December 5, 2006
Editor, The News Journal
In the last several decades of increasing bi‑partisan fiscal irresponsibility, the politicians only proffered as a solution to handling our ever-expanding budgets, increased taxes.
Every householder knows that budgets can be maintained by increasing income, or, just as effectively, by reducing spending. Our Federal Gov't. could look to its Grant programs (‑$425 billion) for immediate and significant cost reductions.
Grants are an insidious poison in several ways, one of which is the costly federal, state and local bureaucracies required for the applications to receive and the administration of the grants for the entire time it is in effect. For example, one anti‑drug program for schools has a 74-page application kit that references 1,300 pages of regulations that grant recipients must follow. This takes a small army of people to follow and to monitor the activity, and not much useful comes of this bureaucratic cost in time and dollars.
If a project is worth doing, we should pay for it. If it is not worth doing, why do we ask others to pay for it through federal grants?
It’s time we taxpayers paid more attention to the legislation from on high and held these elected officials for the waste of our resources.
John H. Boughton