Last week we discussed how the budgetary methods used by Congress are designed to automatically increase federal spending each year. In this way, the Congress can get the additional funds it wants to spend without ever having to take responsibility for raising the total amount coming from the government’s checkbook. This problem, however, is not the only institutional one with regard to spending. A second and equally important problem is the lack of review of the efficacy of federal programs. For the last eighty years, presidents and congresses have “discovered” problems that needed solutions and then created federal programs to help solve these problems. President after president has touted his accomplishments by the numbers of new federal programs enacted to deal with difficulties facing the nation. Sadly, essentially no president has ever made a big deal about how he went back and fixed some existing federal program that was ineffective. Programs get created and then funded and funded year after year after year. Old programs never die, and they never fade away either. The Congress is not much better on that score. True, when the GOP took over Congress in 1994, it did force through major changes in welfare which greatly improved the results achieved while actually reducing the cost. That, however, was the exception that proves the rule.
We have now reached the point, however, where it is not enough for the federal government to just spend more. Sadly, we just do not have the funds to do so. Federal spending has to become more intelligent. Programs need to be reviewed to remove duplication and to phase out programs that do not achieve their intended purpose. Here is an example of a past failure: during World War II and Korea, half the wool that the army used in uniforms was imported. In 1954, Congress passed the National Wool Act which subsidized domestic ranches that produced wool. In 1960, the Pentagon decided that wool was no longer a strategic material, but the subsidies continued. By 1970, fully one-third of the subsidy was paid to ranchers who raised angora goats for mohair even though mohair was never a strategic material. Thirty-five years after wool was removed from being a strategic material, the subsidies were still going strong. In the mid 1990’s the cost of these subsidies were about $300 million per year. Finally, at that point, the new Republican Congress ended those subsidies and the gross waste of federal funds that they entailed. Of course, had there been any kind of rudimentary oversight during the decades that preceded this repeal, many billions could have been saved.
Now America faces the equivalent of hundreds of ongoing wool subsidies, programs that spit money out of Washington while accomplishing next to nothing. Some of these are obvious. For example, there are over 100 separate federal programs for job training. Each one has its own director and management staff. Each one has separate offices. Each one has its own entrance requirements, most of which conflict from one program to the next. If one program finds a methodology that works particularly well, the others never learn of it; advances have to be made program by program. That means that it is very difficult to improve the operation of these programs. Just imagine what would happen if the hundred programs were merged into two or three. Something like 98 management staffs and directors could be let go. After all, no more workers get trained if there are 100 directors or just two. The duplicative overhead is pure waste. Indeed, workers seeking help would be able to find their way into the correct training program much more easily if all programs operated together; a visit to the office could quickly find the right spot for the applicant with his having to go from program office to program office to find the right one. So the total cost of all these programs could be brought down dramatically due to the elimination of unnecessary overhead and the performance of the programs could be greatly improved by eliminating confusion.
Some of the programs needing review, however, are not so apparent. A good example here is Head Start. This program is a liberal icon begun as part of Johnson’s Great Society. The idea is that starting a child in school earlier than kindergarten will give that child a head start at learning (hence the name). That head start is supposed to allow the child to move forward through life more interested in learning and more able to absorb what is being taught. It is a great theory. The problem is, however, that it does not work in practice. For decades, study after study has shown that people who went through head start have no advantage in any of these areas over those from similar background who did not participate in head start programs. The conclusion of the liberal bureaucrats has, not surprisingly, been that the studies must be flawed. Indeed, there might be a flawed study in this batch, but that does not explain why every study done shows the same result. Even studies done by favorites of the left show that Head Start provides no lasting benefit to its children. Nevertheless, the spending on Head Start this year will be in the neighborhood of $5 billion dollars.
When he ran for president in 2008, Obama famously said he would go through the federal budget line by line to see what could be eliminated. Now, after three plus years in office, Obama has yet to make any attempt to cut waste, duplication or failed programs. It is just not good enough. Whoever gets elected president in 2012 is going to have to get the waste and failed programs out of the federal budget, or the USA will just go broke. It is a requirement; it is no longer optional. Indeed, this is one of the key attributes we need to find in our president.
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