One explanation for this reversal of fortune for America’s governors is that in an ever more nationalized political climate, they find themselves at a distinct disadvantage relative to, say, U.S. senators. Kamala Harris and Cory Booker are within easy reach of the D.C. press corps, and so number among the most obvious Democratic standard-bearers for reporters to turn to when they are looking for a response to President Trump’s latest missive. Governors, by contrast, toil in relative obscurity in state capitals, where they find themselves knee-deep in important yet unavoidably parochial issues.

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But I suspect there is something else at work in this apparent eclipse of America’s governors. What if the diminishment of state governors reflects the diminishment of state governments?

Recently, scholars at the Tax Policy Center made an effort to suss out how much state spending is locked in on the basis of formulas, legal injunctions, and federal mandates, and the results were eye-opening. In 2015, for example, 40 to 86 percent of California’s budget was restricted. The lower-bound estimate reflects the percentage of the state budget belonging to pensions, other postretirement public-employee benefits, debt service, and Medicaid. You get to the staggering upper-bound estimate by adding in K–14 education, which is funded through a formula that passed into law as Proposition 98 in 1988; transfers to local governments; TANF; corrections expenditures; and federal receipts. A closer look suggests that much of what is included in the upper-bound estimate really is mandatory, leaving today’s California lawmakers with very little say over how their state government taxes and spends. In times of significant fiscal duress, a supermajority vote can give California the leeway to provide less funding for K–14 education than the formula calls for, but the law also dictates that these shortfalls be made up for in later years.

In recent years, considerable growth in restricted spending has come from Medicaid. Specifically, Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program, has accounted for 68 percent of the growth in restricted spending since 2000. Moreover, across all these states, lawmakers are faced with the same agonizing Medicaid problem. In order to receive federal matching funds, you must meet minimum service and eligibility requirements, which are costly. Refusing these funds, though, is essentially a political nonstarter because they are what pushes many public hospitals out of the red and into the black.

Across the United States, the combination of Medicaid costs, pension obligations, and K–12 education-funding formulas are capturing an ever-growing share of state budgets. In Florida, the lower-bound estimate is 33 percent, and the upper-bound is 78 percent. Those numbers are 32 and 71 percent for Illinois, 47 and 85 percent for New York, 37 and 84 percent for Texas, and 27 and 85 percent for Virginia.