In the wake of the debacles at NPR and Planned Parenthood, the thought occurs to me that federal dollars are spent every day on programs that don’t reflect my values. I happen to agree that if a woman has a right to choose, she should do so without public subsidy. The same goes for Public Radio and Public Television, I support their existence but when their message is so clearly slanted to favor one point of view over another, their public benefit is reduced and I would prefer they fund their message with private money.
Our Constitution may guarantee the right to free speech, but free doesn’t mean that the government will pay for you to say it.
This line of thinking works in other areas too. I happen to believe that farm subsidies are inappropriate. As a free market advocate, I believe that if a farmer can make a profit growing tobacco or wheat or corn or soybeans then he should be able to grow them, but we taxpayers should not be paying him to do it. And, we certainly should not be paying him to not grow them either. Along those same lines, dairy farmers should be allowed to charge a fair price to make a profit rather than have the government restrict them unfairly. Since milk is so perishable, their only option is to toe the line or go out of business.
Over the course of the past months, the right has demonstrated their outrage over videos exposing wrong-doing by folks high enough in publicly funded organizations that both sides have had to admit the government should not contribute to their operation. While the right was enjoying their success, the left was making some points about federal spending that I have to agree with. Many of them argued that their tax dollars were going to fund programs they objected to.
It really creates a dilemma when we think about public money is spent. The plan in the past appears to be that if we spread it around to both sides, then neither side can complain too loudly. In the end, the special interests are served, but the American people are not.
The Republicans in the House may win in this effort to de-fund Planned Parenthood and Public Broadcasting, which I agree with, but why stop there?
I suspect that we will not balance the budget with cuts to ill-advised federal programs, but we can begin the process there. Some of the biggest liabilities in our budget started off as “no big deal” and ballooned into monsters.
If the rationale for funding next year’s programs is the acceptance of this year’s, we will be forever bound to funding meaningless programs. Maybe we should think about some form of Zero Based Budgeting or maybe mandatory sunset clauses in federal programs.
Our elected officials don’t appear to have to fight more than once to pass a bad bill. If we make them justify the continued existence of a program by re-authorizing it periodically, then the public benefit can be tested after it has been in place for a while to see if it delivers the benefit promised. If it is still a good deal, then re-authorize for another cycle.
For those folks on the left who would prefer that their tax dollars not be spent on some of the sacred cows of the right, I couldn’t agree more. They are entitled to test the validity of programs delivering a public benefit too.
No Loss for Words 
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