Democrat or Republican, Congress just keeps on spending our money

Union Leader ^ | Oct 24, 2001 | Jack Kenny

[2Trievers]

PRESIDENT George W. Bush, looming ever larger on the world stage, has set before us an ambitious goal: “We are going to rid the world of evil doers,” the President has said. Well, that might be one way to reduce the size of government in Washington.

That is not, of course, what the President meant (he was speaking of international terrorism), and I doubt if reducing Washington’s role in domestic politics has had any place on Bush’s agenda, before or since Sept. 11. In fact, precious few Republicans seem to share that goal, no matter how much lip service they habitually render their conservative principles.

Take, for example, Chuck Douglas, a former New Hampshire Supreme Court justice and one-term (1989-90) United States Representative from New Hampshire’s Second District. He has also served as an organizer, promoter and spokesman for conservative candidates and causes. Most people in and around New Hampshire politics would regard Douglas as a man of strong conservative bent. Yet even Douglas will occasionally lead the cheers for bigger, more intrusive government.

In a recent op-ed piece, Douglas praised the work of United States Rep. John E. Sununu for his role in obtaining an increase in federal appropriations for special education. “Under his leadership as vice chairman of the Budget Committee and as a member of the Appropriations Committee,” Douglas wrote, “funding for special education has increased from $2.3 billion in 1996 when Sununu went to Washington, to a record $7.7 billion next year. This is a 300 percent increase in funding and means at least $5 million more for New Hampshire’s cities and towns in special education aid for 2002.” Ah, there’s nothing like a 300 percent increase in federal spending to warm the heart of a “fiscal conservative.”

Now except for a few sources of dedicated funds, the revenue flowing to the federal government is not program-specific. So we may never now how much additional money has to be taken out of our cities and towns to accommodate that increase in special “ed” funding. But unless we’re ready to believe that money just grows by itself in Washington (what William F. Buckley, Jr. once called the “myth of the spontaneously generated dollar”), we know it had to be collected somewhere. And as dollars are taken from Spokane, Schenectady and Kankakee to pay for special education in New Hampshire, and our dollars are likewise scattered to pay for special “ed” in other states, it seems reasonable to assume that there is an administrative cost to moving all that money around. There is also a cost to establishing and enforcing guidelines as to how it is spent. We are, in other words, paying a premium for the gift we are giving ourselves.

The argument is often made that Congress, having mandated the special education programs, should live up to the commitment, made when that legislation was passed in the mid-1970s, to fund 40 percent of the cost. But the authority of the Congress to mandate anything is limited to the powers delegated to it by the United States Constitution. So why are we not asking the fundamental question: Where in the Constitution is the power to mandate what education services the state and municipalities must provide to disabled children? When did “We the people” delegate that authority to Congress?

We have been conditioned for decades to look to Washington to meet every need and solve every problem. The states might have more money to spend on special education and other pressing needs if Congress were not taking and spending so much of our money on everything on everyone’s wish list. Whether under Democratic or Republican control, Congress keeps spending more on agriculture, art, education, law enforcement (including grants to help local police departments nab jaywalkers) and transportation (subsidizing planes, trains and bus lines), to list but a few categories. And New Hampshire’s delegation — “fiscal conservatives,” all — does its part to increase spending so that each senator or representative will have a goodly supply of gifts to bestow on his grateful constituents.

Recently, for example, Sen. Judd Gregg was granted an honorary degree by St. Anselm College in Goffstown during ceremonies dedicating the school’s new Institute of Political Science. Sen. Gregg was instrumental in obtaining a $6 million federal grant for the institute, so it was an expensive degree. Here is a question St. Anselm’s political science students might explore: Where in the Constitution of the United States does Congress find the authority to spend taxpayers’ dollars on the study of political science?

Manchester resident Jack Kenny is a freelance writer whose column appears regularly.

[2Trievers]

Yep, “We are going to rid the world of evil doers,” let's start in Washington. Washington, D.C. that is.