Posted by
Dave Smith on Monday, April 07, 2008 11:06:27 PM
Politicians love spending money. Ronald Reagan's famous quip was that
saying government spends like a drunken sailor was an insult to drunken
sailors -- at least they are spending
their own money, while the government is spending
ours.
So while the government is coming up with schemes to fund, they are
counting on forcing the taxpayers to foot the bill, regardless of
whether or not an expenditure is effective, efficient, or even
worthwhile.
Even worse than the idea that politicians take the
first fruits of our labors to spend at will and whim is the attitude of
many that they are justified in doing so and need not answer to the
sources of their funding. To many, those of us who wish to send less
of our money to Washington (or the state capital) and spend more of it
on our own families are "greedy"; some even claim that we don't even
"deserve" our own paychecks. We are taxed on our labors, we are taxed
on our investments, we are taxed on our savings, we are taxed on our
purchases, we are taxed on our profits, and then we are taxed when we
die.
All this taxation serves a government that spends our money
without regard to success. As Judge Janice Rogers Brown has noted,
"[g]overnment is the only enterprise in the world which expands in size
when its failures increase." Consider that rarely does a government
program or tax get cut, much less eliminated,
especially if it
fails miserably in its stated goal, or if the stated need to be
addressed no longer exists. One such example is the telecommunications
tax that was enacted to fund the Spanish American War in 1898; the tax
was finally repealed -- over
100 years later. If a government
program doesn't seem to be working, instead of cutting or reforming it,
the government typically responds by [i]increasing[/i] funding.
Consider the Rural Utilities Service, started during FDR's New Deal --
do we
really still need a government program to ensure that rural areas get electricity(assuming it was ever a good idea)?
According to the conservative
Heritage Foundation, the federal budget contains
342
economic development programs, 130 different programs serving at-risk
youth, 130 more programs for the disabled, 75 different programs
supporting international educational and exchanges, and 72 different
clean water programs. Assuming for a second that each of these is a
valid function of the federal government; could perhaps some of these
programs be consolidated, cutting staff and bureaucracy? When was the
last time these programs were reviewed for effectiveness? The Heritage
Foundation also details $60 billion in corporate welfare, and up to $30
billion in agriculture subsidies (the majority of which go to large
agribusiness firms as well as rich celebrities like Ted Turner and the
late disgraced Enron CEO Ken Lay).
Even the tax code itself is
often used as a government program; specialized, "targeted" tax breaks
allow the government to reward activities and behavior it finds good at
the expense of others, rather than trying to simply persuade
individuals and businesses to act in a certain way and lowering taxes
for everyone. Buying a house might be a good financial decision for
many; however, should people who prefer to rent be forced to subsidize
the purchase? State taxes can be written off on the federal income tax
return, effectively meaning that people living in states with low tax
burdens partially subsidize the tax bills for those residents of
high-tax states. Nearly everyone knows smoking is bad for one's
health, but rather than ban tobacco, the government turned it into a
cash cow by ramping up cigarette taxes.
Rather than putting
the onus on "greedy" and "undeserving" individuals, the government
should be forced to justify every cent confiscated from its citizens.
The first test any government expenditure
should be forced to
pass is this: is this program authorized by the Constitution? If not,
it should not be funded by the federal government. If truly necessary,
then the program or function should be delegated to state or local
governments; if truly necessary, then a Constitutional amendment can be
proposed to add it to the federal government's list of
responsibilities. But if the government
is funding an activity
or program, they should at least be looking to see if the program
duplicates other existing programs, is effective, and is efficient.
When putting together an annual (or monthly, or even
weekly)
budget, most individuals, families, and businesses perform at least a
perfunctory review of expenses and decide whether or not a particular
good, service, activity, or employee is still necessary; it isn't
automatically added to the list unless it meets certain criteria. Not
so the government: each item is "baselined" with an automatic increase
year-to-year. Thus, a budget "cut" most often means that a particular
program was actually
increased, just at a lower rate than had
been previously baselined. Let's say a person eats sushi once a week,
but plans to start eating sushi three times a week when he gets his
next raise; the raise comes, and he decides instead to increase his
visits to the sushi place only to twice a week instead of thrice: by
the government's method of accounting, he has actually
cut his
sushi intake, in spite of the total consumption increasing by 100%!
This is how politicians can claim to be "fiscally responsible" while
government spending keeps increasing at rates faster than inflation.
Instead,
the government should start it's budgeting based on a "Zero Option":
each cabinet agency should have to build its budget from scratch --
from zero. Every program should be forced to put together a budget
that justifies every expense requested, based on the stated goals of
the program and the estimated needs and independent of previous years'
expenditures. Each cabinet secretary should be tasked with ensuring
that every program for which tax money is requested is not duplicated.
Instead of the "default" setting for government spending being an
increase over the previous year's spending, the "default" is nothing at
all.
The government creates no value itself: it has to rely on
money collected from individuals, families, and businesses to fund its
service offerings. Those entities have no choice in whether or not
they can comply; the government has the power of force, the power of a
gun,
to compel compliance. With that power should come the responsibility
to justify every confiscation, to prove that the government "needs" and
"deserves" the money taken. It's OUR money, not the government's.
Implementing the Zero Option would emphasize that fact and help the
politicians remember that crucial point.