Federal aid to states versus a healthy economy

The theory behind federal aid to state and local governments is that the federal government can operate programs in the national interest to efficiently solve local problems.

Now that whole concept is laughable on the face of it. I’m not sure how any politician can even say that sentence with a straight face! When has the federal government ever operated more “efficiently” than anything with which it might be sensibly compared?

No. No! I don’t think this theory holds water on the “efficiency” factor.

But let’s take a look at this other matter of “programs in the national interest.”

Let’s be serious here!

Outside of those few matters for which the people should truly look to the federal government—such as our national defense—politicians do almost nothing from Washington, DC, “in the national interest.”

In fact, a great deal of the time and money spent by the staff of Congressmen and Senators is not, in fact, spent in “the national interest.”

Instead, they spend a huge portion of their time and energy on “local interests” and (worse) “special interests,” for which the reader might instead read:

“Securing ‘pork’ for their local constituents in every effort to leverage the taxpayers’ money to buy votes from the very taxpayers they have pick-pocketed.”

Federal aid to states and localities is nothing short of politicians hoodwinking the taxpaying public into believing that by giving some of the money they have confiscated from the taxpayers back through “aid,” they have somehow done the citizens a great favor.

In short, through federal aid to states and localities, the politicians have managed to trick voters and taxpayers into believing that, as “political doctors,” they can somehow magically make the patient healthier by draining blood out of the leg of the patient in massive amounts and injecting small portions of the blood back into the patient’s arm.