By: Val W. Zimnicki
Bureaucracy is the main poison in our republic. It is self-perpetuating, freedom-robbing and very expensive. As George Washington put it; “Government….is force….it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” America’s forefathers therefore created a Constitution that does not give authority to deal with the many costly administrative services we have become accustomed to. Some of these federal programs include the Department of Energy, Department of Commerce, Department of Transportation, Department of Education, and many more.
Let’s take the Department of Education as an example. This year’s budget is $7 billion. Of course, we did not have a education department until president Carter created one to appease the teachers unions. Have education problems been solved because of this unnecessary monstrous creation? No, and indeed many new artificial and costly difficulties have been created.
Simply put, students are dumber than ever. Of course, the good news for administrators is that thousands have unessential and redundant jobs. These government officials typically want their agendas to grow in scope. More employees mean bigger budgets, which means more importance. These bureaucrats are not subject to profit-and-loss accountability and they frequently prove it. After all, money can always be raised by taxing the good citizens of the U.S. When a program fails, as most do, the cry of being underfunded is raised. Raising taxes to pay for failures is standard operating procedure. That’s the bureaucratic way.
Problems caused by expensive government cannot be solved by growing more government. Yet, federal and state governments continue to raise taxes to pay for their failures. The Department of Education is just one of thousands of costly misadventures that stifle economic growth and keep the static government employees occupied with ‘busy work.’
