Today’s “Daily Journal” guest columnist is Joseph Coletti, fiscal and health care policy analyst for the John Locke Foundation.

You remember the Lorax, who spoke for the trees. He tried to stop the Once-ler from chopping all the Truffula Trees down to make thneeds. He did not succeed. Perhaps he knew he would not succeed. Nevertheless, the Lorax never gave up, and the Once-ler kept the last Truffula seed.

It is worth remembering Dr. Seuss’ cautionary tale as we enter the next phase of the great bailout boondoggle. Written about the natural environment, the fictional tale applies just as well to the economic ecosystem and the federal system of government.

The bailout bill for state and local governments being advertised as economic stimulus is like the Once-ler’s wonderful invention.

It is making money, and money is a thing that everyone needs. But the money has strings. It has strings galore. And before it arrives, it will have even more.

The bill represents “the largest expansion of a federal role in education since World War II.” If school systems felt obliged to meet No Child Left Behind standards when federal funds were less than one-tenth of their budgets, watch what new hoops pop up when the federal money doubles. Why not let parents make decisions about their schools and expand the standard deduction for dependents or the child tax credit, or make the child tax credit refundable? Because the politicians want to make thneeds, education is secondary.

More money goes to Medicaid, too, but only partly to plug state budget holes created by greater demand for service. The rest will expand Medicaid to cover any worker collecting unemployment payments and will subsidize the cost of continuing insurance for others who lose their jobs. It might be easier and cheaper just to allow people to buy insurance from other states. But then the role of government would not expand, and those Truffula Trees might grow back.

All of this expansion creates a new set of problems even more difficult than the ones it is supposed to resolve. States such as North Carolina that must balance their budgets will be violating the spirit of their constitutions by relying on borrowed money to pay operating expenses. If the bailout gets states and localities through the downturn, it encourages more overspending without consequences and allows Once-ler politicians to continue chopping down the forest.

How did we get in this rubblesome state, and how did it come at such a bubblesome rate?

The economic Truffula Trees of markets have made possible the varied economic lives we lead. The effects were hard to notice when politicians began to remove the trees and transform them into security thneeds, polluting the economic ecosystem and killing economic opportunity.

Social Security guaranteed income after work. Medicare guaranteed health care after work. Medicaid guaranteed health care for some of the poor, and expansions in the half century since it first passed have covered more people. A tax exemption for insurance purchased by one’s employer covered most working people. Regulations and lawsuits removed other risks from the economy.

Then came the bailouts: first Chrysler in 1979, the financial industry in the wake of the Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) collapse in 1998, state governments in 2002, and seemingly everybody else since 2007.

It is not too late to be the Lorax. Our task is made easier by the fact that by speaking for the markets we also plant and protect their seeds – Hayek and Sowell and Roberts and Burke, Bastiat and Tocqueville and Friedman and Kirk. Their ideas remind us of the proper role of government and of the importance of markets, which will grow in any environment, but will flourish only when risks and rewards are part of the environment. Destroying markets for security leaves only desolation.

And all that the Lorax left here in this mess
was a small pile of rocks with the one word
“UNLESS”
UNLESS someone like you
cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better.
It’s not.