“Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.” ― Herbert Hoover
Uncontrolled government spending and the unfunded obligation of entitlement programs are driving the $40 trillion debt crisis. However, those fiscal challenges don’t tell the whole story. John C. Eastman, a Senior Fellow at The Claremont Institute and Director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, argues that “…there is another cause of our fiscal predicament that almost no one in Washington is willing to discuss: the federal government spends enormous sums of money on things the Constitution never authorized it to fund.”
Though it may have faded from memory already, President Trump’s DOGE efforts to reduce government spending by eliminating federal funding of numerous local programs helped shine a light on how far the federal government has drifted from the Constitution. Grants from the federal government fund an overabundance of programs and nonprofit organizations, in addition to funds sent directly to many state and local governments. One glaring example close to home was the University of Iowa’s international writing program, which was a recipient of federal funds.
In Iowa, many critics of DOGE argued that the loss of grant funding would have a substantial impact on the economy and the individuals served by a respective program. Few, however, bothered considering whether it is even constitutional for the federal government to fund all of these programs in the first place.
Eastman argues that the federal government increasingly finances projects whose benefits are primarily local, including transit stations, bicycle paths, parks, streetscape improvements, and community development projects. This creates an incentive for state and local governments to pursue as much federal funding as possible, while members of Congress have their own incentive to deliver federal dollars to projects back home.
As an illustration, Eastman points to a federally supported walking and bicycle trail in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The project may provide worthwhile benefits to Albuquerque residents by connecting neighborhoods, encouraging development, and providing recreational opportunities. But Eastman questions why taxpayers across the country should borrow money through the federal government to pay for a project whose benefits are concentrated in one community.
The problem multiplies exponentially when that same incentive is repeated across thousands of cities, counties, states, universities, agencies, and nonprofit organizations. Each has reason to seek federal dollars for its own priorities while spreading the cost across taxpayers nationwide. The result, Eastman argues, is a system in which communities compete for federal money that increasingly must be borrowed and ultimately repaid by taxpayers everywhere.
The $40 trillion national debt is the result of more than simply spending too much. It also reflects decades of allowing the federal government to assume responsibilities that properly belong to state and local governments, and the private sector.
Restoring those constitutional boundaries would not mean that communities could no longer build parks, trails, or pursue other worthwhile projects. It would mean, though, that the governments and taxpayers who receive the benefits would also be responsible for bearing the costs. When Washington can borrow money and spread those costs across the entire country, there is little incentive for anyone to say no.
Reducing the national debt will require difficult spending decisions, but it should also require a more fundamental question: Is this something the federal government should be paying for in the first place?
Print a PDF