Are Community Development Block Grants justifiable?
Why are federal tax dollars being sent back to local government to distribute to charitable organizations?
Back in January, the Bloomington City Council voted to distribute money from federal community development block grants to local charities. Fortunately, there was no money given to Planned Parenthood. While they get subsidies every summer from local property tax dollars at both the city and county level, the only time that I know of where PP got money from CDBG was in 2000 for "teen education." Several members of Students for Life at Indiana University attended the meeting, and the organization's president spoke against the funding.
But here is a more fundamental question: Why are federal tax dollars being sent back to local government to distribute to charitable organizations? Why are taxpayers sending money to Washington, D.C. so those dollars can be sent back to Bloomington for politicians to distribute?
Given the size of the federal budget, I realize that $622,000 is effectively one molecule of water, inside of one raindrop in the Pacific Ocean of all of the things the federal government spends money on. (The total amount distributed nationwide is much larger, sitting at $3.3 billion.) But is this really something the federal government needs to be doing, given that we are still running a $1.8 trillion budget deficit and the Congressional Budget Office projects a $1.9 trillion budget deficit for fiscal year 2026? (So much for DOGE.) Given our federalist system and the unimaginable federal budget deficit, would it be more wise to leave this sort of thing to the states?
If we are serious about finding government waste, giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic politicians to distribute as they see fit should be one of the first things on the chopping block for President Trump and for Republicans in the House and Senate. Congress should at least significantly scale back the CDBG program, if not eliminate it outright. When the annual budget deficit (not the national debt) is approaching two trillion dollars, everything needs to be on the table and nothing should be safe from cuts.