Gov. John McKernan’s recent paean in his State of the State address to President Bill Clinton turned out to be prophecy this week when the president responded favorably on the need for Medicaid rule reform as part of a better balanced federal-state partnership.

If the president’s verbal assurances are backed up by quick, forceful and positive action to give the states greater latitude in the way they spend federal dollars, states will receive immediate financial relief, but also will gain a challenge as they become creative laboratories for programs that are subsidized by federal dollars.

In making his promise to cut some of the strings attached to money from Washington, President Clinton acknowledged that “governors have been screaming for relief from a cumbersome process by which the federal government has micromanaged the health care system affecting poor Americans.”

The president temporarily has stopped that screaming by vowing to send out checks accompanied by a smaller operating manual, but this could produce another cycle of frantic state chief executives appealing for help if governors and legislators do not spend this money cautiously, in a way that anticipates dramatic changes that are likely to occur in federal health care policy.

In his speech last week, Gov. John McKernan paid tribute to the new president’s approach to federal-state relations and citizen responsibility. The governor said, “We need to aspire to new heights, to new ideals, and invest in our future even as we scale back on our government.”

Gov. McKernan said he agreed with President Clinton that it was time to “break the habit of expecting something for nothing from government.”

Although the observation is accurate — the public perception of their relationship with government needs to change — it is equally true of the relationship between levels of government.

Since the early 1980s and the introduction of the Reagan New Federalism, states have been expected to do something for nothing. The responsibility to deal with many societal problems was dumped on 50 state capitals, usually without financial assistance, and, when there was money from Washington, it was so encumbered with regulation that it frustrated efforts to develop responsible, cost-effective state programs.

Clinton, fresh from the capital of Arkansas, agrees with the governors that this relationship must change. States must be given the money, and the freedom, to carry out their responsibility. This policy represents a dramatic shift in federal thinking that is overdue, and if handled wisely at the state level, will be to the public good.