight. But they also embedded layers of bureaucratic tentacles that proved difficult to evaluate and nearly impossible to reform. As economist Milton Friedman warned, “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.”
That warning carries more weight now. “We have to be able to show taxpayers where the money is going and what outcomes we are getting for it,” Ohio Rep. Greg Landsman said last year in support of stronger audit reporting requirements. States are being asked to carry more of the load for programs that once came with a federal cushion. That may ultimately point toward a healthier kind of federalism — but only if states are ready to do what Washington often didn’t: measure outcomes, confront inefficiencies, and hold their own systems accountable.
It may not be the loudest debate in American politics this year. But it may turn out to be one of the most important.
Andrew Dunn is content manager at the State Policy Network.
