Answer to Question 1
An ideal response will be:
Police powers refer to inherent powers of state governments to pass laws to protect public health, safety, and welfare; the national government has no directly granted police powers but accomplishes the same goals through other delegated powers.
Answer to Question 2
An ideal response would be:
There are some grounds for concern about states' capacities to fund and administer the programs they enact. First, many people worry that state revenue systems do not function well in the new global economy. For instance, these systems are better at collecting taxes on goods than on services, on tangible property (such as buildings and land) than on intangible property (such as patents and information), and on businesses whose operations occur in specific locations than on those that are partly virtual and global. In the new economy, however, services, intangible property, and business activities without clear geographic locations are increasingly common. If these trends mean that an increasing number of economic activities such as Internet sales are hard or even impossible to tax, state and local governments may either lose revenues or be forced to raise rates on the activities they can still tax, possibly increasing differences in tax burdens across different businesses and activities and exacerbating inequities.
Second, states vary greatly in their fiscal capacitiesthe economic resources they may taxand these differences lead to large differences in the extent to which they can meet demands for public programs.
Third, state and local governments also vary greatly in their administrative capabilities. Bad management can mean delays in completing important projects, whereas strong state management capacities can be critically important in implementing challenging new programs.
