78-02-B4
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Jobs
TranscriptBack in 1971 Congress -- spurred by the recession of 1970 -- passed a measure called the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act. It was to be a temporary program, cost $1 billion. The money was to be doled out to state and local governments which would, in turn hire the hardcore unemployed in fields such as law enforcement, health, education and so forth. The "temporary" program is still with us, but now it costs $6 billion a year. It has also been proposed as a part of the much talked about welfare reform going to $9 billion. Well, with one out of five workers in the United States already on the public payroll, more government jobs doesn't seem to be a practical answer to unemployment. But more importantly , the record of the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act -- called CETA for short -- is a story of boondoggles and scandal. Here and there special interest groups have managed to get grants which helped pay for their own staffs and could hardly be called legitimate public service jobs. One county in my own state of California came up with a program that won a Golden Fleece award from Senator William Proxmire. The Senator gives his award each month for the biggest and/or the most ridiculous example of wasteful government spending. In this California case, $400,000 of CETA money is being used to hire some 85 people who will do a door-to-door survey. They are counting all the dogs, cats and horses living in or near the 160,000 homes and apartments in the county. The awarding of the "Fleece" brought the project to the attention of the citizenry of that particular county and they felt just about the same as Senator Proxmire did. But the counting goes on and will continue through the spring. Defending the program, CETA's local director said the Department of Labor doesn't "weigh the project's merits". He then went on to say that an idea would have to be "illegal or extremely ridiculous" before the department would cancel the funds. And while he admitted that counting animals might sound ridiculous it really isn't. County officials defended the nose count on the grounds that they might pick up revenues by turning up unlicensed animals ($400,000 worth?) Then there was the matter of animals not vaccinated for rabies. Well, no one can question the seriousness of a rabies epidemic, but there hasn't been a single case of rabies among dogs and cats in that particular county for more than ten years. So, the program seems well deserving of the Senator's monthly award. It does bear out what the French economist Bastiat said more than a century ago, "Public funds seemingly belong to no one and the temptation to bestow them on someone is irresistible." |
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