Break the Cycle: Trimming RI Government One Grant at a Time, Part I

Have you ever wondered how so many states came to be in such debt? How has government grown so big and expensive? Do you believe politicians when they say there's no place left to cut?

One debt factor is the old trick and ugly trap of unfunded mandates.

What are they? 

Those in charge of the federal government have 2 motives: (1) they need to justify their own jobs, and (2) they want more control over you so they can justify their own jobs. Therefore, whatever hare-brained idea for more social engineering pops into the latest bureaucrat or czar's head, it gets proposed.

But because of that pesky 10th Amendment in the United States Constitution declaring state sovereignty, the federal government can't directly replace state authority.

Instead, Washington dangles the carrot of federal grants to successfully coerce compliance. Cash-strapped municipalities and states eagerly grab the "free" money. I'll avoid the obvious point that you and I are still the source of that "free" money, even if local politicians are too stupid or too sly to admit it. So, states willingly adopt policies, pass laws, create new or expand existing bureaucracies, and implement programs they would never consider of their own volition -- and usually step on your liberty in some way, but that's another topic. To politicians accepting the "free" money, tomorrow's strings are of little consequence in light of today's financial windfall.

Oops! Tomorrow is Today!  

However, federal grant monies dry up after a couple of years, and states and cities are left with more employees, more departments, more equipment, more office space, more mandates to perform more programs. But no more money.

So, it comes to a decision: scrap the program and lay off the workers (as if the unions would permit that nonsense!), or find a way to fund the whole thing through existing funds or - far more likely - borrowing money. Or raising taxes.

Can you name a government program that has been eliminated in the past 10 years? I can't either.

Now consider that what I describe is for one grant, one program. Realize that the pattern is repeated over and over. 


Did You Say, "Nothing Left to Cut"?

Is it becoming clearer how we got where we are? Local governments don't cut programs when federal money runs out; after all, the "new" program is now a couple of years old and has developed an expectation of a "service" that must continue, right?

I say, "Wrong!" Rethink those unfunded mandates. Better yet, don't even accept the federal money in the first place. But if local government does accept a grant, then have the testicular fortitude to end the program when the money ends.

And what about federal taxes? When the feds no longer fund a particular program and the cost shifts to local government, do your federal taxes go down to make up for hike in local taxes? Of course not. The feds dream up another liberty-clipping, social engineering project to propose and fund.

Current example for Rhode Island? The Race to the Top education grant. That's Part II.