The Heritage Foundation’s Romina Boccia says government resembles kids who’ve yet to learn to pick up their clutter. She explains in a Daily Signal column.
Summer is here and school is out. For many parents this means toys everywhere around the house and never-ending debates to get the kids to put their stuff away. Or, some parents may choose to just pick up after their kids.
Like America’s kids, Washington is quite good at putting out new government programs and keeping old ones lying around. Yet lawmakers do a poor job of putting away government programs that no longer work, waste taxpayer dollars and are outside the legitimate scope of the federal government.
For example, there are about 80 education programs designed to help improve teacher quality administered across 10 federal agencies. The federal government also funds about 80 programs in eight different agencies to provide transportation services to disadvantaged individuals. There are also about 45 federal job training programs administered by nine different federal agencies with questionable impact on preparing Americans for the workforce.
A government waste commission could help clean up this mess.
Of course, Keynesians like those leading the Obama administration believe it doesn’t matter whether government spends money on ineffective or nonessential programs, as long as it continues to spend.
