Government Octopus Threatens Economy

As the government shutdown drags on, it is starting to damage activities across the economy because federal tentacles are in everything. But we better get used to it because with rising deficits and growing partisan discord such disruptions will probably become more frequent and damaging.

Sadly, the expansion and centralization of government power in recent decades has made our $20 trillion economy dependent on a small group of self-interested and often ill-informed politicians. Centralization and dysfunction at the core is a toxic mix.

The shutdown is affecting activities that the government needlessly monopolizes—such as air traffic control. It is affecting activities that the government needlessly regulates and subsidizes—from Smuttynose’s beer labels in New Hampshire to Betty Gay’s home repairs in Kentucky.

And it is needlessly harming a large group of people that it has micromanaged for far too long—American Indians. “The shutdown has hit Native American tribes especially hard because so many of their basic services depend on federal funding,” notes the Washington Post. Education, health care, road maintenance, and other services on reservations are often run by the federal government or run by tribal employees paid by the federal government.

That dependency has long resulted in mismanaged and low-quality services for the million people who live on reservations. In the New York Times, one tribal leader spoke of federal support, “The federal government owes us this: We prepaid with millions of acres of land,” while another said the shutdown “adversely affects a population that is already adversely affected by the United States government.”

I agree with those views. In the long run, subsidies are not a good way to generate prosperity, but they are needed until Congress tackles basic problems of property rights and legal institutions on reservations that stymie growth.

In the meantime, funding should be converted to block grants to the tribes or vouchers to individuals on reservations. Tribes and individuals would use the benefits to contract for services such as schooling and health care from private firms or nearby local governments. That would further the goal of Indian self-determination and ensure that reservation life doesn’t get caught in the political crossfire.