Catastrophic Mistake

Catastrophic Mistake

by Rick Adamson 6.11.16
© 2016 Rick Adamson

One of the most catastrophic, if not the most serious, mistakes that FedGov has ever made is when it decided to write Treasury Department checks to entities and individuals other than states. The states and their citizens created FedGov for very specific purposes, the most important of which was defense of liberty.

Once FedGov started directly subsidizing entities and individuals everything changed. FedGov became a factor in the everyday lives of all people living in the USA. Some people and other entities became interested because of their concern about how much money or benefit they could get from FedGov, others, about how much money FedGov was taking from them in the form of taxes or other rules, i.e., regulations.

The election of representatives became more and more fixated on these same concerns. The electorate became divided along the same issues. Today, it is impossible for a President, Senator or Representative to be elected if he or she speaks out against the 2,300 subsidy programs that consume much of FedGov’s budget.

Most of these programs were never contemplated by our founders and are not covered by the Constitution. Some argue that they are, for the most part, unconstitutional.

However, this has been allowed to happen because we the people and our representatives periodically forget human nature. Mankind is by nature desirous of power and control and left unchecked power and control will drift away from the folks toward those with the persistence and tenacity to seize it.

It’s only natural.

The problem is that FedGov was never intended to directly manage very many things. The military and the treasury function come to mind as obvious functions of FedGov. But what about local high school locker room policies. And I wonder why they would be providing funds to Texas K-12 schools in the first place. Isn’t Texas an oil rich state? Can they not  afford to pay for their schools? Is it because FedGov takes so much of Texas’s citizens money that they feel they should give a little back? Or maybe they just want to regulate the activities of every school in Texas and in America.

Schools are only one example (of the many hundreds of similar regulatory schemes which have been developed by career bureaucrats and politicians) of programs developed by the bureaucrats based on their belief that they know better how to spend the people’s money.

FedGov does a very poor job of managing the many things it’s involved in and it’s rarely able to improve because it just does not know any better. Their answer is always “more money.” The bureaucrats are engaged in pure guesswork about issues that can better be handled locally. In short, FedGov is incompetent.

Our founders designed a system of limited government because they understood human nature.

Too bad we have forgotten.

And That’s that!

References:

https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/recollections/redefining-the-federal-role-in-social-welfare-1995/