In my book, A Broken Sausage Grinder; Is Our Government Fundamentally Flawed?, I use Medicaid as an example of an unfunded mandate. The Medicaid program is a federal program which imposes regulations for low-income medical care to be administered by state workers and paid for in part by state resources.
Unfunded mandates represent bad government because they pass the responsibility without passing the required resources to meet the requirements. We could imagine a police officer assigned to enforce a speed limit being dropped off beside the road somewhere with no radar gun and no patrol car. Then the Sargent sits just down the road to evaluate the effectiveness of the officer. A regulation with no means of enforcement is bad government because it creates an attitude of lawlessness. After all, even the most upstanding citizen will occasionally succumb to temptation.
Back on October 22nd, I wrote about the federal budget. I explained how the compilation of all the mandates (aka. regulations or statements of work) from each federal agency form the basis of the President’s Budget Request. There is certainly some amount of proposed spending that is not backed up by a bono fide requirement. But there is nothing remotely close to the size of the deficit in that category, so what is causing the imbalance? Unfunded mandates!
You see, an unfunded mandate can also be created when a requirement that has been in place within an agency for years is suddenly not adequately paid for in the final budget authorization.
The recent sequester is a really good example of how this happens. The sequester represents across-the-board cuts in spending without regard to the reasons for the spending in the first place. The sequester created new unfunded mandates within every government agency. You will see this show up as an imbalance in the next proposed federal budget as a deficit request.
It is simply irresponsible to cut the funding and not cut the requirements – it is simply bad government. Good government would approach our so-called “spending problem” differently. “Good government” would debate the requirements and make cuts in the many statements of work that define our federal government agencies. A thoughtful debate like this would pare back the need for spending while evaluating and reaffirming the underlying policies of our federal government.
Imagine a time when our Legislature debated policy in a bipartisan atmosphere of compromise to find and serve the needs of a majority or our citizens. Imagine a time when our elected representatives could arrive at a town hall meeting and explain that the needs of a majority of our citizens were the driving force behind the size of our tax bill. Imagine a time when our Legislature would debate and update the policies of a program such as Social Security, in order to maintain its sustainability for the long haul and protect the benefits for our future generations. Times like these could be a reality today if our Federal Legislature would start doing their job and delivering to us the good government our Founding Fathers labored to create.
In my book, I ask the following question: “Does anyone believe that we could pick fifty-five of our current elected leaders and get a new Constitution written in eighty-nine days?” If we answer the question honestly we must admit that we couldn’t even get the First or Second Amendment done in that period of time.
The Sausage Grinder is Broken – will you help to fix it?
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