Just Say No to Grants

In the attached column, Rep. Tom McClintock (CA-05) examines the cost and impact of federal grants on the national economy.  Between 2016 and 2020, federal grant spending ballooned from $675 billion to $972 billion.

Budget writers and appropriators should look with extreme skepticism on every grant that awards money without results or that robs taxpayers in one community to pay for projects in another.

Rep. McClintock column via Washington Times:

Most of the stories we read every day about outrageous government waste stem from a category of government funding called “grants.”  From the $3 million grant to study how hamsters fight each other to the $3.7 million in grants given to the Wuhan virology lab that likely unleashed Covid on the world -- they are the very essence of wasteful spending.

Government grants fall into two major varieties: gifts of public money for every cause under the sun and grants for local projects of every variety.

They are all for “good causes.”  They go to universities, companies, NGO’s, civic groups, charities, local governments, state governments and do-gooders of every kind -- all promising some public benefit.  Unfortunately, by their very nature they are plagued with lax oversight, political favoritism, little follow-up and questionable benefits.  Indeed, much of the grant money doled out each year disappears into the salaries of various groups and agencies who will write glowing reports of their work and apply for more grants the next year in an ever-expanding litany of waste.  There is never a shortage of highly-paid grant application writers eager to make the case.

“Personally, I liked the university,” says Dan Akroyd’s character in “Ghostbusters.”  “They gave us money and facilities; we didn’t have to produce anything!  You’ve never been out of college!  You don’t know what it’s like out there!  I’ve WORKED in the private sector.  They expect results!”

If the federal government needs a particular good or service that it can’t produce itself, it should send out a request for proposal specifying what it needs and then award a contract to the lowest responsible bidder to provide it.  And then the contractor should be held accountable for delivering that good or service.

Another major class of grant recipients are local and state governments.  Who can begrudge grants for law enforcement, wastewater treatment, transportation, homeless shelters and schools?  Yet all of these grant programs beg a fundamental question: if a project exclusively benefits a local community, shouldn’t it be paid for exclusively by that local community?  Why should the taxpayers in Pocatello be forced to pay for sidewalks in Poukeepsie?   Robbing St. Petersberg to pay St. Paul turns the federal treasury into a grab-bag for local pork projects that destroys the entire concept of federalism: local decisions and local money should be made and spent locally.

By definition, local grants are lower priority projects that simply don’t make the cut when local governments are measuring their own local needs against their own local resources.  They only make economic sense if somebody else can be stuck with the tab – and grants are the means to do so.  Money flows from politically powerless communities to politically powerful ones, often for frivolous projects that don’t merit a place in local budgets.

And because these federal grants come with lots of strings attached, they are often inefficiently applied – but who cares since its free money?

A very simple test should be applied to this class of grants: if the project exclusively benefits a local community – that local community should pay for it.  With that burden also comes the freedom to spend those dollars exactly as they are most needed.  Federal resources should be reserved for projects that benefit the entire country.  That’s the difference between the federal interstate highway system and a local street.

This is not a small matter.  Between 2016 and 2020, federal grant spending ballooned from $675 billion to $972 billion, exclusive of Medicaid grants to states.  That’s nearly half of the annual federal deficit.

Weeding them out or reforming them is no easy task, because a thriving political ecosystem of wealth and favor supports them.  In last year’s spending spree, both parties indulged themselves with 8,222 congressional earmarks – a particular sub-set of grant spending where individual congressmen hand-pick their recipients.

So here’s a modest proposal for the DOGE boys: stop the cash bonanza to every self-described deserving cause and influential community with a good grant writer.  Budget writers and appropriators should look with extreme skepticism on every grant that awards money without results or that robs taxpayers in one community to pay for projects in another.  It is time we protected and reserved the federal treasury for the general welfare of the nation as the Constitution envisioned.

Congressman Tom McClintock (R-CA) represents California’s 5th Congressional District.