President Bush unveiled his 2003-04 budget today. Its priorities are clear: reduce the tax burden to encourage economic growth and investment, fight and win a war against Islamofascist terror, and seize an historic opportunity to reform Medicare through consumer choice and competitive markets. Other federal programs large and small will see slower growth, or even cuts.
One of the programs slated for a cut is the Appalachian Regional Commission, or ARC, which serves a 410-county region that includes portions of western North Carolina. The Bush budget would cut ARC’s funding – not just the rate of increase – by roughly half, or $33 million. Expect to hear some North Carolina politicians vow to fight this move, as members of the Congressional Rural Caucus have already said they’ll do.
They shouldn’t. The proud people of the North Carolina mountains do not want or need this little pittance of welfare from the federal government. What they need, what we all need, is for Washington to perform its basic and necessary functions well, and otherwise to get out of the way and leave us our own money to spend and invest. There is absolutely no constitutional justification for Congress to tax the residents of other states, or even of the rest of North Carolina, in order to fund economic development projects in the mountains, the coast, or anywhere else.
The ARC and other boondoggles left over from the New Deal and Great Society eras reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the source of wealth and the nature of poverty. They apply the model and the logic of grantmaking to a problem for which it is poorly suited. North Carolina’s mountain communities will thrive to the extent that individual entrepreneurs see opportunities for profit, workers have the basic education they need to train and retrain for the resulting jobs, and a basic infrastructure of stable laws and well-maintained roads exists to accommodate the resulting growth.
Yes, there is a role for government in creating these conditions, though the federal role is minute. The state should spend its education and transportation dollars more wisely – and in the case of western NC counties, more equitably. And the state legislature should get our fiscal house in order and restore the state’s economic competitiveness through lower rates of taxation and regulation. But the primary responsibility for bettering the economy of Appalachia lies squarely with those who populate its hills and valleys. Their history is actually an inspiring one, not a pitiful one. Millions of Americans have grown up in the region, amid ignorance and poverty and remoteness, and gone on to accomplish great things.
My own family has deep roots in the North Carolina mountains. I doubt seriously these ancestors would have shed a tear at losing a few million dollars in federal welfare to which they would likely never have felt entitled to in the first place – and let’s face it, even if the idea made sense at all, a mere $66 million is too trivial a sum to make the effort a serious one.
Our nation faces big challenges. Our president has priorities. Propping up the crumbling ruins of the New Deal isn’t one of them. Good for him.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.