Health-reform debate triggers memories of '93

In some ways, you could look out the window this morning and think it's 1993 again. Democrats control Washington, a comprehensive health-care reform package is on the table, and all over the country a groundswell of discontent is beginning to shake like the early tremors of a catastrophic event.

Those who don't know history may be condemned to repeat it, but do the reruns really start this soon?

The answer is, it depends.

Those debates in the early '90s stoked a rebellious states' rights movement that gained credibility because it involved governors. It was led, principally, by Utah's Gov. Mike Leavitt, and it was intended to present a united front that would force change in Washington.

And it had all the lasting strength of a New Year's resolution.

After Republicans took control of Congress with a platform that included a heavy dose of states' rights, and after the president dropped health reform and signed welfare reform, everything sort of fizzled. Washington returned to business as usual.

At the moment, states' rights has no visible champion, but there are a few skirmishes afoot. Arizona's Legislature approved an amendment to the state Constitution that would exempt the state from any federally mandated health-care reform. It will go before voters in 2010. In Kansas, lawmakers are set to introduce the same thing. Some Utah lawmakers have said they gladly would opt out, too.

But will that spark a larger movement to restore a balance between states and Washington? Will it attack the fact that "the states are politically anemic right now"?

Those were the words Leavitt used when I interviewed him in 1997, after the movement had begun to lose steam. Here is something else he said: "What the last few years has taught me is there are moments in time when issues become topical and have a high level of currency."

Is this such a time again?

Leavitt wrote an essay that was published last week by The Ripon Society, a Republican public policy organization. In it, he calls health-reform legislation "another massive expansion of federal power."

"The legislation perpetuates and accelerates a century-long emaciation of state governments. The legislation also expands a relationship where string-laden dollars are 'given' to states (and the people) in a manner that makes Congress a federal puppeteer who names the tune and calls the dance."

The irony of Leavitt's earlier efforts, which were supposed to result in a Conference of States attended by delegates sent from each state legislature, is that it was undermined not so much by the left, but by the extreme right.