Will HUD Be Divided (And Conquered)?
by Peter G. Miller
HUD is about to be broken up, at least that is the substance of a report in The Washington Post ("Bush Plans Sharp Cuts In HUD Community Efforts," January 14, 2005) Under the proposal, says the paper, several community programs will be transferred to other federal departments in an effort to cut costs. Most, including the $4.7 billion Community Development Block Grant program, will be transferred to the Commerce Department, while the $62 million "Youthbuild USA" high school dropout outreach program will be sent to the Labor Department. Citing anonymous sources, the article says that not only is consideration being given to transferring the programs but that funding may drop by half. What will happen next is that everyone in Washington will soon debate the wisdom of moving programs from one federal department to another; how many dollars will be "saved," "lost" or "gained" as defined by whoever's ox is being gored; and who will win the battle for bureaucratic turf. All interesting stuff to someone, no doubt, but issues which avoid the core point: Why are these programs in Washington at all? Ask yourself: Why is HUD spending $62 million to reach high school dropouts? Does this program sound like a labor issue -- where the money is expected to be moved -- or an educational matter? In any case, is this not a job for local school systems -- the folks in your town? Or consider the biggest item in question, those community block grants -- money expended to help state and local housing programs. A noble concept and surely a way to reward political supporters. But if you look at that $4.7 billion you have to wonder: Could not citizens get more for their dollars if the program was localized? Instead of having the grant programs inside HUD budget or within the Department of Commerce, why not take $4.7 billion, divide by the national population, roughly 295 million people, and then distribute the $15.93 per capita to each state according to its population? In this way California with 33,871,648 residents in the 2000 census would get $539,575,353, Montana and its 902,195 citizens would take in $14,371,966, etc. The not-spend-money in Washington approach assures that tax dollars would be administered by those closest to the problem of community development, it would remove a layer of cost (the expense of federal oversight), it would distribute funds fairly to all the states and it would make more dollars available for actual programming by cutting a layer of government costs. Such benefits, of course, are precisely why such a proposal cannot succeed. The political idea is not to distribute benefits evenly or fairly, it is to reward buddies, backers and partisan interests and to maintain and grow bureaucratic turf. But the old ways of doing business must now change. Massive federal deficits, state deficits, and soaring tax bills mean the country can no longer afford to fund programs inefficiently. The federal government must shrink, not because one party or another is in control, but because the federal structure is simply not the best way to handle certain tasks -- especially those tasks which are plainly within the scope of state and local government. The debate which is to follow will be both heated and wrenching. But rather than asking which bureaucracy will get the spoils, we should instead ask why there should be any spoils at all. | 
