Protection, Not Provision
Experience shows limits to role of government in child welfareEast Valley Tribune Editorial for Oct. 7, 2001
Budget cutting is never a pleasant or painless task. Just ask someone who's been laid off by a business suffering from the current economic slump.
Yelps of pain also can be heard in and around the state Capitol, even before the ax falls on as much as $1.6 billion in spending over the next two years. But hard choices must be made, and very likely certain programs or departments will feel more pain than others. Carol Kamin, director of the Children's Action Alliance, makes a strong plea elsewhere on these pages for preserving social welfare programs. We agree with much of what she says. Part of being a healthy community is assisting individuals and families who have fallen on hard times.
But the best way to help these people isn't always through government - which Kamin clearly advocates. Indeed, the lesson of 40 years of failed federal welfare policy is that impersonal government assistance undermines both individual initiative for self-improvement and effective private efforts to help the needy.
Ending the welfare entitlement prompted many recipients to work harder toward self-sufficiency. It also reinvigorated families, churches and private charities to help them succeed. And it's working.
Kamin is absolutely right about the vital role government must play to protect us from physical harm. We would say it's the No. 1 duty of government. Our most important public servants are our soldiers, police officers and firefighters.
Unfortunately, an overly expansive interpretation of the Founders' "general welfare" charge for government has unleashed a bureaucratic monstrosity that crowds out private initiative to solve social problems. "Freedom from need" became a government mandate. That later ballooned into "freedom from want."
The Founders didn't establish this republic to ensure government would provide citizens what they want. They established it to protect citizens working hard for what they want from bandits trying to take it away.
And it doesn't take a rigid ideologue to suggest that tax rates that confiscate upwards of 40 percent of a citizen's earnings just might be a form of banditry.
Thankfully, Arizona's lawmakers have found ways to allow hard-working citizens to keep more of what they earn. One way is tax cuts; another is tax credits that give individuals more say in how they want their dollars to be used. And some good things are happening as a result.
One of the most cost-effective tax credits allows Arizonans to deduct the full amount of donations up to $500 a year to private-school scholarship funds. Contributions have surged, and so has enrollment in private and parochial schools - to nearly 15,000 last school year.
A just-published Cato Institute study found the tax credit: 1) reduces crowding and cost burdens on public schools and 2) allows more children to get a high-quality private education at lower average cost per pupil.
As head of the Children's Action Alliance, Kamin is in an excellent position to find and advocate more such creative, cost-effective private answers to today's educational and social challenges. One promising possibility would be tax credits for charitable giving. If any rigid ideology should be taken off the table as legislators sharpen their budget knives, it's the one that insists government is the right salve for all of society's ills.
