Those in the seat of power enjoy self enrichment, status, pomposity, and gluttony, in its many forms, all on the backs and hard efforts of the rest of the citizens out in the country and hinterlands. These elitist types are so wrapped up in taking care of themselves and those that keep them in power and wealth, the rest of the country and the issues that are present in the rest of the country fall into disrepair.
Major problems ranging from a failed war on drugs to failing public schools to escalating health care costs and national debt never get resolved. These issues always take a backseat to those entities within the Washington Beltway, both in the Federal government itself (e.g. politicians) and outside of it that depend on those within the government, e.g. big business and big labor cronies, campaign contributors, etc.
Today, we will take a closer look, not at the “Hunger Games” mentality and processes of Washington, but at those real life issues that never get resolved because of the pursuit of wealth, fame, and ego of those sitting at the seat of power in Washington. The basis of this discussion comes from a recent article Independent Journal Review from January 30, 2013, “Unintended Consequences: 14 Big Government Programs That Failed to Achieve Their Goals.”
We will cover the first five of these epic disasters today and finish up with the rest over the next two days. When reviewing these 14 programs, keep in mind that almost all Federal government programs have at least some of the following characteristics in common:
- They never attain the lofty goals and expectations that were originally used to sell in the idea of the program.
- In many cases, not only do they not resolve the original issue, they make the original issue or some other issue worst than before trying to fix the original issue.
- In almost all cases, massive amounts of taxpayer wealth is destroyed with no redeeming societal benefit in return.
To operationalize the Amendment, Congress passed the “Volstead Act” on October 28, 1919. But as history tells us, most large cities simply ignored the law and bootlegged alcohol to meet demand. This resulted in a huge underground, illegal market, infested with crime and corruption. This breeding ground led to the rise of organized crime in major cities across the country who filled the alcohol void created by the Amendment. Fourteen short years later, Prohibition was repealed by the Twenty-First Amendment, proving the exercise had been pointless and criminal inducing.
Unintended consequences: make something illegal and the illegal act gets profitable for criminal elements without reducing the supposed bad habit, drinking alcohol. Think about this same mentality we have today relative to “illegal” drugs. The war on drugs has been going on for over forty years and the results have not seriously impacted usage, just like Prohibition, but it has led to the exponential growth of organized crime syndicates.
While it was the likes of Al Capone and his peers that got rich off of Prohibition, it is the Mexican drug cartels that are following this model today relative to the criminalization of drugs and the associated lost war on drugs. Massive amounts of money wasted, desirable effects never attained, and the unintended consequences of creating rich cartels and violent criminal activity.
2) Make our schools better, our kids smarter, and the country would be much better off. Great idea, sounds simple, let’s do it! Unfortunately, tried that, failed miserably, spent a lot of money.
Back in the early 1980s. President Reagan commissioned a blue ribbon panel to investigate the problems with public education and develop a set of remedies for our failing public schools. The commission did its job well, identified the fact that we were under educating our kids thirty years ago, and presented a set of solutions to remedy the situation.
The Washington political class, as it often does, created a new bureaucracy, the Department of Education to address the issues. This Cabinet level Department then proceeded to spend trillions of dollars over the next thirty years for … virtually nothing. Our kids today are still undereducated and almost always do miserably on standardized tests vs. kids from dozens of other countries.
But this is ancient history. Consider some more recent stats and depressing news in this area, as reported in the article:
- Under George W. Bush’s education plans and strategies, Federal government spending on education doubled within eight years.
- Despite this massive increase in government spending and having a spending per student among the highest in the world, the U.S. lags far behind most economically developed nations in terms of math, science and other core competencies.
- The National Assessment of Educational Progress results showed that less than one-third of eighth-grade students were proficient in math, science, or reading.
- At the high school level, the U.S. graduation rate continues to stagnate at just around 70%.
- And of those kids in the 70% who actually get a high school diploma, many of them are not prepared enough for college work.
3) The article sets up the Medicare failures using analyses from the Cato Institute:
- When Medicare’s Part A was implemented in 1965, it was supposed to cost $9 billion by 1990.
- However, by 1990 it was costing the country $67 billion a year, more than seven times higher than the original estimate.
- Medicare’s home-care benefit, added in 1988, was expected to cost $4 billion in 1993.
- It ended up costing, costing $10 billion, two and half times the original estimate that was made just five years earlier.
Shoddy benefits for a higher and higher price that may destroy the country’s economy. No success here either.
4) If the above Medicare numbers spooked you, consider the Medicaid numbers from the article:
Cato Institute: “When the Medicaid program’s special hospitals subsidy was added in 1987, it was supposed to cost $100 million annually, but wound up costing $11 billion annually within five years.”
CNN Money: “Medicaid spending is set to double over the next 10 years — from $253 billion today to $593 billion in 2022 — and, according to the Congressional Budget Office, Medicare spending will do the same.”
Two massive government programs that were supposed to provide maximum health care benefits at a reasonable cost but are ending up providing minimal (and shrinking) benefits for a maximum cost, a maximum cost that will bankrupt the country unless something is done. It makes you wonder if the political class was so busy taking care of themselves that they had no concept of cost forecasting, paid no attention to cost forecasting, or intentionally lied about the cost forecasting since they were so far off in their estimates. In any of these cases, their performance has been putrid.
Shrinking benefits, rising costs, a typical Washington story.
5) No one truly knows how many illegal immigrants are in the country today. However, the most quoted figure is about 11 million, not an insignificant number. This number is bigger than the population of all but seven states so it is not an insignificant problem.
The U.S. has never had a sane, secure, and compassionate immigration policy. Our borders leak, our safety net social services processes are overwhelmed, people living in the country spend every day in fear that they will be deported, and those that are illegal are often abused by employers or others who know their status and leverage it for their own good.
Nobody wins but nobody ever comes up with a plan to address the issue. Over 25 years ago, Congress passed a resolution that ordered the U.S. military to seal our border with Mexico within 45 days. Over 25 years later, that Congressional mandate is still unfulfilled, another massive failure of those sitting in the seat of power in Washington.
Given how poorly we have secured our border with Mexico, a new issue and threat has evolved over the past several years. There have been reports and rumors that terrorists have used our weak border security so smuggle potential terrorists into the country. Thus, the nonresolution of the long standing illegal immigration problem may have morphed into a homeland security issue over time, an issue that Washington also has no plan to resolve.
That’s enough for today, more “Hunger Games” discussions and political class failures tomorrow and the next day.
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