By Michael D. Tanner
This article appeared on National Review on September 24, 2014.
Aficionados of horror movies know that the monster is never really dead when you think it is. It may be down, but it will inevitably climb back from the dead at least one more time before the final credits. So it is with government programs. No matter how outdated, useless, wasteful, or redundant programs may be, they come as close to immortality as possible.
Recall that Washington is a town where a tax on long-distance telephone calls was enacted in 1898 to help pay for the Spanish-American War. That tax wasn’t repealed for good until 2006. Or consider wool and mohair subsidies. Congress passed this giveaway to farmers in 1954, having designated wool as a “strategic material” since it was used to make military uniforms. (No one is quite sure how mohair, which is largely used to upholster furniture, became part of the program, but that’s Washington.) In 1993 Congress noticed that military uniforms were actually made from synthetic fibers and began phasing out the subsidies. But by 2002, military necessities aside, the subsidies were back, and this year’s farm bill extends them until at least 2018, at a cost to taxpayers of $5 million. Likewise, the Rural Electrification Administration was created in 1935 to bring electricity to farm country. There aren’t many farms without electricity anymore, but the REA, now called the Rural Utilities Service, is still with us, spending almost $800 million last year."...
