Someone else will get it
Local editorials from 50 years ago are being reprinted every Monday and Tuesday in this column. This editorial appeared in the Evening Standard, a predecessor of the Herald-Standard, on July 11, 1967.
Some conservative-thinking Americans look at the millions spent by the federal government in its Great Society program and at the hundreds of thousands of dollars coming into his community this way:
“If we don’t take the money it will go to some other community or state,” he says.
He is correct. Congress appropriates so much in Great Society funds and if requests are not made, then the money is not handed out. Of course, always there are more requests than there are funds. So a priority list is established and the various agencies in government keep hiring more and more well-paid bureaucrats to determine who gets the handouts.
The city of Grandvllle, Mich., had an example of the problems of seeking federal government handouts.
Grandville applied in April 1966 for a $245,000 grant to convert the city’s groundwater system to a Lake Michigan supply system. The request went to the Housing and Urban Development Department, known among the handout seekers as HUD.
Delay followed on top of delay. Finally last month the mayor of Grandville told HUD to forget about the appropriation, that the city council decided to proceed with local financing.
The costs had increased by $70,000 in the one year, however. Wrote the mayor: “The city is now faced with arranging additional financing which will substantially increase water rates to customers. I am sure our experience is not unique. I cannot help but feel that our tax dollars would go further and be used more wisely if the monies spent through HUD were returned to cities and townships on a population basis. It would also be more equitable for all.”
That is the key to the situation. We keep piling money into Washington, and Washington sends it back to us. But in between, there are thousands of bureacrats who are well paid, who make those determinations where the money goes without having any idea of what really is necessary and what could be a bluff to get some funds not needed.
Returning the money to cities and townships and boroughs would certainly put an end to much costly boon-doggling.
Then we wouldn’t be hearing that well-worn phrase, “If we don’t get it someone else will.”