Kicking the Can Down the Road: What Does Government Owe Its People?
Release Date: 06/06/2026
One Toke Over the Line: Prohibition, Marijuana, and the Limits of Federal Power
America at 250: Due Diligence
Alcohol prohibition required the Constitution twice—once to impose it and once to repeal it. Marijuana prohibition took a different path, imposed through federal law even as a growing number of states have chosen legalization. In this episode of America at 250: Due Diligence, Steve Herman and Bill Bernardoni examine how national prohibition takes hold, what happens when Americans refuse to comply, and how conflicts between federal and state power can reshape the law. Historian Richard Hamm explains how nearly a century of temperance organizing, religious activism, women’s groups, and...
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Power Struggle: Energy, Climate, and the Future
America at 250: Due Diligence
In April 1977, Jimmy Carter told the country that solving its energy crisis would take sacrifice — that the alternative might be, in his words, a national catastrophe. Nearly fifty years later, the crisis looks different. The gas lines are gone. In their place: climate change, an aging power grid, and data centers that are starting to draw more electricity than entire cities. But the underlying argument hasn't moved an inch. Who decides what America builds? Who pays for it? And who has the authority to make that call — Washington, the states, or nobody at all? The Constitution says almost...
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The First Shot: 27 Words, 230 Years, and a Fight That Isn't Over
America at 250: Due Diligence
Twenty-seven words. That is the entire text of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. And for more than two centuries, Americans have been arguing about what those twenty-seven words mean — in courtrooms, in statehouses, in campaign ads, and in the streets. The fight is about guns. But it is also about something larger: liberty and public safety, individual rights and democratic government, what the Constitution meant in 1791 and...
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The State of Control: Federalism and the Limits of Federal Power
America at 250: Due Diligence
As America approaches its 250th anniversary, America at 250: Due Diligence turns to one of the oldest unsettled arguments in American life—not whether to have a national government, but how much of one. Where should power actually live: close to the people, in the states and towns where most Americans spend their lives, or at the center, in Washington? The argument was there before the ink was dry. Inside the Constitutional Convention of 1787, James Madison pushed for what became known as the “federal negative”—a congressional veto over state laws—and lost. The states were too...
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The Key to the Cage: Is It Time for an Article V Convention?
America at 250: Due Diligence
As America approaches its 250th anniversary, America at 250: Due Diligence turns to one of the most consequential — and least understood — provisions in the U.S. Constitution: Article V, and the question of whether the country should call its first-ever Article V convention. This episode opens in the summer of 1787, inside a sweltering Pennsylvania Statehouse, where George Mason — one of the sharpest minds at the Constitutional Convention — warned that the founders were “building a cage without a key.” Mason’s insistence on a state-led convention process became Article V’s...
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Kicking the Can Down the Road: What Does Government Owe Its People?
America at 250: Due Diligence
As America approaches its 250th anniversary, America at 250: Due Diligence takes on one of the country’s biggest and most enduring questions: What does the government owe the people it serves? Not as a theory. Not as a campaign slogan. But in real life — in retirement checks, health care, food assistance, taxes, debt, and the promises made to working Americans. This episode traces the American social safety net from the Founding era through the New Deal, the Great Society, the Reagan Revolution, and today’s debate over Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, federal spending, and the...
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America at 250: Due Diligence Trailer
America at 250: Due Diligence
The United States turns 250 this year — but what does the anniversary actually mean? Hosted by nationally syndicated radio host Bill Bernardoni and former Voice of America White House Bureau Chief Steve Herman, America at 250: Due Diligence cuts through the noise to ask the hard questions: What has the Constitution's promise delivered over 250 years, and where has it fallen short? Each episode brings together historians, former lawmakers, policy experts, and advocates to examine the debates that have defined — and divided — American democracy from the beginning. This is the podcast for...
info_outlineAs America approaches its 250th anniversary, America at 250: Due Diligence takes on one of the country’s biggest and most enduring questions: What does the government owe the people it serves?
Not as a theory. Not as a campaign slogan. But in real life — in retirement checks, health care, food assistance, taxes, debt, and the promises made to working Americans.
This episode traces the American social safety net from the Founding era through the New Deal, the Great Society, the Reagan Revolution, and today’s debate over Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, federal spending, and the national debt. It begins with Franklin Roosevelt’s defense of “social insurance” during the Great Depression, revisits early opposition to Social Security, and then brings the debate into the present through three very different voices: a historian, a former congressman, and a libertarian fiscal-policy scholar.
Together, they wrestle with a question that has shaped America for nearly a century: Is the safety net a promise America must keep, a system America can no longer afford, or something that needs to be rebuilt before it breaks?
Hosts
Steve Herman
Steve Herman is a veteran journalist and former White House Bureau Chief for Voice of America. He brings decades of reporting experience to America at 250: Due Diligence, helping guide the series through the historical, political, and institutional questions that have shaped the United States.
- Website: Steve Herman
- X: @newsguyUSA
Bill Bernardoni
Bill Bernardoni is the founder of Bernardoni Media & Marketing and co-host of America at 250: Due Diligence. His work focuses on building, producing, and distributing podcasts and radio programs that bring serious conversations to broad audiences.
- Website: Bernardoni Media & Marketing
- Blog: The Bernardoni Brief
- X: @BillBernardoni
Guests Featured in This Episode
Julian Zelizer
Julian Zelizer is the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University and the author or editor of more than two dozen books on American political history, Congress, the New Deal, and the Great Society.
- Website: Julian Zelizer — Princeton University
- Substack: The Long View
Dennis Kucinich
Dennis Kucinich is a former mayor of Cleveland, a former U.S. congressman from Ohio, and a two-time presidential candidate. He spent much of his career arguing for working people, seniors, public services, and the protection of the social safety net.
- Website: The Kucinich Report
- X: @Dennis_Kucinich
Romina Boccia
Romina Boccia is Director of Budget and Entitlement Policy at the Cato Institute. Her work focuses on federal spending, debt, Social Security, Medicare, and entitlement reform.
- Website: Romina Boccia — Cato Institute
- Social Security Reform Hub: Cato’s Hub for Social Security Reform
- Book: Reimagining Social Security — Cato Institute
Listener Question
As America turns 250, what do you think the federal government owes its citizens: a guaranteed safety net, a smaller and more localized support system, or something entirely different?
Join the conversation and respond by sending us an email by visiting RadioFreeAmerica.media.