Baby steps towards statism

Here's why government should never be the first entity turned to for financial assistance. (And why, when someone does turn to government for help, the rest of us should tell our congressmen to say "you're on your own.")

Legislators in eight states are championing bills to require welfare recipients to submit to random drug tests. It seems perfectly reasonable: I don't want my tax money to be transferred to somebody else because they're too high on meth to get a job and support themselves.

During the auto bailout bill debate, we heard Sen. Chris Dodd et al describing their conditions for lending billions to failing car companies. More tiny "green cars" (that nobody wants to buy) to save the world from global warming. Sell the corporate jet. Build vans to provide public transit. Never make a move without first submitting to a government-appointed (read "hack") car czar. It seems perfectly reasonable: I don't want my tax money going to a car company without the car companies having to answer for it.

Now President Obama has fired the CEO at General Motors, and the new "boss" there is an Obama puppet — he has to be, to save his own job.

Bonuses might be taxed at the morally indefensible rate of 90 percent if a company has received bailout money. And Rep. Barney Frank has expressed his desire to determine which employees at such companies are "productive" and to set their compensation accordingly. It seems perfectly reasonable: What a company does with its own money is the company's private business. What a company does with my money is not.

These attached strings seem small and are often perfectly reasonable. But sometimes they are entirely unreasonable. And even when they are reasonable, they do not go away when the need for short-term financial assistance ends. Actually, the need rarely ever ends, usually is expanded over time, envelops people and organizations unwittingly, and eventually saddles everyone with cumbersome — and sometimes worse — regulation.

Consider the minimum drinking age in the United States. Our Constitution does not give the federal government the authority to regulate alcohol distribution, so federal bureaucrats sidestep the founding fathers by tying the age limit to highway dollars. For a state to receive federal money for highways, that state must set a (also morally indefensible) minimum drinking age of 21 or higher. After a few years of this nonsense, every state in the union is addicted to federal highway money and will never risk giving it up. So while the Constitution explicitly denies the federal government the authority to set such a regulation, it sets it all the same — and states welcome that because the feds are "giving" the states money.

What happens when Congress says all people are government welfare recipients? We all drive on highways and most of us go to public schools. Do I, then, have to submit to random drug tests to prove I'm innocent? Does Wal-Mart have to run its hiring practices by President Obama, just because its customers drive on public roadways to get to the store? Based on what I've seen of government in the past, and during the first few months of the Obama Administration, I'd say the day is coming when some politicians will demand such steps.

Congress raises our taxes, pretends to "give it back" in various forms, then controls one more aspect of our life. Because how we spend taxpayer dollars is not a private matter — it's up to Congress to tell us how to do it.