Still, a Sept. Labor Department official told state agencies the federal funds remain available for retroactive payment of the benefits, if states choose to restore them or are forced to do so by court order, even after Sept. So, for some who may otherwise have been eligible for the federal aid, that window has now closed.
Vereen said in an emailed statement. Those cases are on hold while one of them waits for the Ohio Supreme Court to decide whether it will hear an appeal from Gov. Mike DeWine R. The DI benefits provide coverage for severely disabled workers and their dependents, including veterans. The budget cut to DI benefits could financially harm wounded warriors—approximately , military veterans received these benefits in While veterans are a diverse group, many face challenges making ends meet and depend on various programs that help struggling families.
Nearly 1. A study from Feeding America highlights that approximately 20 percent of households receiving help from the charitable food assistance network which includes food banks, pantries, and shelters include a veteran.
Table 2 shows cuts to discretionary programs and entitlements other than health care and Social Security. The reforms listed in Tables 1 and 2 are deeper than the savings from "duplication" and "waste" often discussed by federal policymakers. We should cut hundreds of billions of dollars of "meat" from federal departments, not just the obvious "fat.
The proposed cuts are illustrative of how to start getting the federal budget under control. Further reforms are needed in addition to these cuts, such as major structural changes to Medicare. The important thing is to start cutting as soon as possible because the longer we wait, the deeper will be the debt hole that is dug. After the tables, proposed cuts to subsidies, aid to the states, military expenses, and entitlement programs are discussed.
The final section discusses the privatization of federal activities. Further analyses of the cuts listed here are available at www. The federal government funds more than 2, subsidy programs, more than twice as many as in the s. The federal government subsidizes farming, health care, school lunches, rural utilities, the energy industry, rental housing, aviation, passenger rail, public broadcasting, job training, foreign aid, urban transit, and many other activities.
Each subsidy causes damage to the economy through the required taxation. And each subsidy generates a bureaucracy, spawns lobby groups, and encourages even more people to demand government hand-outs. Individuals, businesses, and nonprofit groups that become hooked on federal subsidies essentially become tools of the state. They lose their independence, have less incentive to innovate, and shy away from criticizing the government and its failures. Table 2 includes cuts to subsidies in agriculture, commerce, energy, housing, foreign aid, and other activities.
Those cuts would not eliminate all of the unjustified subsidies in the budget, but they would be a good start. Government subsidies are like an addictive drug, undermining America's traditions of individual reliance, voluntary charity, and entrepreneurialism. Under the Constitution, the federal government was assigned specific limited powers, and most government functions were left to the states. To ensure that people understood the limits on federal power, the Framers added the Constitution's Tenth Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Unfortunately, policymakers and the courts have mainly discarded federalism in recent decades. Through "grants-in-aid" Congress has undertaken many activities that were traditionally reserved to state and local governments. Grant programs are subsidies that are combined with federal regulatory controls to micromanage state and local activities. The theory behind grants-in-aid is that the federal government can operate programs in the national interest to solve local problems efficiently.
However, the aid system does not work that way in practice. Most federal politicians are preoccupied by the competitive scramble to maximize subsidies for their states, regardless of program efficiency or an appreciation of overall budget limitations. Furthermore, federal aid stimulates overspending by state governments and creates a web of complex federal regulations that undermine state innovation.
At all levels of the aid system, the focus is on regulatory compliance and spending, not on delivering quality public services. The aid system destroys government accountability because each level of government blames the other levels when programs fail. It is a triumph of expenditure without responsibility. Federal aid is a roundabout funding system for state and local activities. It serves no important economic purpose. Notify me of new comments via email.
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