Great question. It's not that cut and dried. You could probably ask ten Americans what either the balance of power between the federal government is, OR what it

Great question. It's not that cut and dried. You could probably ask ten Americans what either the balance of power between the federal government is, OR what it should be, and get ten different answers. The reality is that, today, the federal government gets the lion's share of attention but the bulk of day-to-day stuff (roads, schools, police, utilities eg water) are run by state and local governments. BUT--and this is an important caveat--SOME (not a lot, but some) money for this is provided by the federal government through about 20 different mechanisms including federal block grants for education, federal highway funding, and other mechanisms. It's actually quite complicated, but to a first approximation, most local things are operated locally, financed mostly locally, but the federal government does kick in (fund) a little on certain things, in a way that's fairly haphazard and subject to the whims of politics, than any sort of tradition-driven or constitutional way. Incidentally, this is part of why the US's COVID response has been literally "all over the map". It's mostly in the hands of the states and you're seeing how 50 different political cultures deal with this crisis.