Gee, I wish what I write could always be well thought-out, researched to the hilt, full of evidence, and in fact, irrefutable. Unfortunately, the rest of the world won't stop while I think. (Mighty rude of them, if you ask me.) That won't do. Like everybody else, I'm dying to be heard.
So here are some shots from the hip.
Do away with them. Legislators and regulators should never be allowed to impose hidden costs. It misleads voters to support more government than they would agree to if they realized the cost. Also, it facilitates buck-passing: nobody can figure out where to complain.
No, doggonit, no! Block grants, for starters, do the same thing as unfunded mandates: they shelter decision-makers from accountability. Why is it any better for state politicians to make grand gestures and stick federal politicians with the tax collecting , than the other way around? How is it any less confusing to the voters?
That's not the end of the mischief, either. Block grants will (and do already) make state governors, state legislators, and the whole troop of state employees into yet another cheering squad for federal taxes. The same thing goes for municipal personnel.
Really, hasn't anyone in Washington ever observed how local authorities treat a "grant" from a higher level of government? It's cargo from the gods: use it or lose it. You may point out to local authorities that you pay taxes to the higher unit as well, but they'll shrug it off every time, arguing that nothing they might decide will alter the decision which has been made at the higher level. They anticipate (not unreasonably) that if their locality opts out, some other place will gladly take the money, and taxes will be the same.
Then there's the notion that at least the "devolution" of details to the state and municipal decision-makers will give voters more control over government. It may be that what's "politically correct" will vary from one jurisdiction to another, and voters may gain a little fine tuning in that respect, but let's keep our eye on the biggest issue of all: how much government involvement do we want at all, and in what? Is it imaginable that Washington will let a state decide simply to refund some part of the welfare grant to its taxpayers? For still greater merriment, imagine the hullabaloo if a state were to refund the money in the same proportion as taxpayers contributed it (that is, disproportionately going back to "the rich").
The truth of the matter is, block grants are a dodge, a gesture to pretend that Washington is doing something about runaway expenditures which are too widely resented to continue, and too widely depended upon to stop. Some time or other, we've got to take the make-believe out of our choices.
Abolish it, don't raise it. This is yet another form of price control, and we ought to know by now what happens. If the price is set too low, there's a shortage of suppliers. If it's set too high (as is the case here), there's a shortage of buyers. Read: nobody's hiring.
Don't look, though, for job losses that can be traced to the cause (and to the activists who sponsored it). Not many employers will lay off existing employees in response to a small wage increase; it's painful to let people go when they're already hired, and there are overhead costs.
The losers will be some of those who are currently looking for work, or who will do so in the future. The employers who don't hire them will be those who were already undecided whether to expand the business or not, take on a summer employee or not, open a new franchise or not. Politicians don't care. Workers who hang onto their jobs and get a raise will be much easier to identify, and will be grateful. People who are milling around looking for a job won't know what hit them.
Unemployment from this cause will be hidden among job losses from a host of other causes, and the blame will be shifted to more popular peeves: for example, illegal immigrants or trade with Mexico. (Something in the human psyche is always quick to blame foreigners, and slow to give up wishful thinking about an employer's ability to pay.)
The premise of the drive for term limits is that we, the voters, aren't getting our way because politicians lose touch with the folks back home, after they've sat in the capitol too long. It's a myth. The real reason we don't get our way is because it's the opposite of the way that other constituencies are trying to get. When our representatives get together with their representatives, they cancel each other's maximum demands.
Meanwhile, our elected officials are too short-sighted already. Projects that require a steady commitment, with funding over a period of years, get short shrift because politicians need splashy accomplishments to which they can point before the next election. Money doled out here and now buys more votes than long-term investments in the public weal.
What are term limits supposed to change? Politicians who are in it for personal gain will have to make their killing quicker. Those who come to office with a sincere impulse to do good will be impelled more than ever towards grand, symbolic gestures: legislative decrees that lions shall henceforth lie down with lambs and hurricanes are forbidden. Why shouldn't they play the demagogue, when they won't be in office a decade from now to answer for their false promises?
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