One of my suggestions for a 21st century new bill of rights is that no level of government should be allowed to:
1. Raise tax money to give to another level of government.
2. Mandate that another level of government spend money on anything.
Thus if the states choose to do something, they must raise the revenue to do it. I believe this would not have interfered with the interstate highway system as that was just government pooling resources to contract with private businesses to build roads. It would however prevent the federal government from taking tax revenue and creating bigger and bigger state governments.
How radical an idea is that? That's what we started with. The federal government was, for all practical purposes, the states' night watchman. The individual states were the dominant form of government, followed by counties and cities and towns and villages, followed by the national government.
Except—possibly—for national defense, everything that needs to be done could be done at the state or local level far better and more cost-effectively than at the national level. Why did I add "possibly?" Because I believe the state of Arizona, to choose an example more or less at random, could defend itself against the invasion of illegal aliens better than the national government.
Oh, by the way, other than going to the moon and back, can you name five major feral government success stories from the past 50 years? The war on poverty? The war against drugs? The war against terrorism, maybe?