Legislating Bureaucracy as Infrastructure
By: Denise Simon | Founders Code
Brilliantly true… wish I had thought of that but credit goes to Robert Mulligan. Infrastructure is really items like roads, bridges, ports, and the power grid system… hardly expanding government agencies but read on.
Mr. Mulligan’s summary actually shows us how to think differently and correctly.
President Biden’s staggering $2.3 trillion requests for infrastructure appropriations tend to hide the extent Congress is further bloating them with their own wasteful earmarks. Congress is approving, and even expanding on, the president’s already far-reaching requests, though it’s doing so in installments—the House just sent a $715 billion “INVEST in America Act” to the Senate, where it’s all but certain to be packed with even more pork by legislators from both parties. The typical Orwellian-Kafkaesque title for this legislation—“INVEST”—is supposed to stand for “Investing in a New Vision for the Environment and Surface Transportation,” a title that both helps hide the rancid pork actually contained in the bill, as well as head off any responsible scrutiny or debate.
Hidden deep in the House version are numerous provisions for expanding the federal bureaucracy and government programs that have absolutely nothing to do with infrastructure, including doubling the size of the IRS.
It is especially fascinating that the federal government has such little difficulty spending more money, regardless of how focused or unfocused its aims—being driven mainly by politicians with planning horizons not extending past the next election—but the government has a real problem with raising taxes directly because politicians fear the potential blowback. Their preferred solution is apparently to expand one of the least-liked sectors of the federal bureaucracy, in hopes of increasing revenues through heightened tax enforcement. Never mind that the IRS has recently exhibited extraordinary misconduct, including leaked confidential tax filings and playing politics with nonprofit tax exemptions. The IRS is one federal bureaucracy among many that need to be reformed rather than expanded. Without meaningful reform, expanding the IRS’s enforcement budget will be tantamount to unleashing a plague of locusts on already overburdened taxpayers.