As team Trump digs into taxing, spending and health-care reform, it’s learning a vital lesson of Washington. Once a government benefit is given, it can never be taken away. If young people have been overcharged by ObamaCare so middle-aged people can be undercharged, then the solution is to undercharge young people too. The taxpayer—usually visualized as a hedge fund manager—can always pay more.
Ditto the budget as a whole. The Washington Post moans that the White House’s new spending plan would “eliminate the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, which coordinates the federal response to homelessness across 19 federal agencies,” including providing funding for “Meals on Wheels, a national nonprofit group that delivers food to homebound seniors.”
Never mind that Meals on Wheels is not a federal program. Funding comes from private donations and state and local governments, sometimes using small parts of federal block grants.
The Post further moans that the Trump budget “guts federal funding for affordable housing and kicks the financial responsibility of those programs to states and local governments.”
Never mind that the federal government doesn’t have access to resources the states and localities don’t. Its tax base is their tax base. If housing subsidies are a local priority, let local leaders raise and spend the money locally. They are likely to do a better job addressing a local problem than Washington is.