Posted on 02/28/2017 3:01:29 PM PST by TBP
So, since 1960, federal spending, adjusted for inflation, has quintupled and federal undertakings have multiplied like dandelions, but the federal civilian workforce has expanded only negligibly, to approximately what it was when Dwight Eisenhower was elected in 1952. Does this mean that “big government” is not really big? And that by doing much more with not many more employees it has accomplished prodigies of per-worker productivity? John J. Dilulio Jr., of the University of Pennsylvania and the Brookings Institution, says: Hardly.
Since 1960, the number of state and local government employees has tripled to more than 18 million, a growth driven by federal money: Between the early 1960s and early 2010s, the inflation-adjusted value of federal grants for the states increased more than tenfold. For example, the EPA has fewer than 20,000 employees, but 90 percent of EPA programs are completely administered by thousands of state government employees, largely funded by Washington.
A quarter of the federal budget is administered by the fewer than 5,000 employees of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) — and by the states, at least half of whose administrative costs are paid by CMS. Various federal crime and homeland security bills help fund local police departments. “By conservative estimates,” Dilulio writes, “there are about 3 million state and local government workers” — about 50 percent more than the number of federal workers — “funded via federal grants and contracts.”
Then there are for-profit contractors, used, Dilulio says, “by every federal department, bureau and agency.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Quite a different story we’d be telling today if that old, yellowed, limiting document called the Constitution was strictly adhered to from the beginning.
bump
Public-Private-Partnerships are the big problem.
PPP is a form of favoratism where government/politicians give not just Solyndra and Acorn money to advance its agenda. The Feds give money to a wide variety of individuals, not-for-profit and for-profit outfits.
It creates a massive patronage army with a vested interest in the gravy train to study cow farts, to build community organizations, to teach yoga. You see the ads on the internet, on late night TV.... send money and the grantsmanship specialists will send you 1,001 ways to get free money from the government. You can go to seminars (paid for by us taxpayers) that teach you how to qualify for TANF, EBT, SSI, etc even though you might think you don’t qualify because you are middle class.
Don’t be too proud to lie and say you have disabilities. Don’t be too proud to get everything that you are entitled to.
Just what is being proposed for the infrastructure program. (I heard Secretary Chao saying so.)
Is this clown still around?
Yes, Chao and hubby McConnell (and Trump and others) have a corporatist anti-capitalist view of the economy. Either they really think the government knows better than the private sector how to do thinngs ... or more likely, they just like the power and ego trip of being the ones to pick the winners and losers.
I read this article in the WSJ. It was extremely informative.
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