Theft at the Public Till
But, taxpayers are an incredibly conservative bunch. While they might enjoy voting for vast new programs of infrastructure and social welfare, they have an inherent objection to actually being the ones to pay for it. As the need for funds grew - creative minds invented new ways of getting at money without the explicit consent of the voters. Nelson Rockefeller and Robert Moses made the most out of an old English concept “the authority” to begin whole- sale borrowings for a variety of purposes. Eventually it dawned on the polit- icos that with the right semantics and rhetoric money could be borrowed to finance not just capital but other programs -- with the cost shifted off into an indefinite future. They were encouraged in this endeavor by a Federal government that had grown too generous with its own resources and now was trying to shift costs off unto the states and localities. When cost shifting is involved it is difficult for one level of government to call attention to the more dubious tactics of another layer. Thus from an innocent beginning, there arose great trouble. Promises that required money and the money was nowhere to be found. Washington backed away from new Great Society-type programs begin- ning in the mid-1970s, and this was followed by the conservative Republican politics of the 1980s. The result: A hollow federal government has precip- itated a nation of hollow state and local governments. For almost two de- cades, rising fiscal needs at the local level had been eased by federal funds. Great Society programs, General Revenue Sharing, hundreds of grants and other forms of federal aid helped cities struggle against the persistent growth in urban poverty, inadequate housing and hopelessness, crime, drugs, high school dropouts, and illegal immigrants-the ever rising tide of the cities’ troubles. Reagan’s idea of intergovernmental relations was to return to the states responsibilities that over several decades had accrued to Washington. The states readily agreed, sensing in the proposition a chance to control at the local level greater resources, to dole out and to get the credit for more federal benefits distributed to their communities. Reagan failed to mention, however, that in turning back the respon- sibilities to the states, local governments would in many instances not be getting the federal funds necessary to effectuate the programs themselves.
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