FREE MONEY FROM THE GOVERNMENT?
by Andrew Zuelke
2008

Recently, I caught an infomercial sponsored by the National Grants Conference (NGC). There was a round table discussion by characters from Housing and Urban Development (HUD), US Small Business Administration (SBA) and of course the co-founders of NGC, Mike and Irene Milin. Their web site is ngcreg.com.

On their infomercial, Mike proudly proclaims, “The government is helping us (grant recipients) make money.

I heard Oscar Anderson, former Deputy Chief of Staff for HUD, tell anyone who was watching, “We’ve (government) put people into homes with no money down fully funded by the government. Money they don’t have to pay back.”
Melanie Sabelhaus, former Deputy of Administration for the SBA, chimed in with, “The environment we’re creating enables us to take risks—“

What risks, Ms. Sabelhaus? The remote possibility the government may not approve your grant? If they don’t, you’re no worse off than before you applied for it. Even if someone’s grant-funded business goes bankrupt, it matters not if it was started up with money that wasn’t that private person’s money to begin with. To paraphrase an old adage, “Nothing ventured, nothing lost.”

Viewers of the infomercial were further regaled with the personal testimonials of average folks telling us how they received:

“…$90,000 to start my own business…”
“…a $125,000 business loan and an extra $15,000 grant.”
“…$130,000 free money grants and matching funds…” so one married couple, as they delighted in telling the viewers could, “…refurbish a 15-unit complex.”

One woman said, “…a half million dollars is coming to our small town…” for historical preservation of their main street.
And here’s my personal favorite. A woman actually begins crying with joy for receiving a, “…$15,000 forgivable loan and $8,000 in real estate equity…” to be able to buy her first home with three bedrooms and two baths.

Forgivable loans, oh how generous. How nice of the politicians to ‘forgive’ the loans they dole out with our money. For all our liberal/socialist friends who think this is just wonderful that government is ‘helping the people’ and then not burdening the loan recipients with some silly, unfair loan repayments, I only have one retort:

It’s easy to be generous with someone else’s money.

But the Milin’s aren’t the only ones showing people how to milk the fatted government cow. Matthew Lesko, author of over a dozen books, is probably the best known of the free-money-no-responsibility-needed crowd. On one of his web sites, lesko.com, there is a wonderful 770 page tome titled “Free Money to Pay Your Bills.” We in the Constitution Party have a more time-proven plan to do that. We call it, “Get a job and take responsibility for your expenses and cut back on luxuries.”
According to Lesko, from another of his books titled “Free Money to Change your Life”, we find out that, “Every year, the government gives out $350 billion to people to change their life.” Oh, yes, that’s why the Founding Fathers finally agreed to create a central government, to ‘change people’s lives by giving them public monies for their private uses.’ Sure. We also read in Lesko’s book that there are “15,000 government programs doling out that life-changing cash.”

On mlesko.com we learn, “The most successful companies have also jumped on the free government grants and loans bandwagon, including Home Depot, Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, American Online, Outback Steakhouse, Nike…”
Now, I’m willing to bet that enrages millions of Americans when they hear that ‘evil’

corporations like these are unashamedly seeking out and taking government handouts. But that great anger seems to mysteriously disappear when the average folks are the ones getting the handouts.

That’s what he Milin’s and the Lesko’s of this nation are counting on, that people will hear the word ‘free’ and will overlook one simple obvious point: if you pay taxes, the money isn’t free!

The CPoW is a staunch supporter of capitalism. First point to make here…subsidies, grants and government-backed loans are not capitalism…they’re socialism.

I am not an economic science major. But it seems to me, layman on economic matters that I am, that when a government entity props up or pumps public monies into a private endeavor like a business, besides the fact that government is stacking the economic deck unfairly against a direct competitor of that business who cannot get a grant or forgivable loan from Uncle Sam and must make a profit on his own or fail, it also artificially creates the impression these grant-receiving businesses are making it on their own, even if they’re not. The CPoW believes any business, from a Fortune 500 Company, to a Mom-and-Pop store, to a dairy farm, should rise or fall on its own merits and not be kept alive by some bureaucratic life support.

Also, would you agree that some people simply aren’t prudent and wise businessmen? So what happens if the business being kept alive by subsidies and government loans is not competitive, being that it no longer sells goods and/or services in demand by the public or that the business is badly managed by owners or perhaps they are just unwilling to make the changes necessary to become more efficient and productive? Better then that such a business be allowed to fail so that a more productive enterprise better managed by more forward-thinking and efficient entrepreneurs is allowed to flourish in their place.

Heartless and cold blooded? Perhaps, but that is capitalism. This is about the only time the CPoW actually defends the evolutionary belief of survival of the fittest, which is what makes capitalism tick and what has afforded Americans the most successful nation the world has ever known and brought life to one of America’s many gifts to the world: the middle class. Free money and handouts aren’t the way of capitalism. At least, they’re not supposed to be.

We do fervently believe that, yes, too many regulations and micro-managing from Washington or Madison can still cause a profitable business to fail due to having to comply with and pay for all the demands of government upon them, so that is an issue as well. But our party supports full compliance with the Constitution’s Article 1: Section 8 and Amendment Ten so the federal government doesn’t commit overreach and vote to create programs that federal officers and bureaucrats have no authority to even establish, such as ‘free’ money grant programs.

Government has clearly defined roles to play in our society, but robbing Peter to subsidize Paul isn’t one of them. Nor is it the government’s role to take upon themselves the debts and responsibilities of private citizens by paying their bills or buying their homes. Public monies are for general public projects, not individual gain and desires.

Actually, the people who apply for these grants and loans aren’t nearly as much to blame as the politicians and unelected bureaucrats who created programs like HUD’s “American Dream Down Payment Home Program” and the increasingly overreaching, power-grabbing unelected bureaucrats whose agencies are given enormous annual budgets by the politicians.

If Republicans are the limited government party they claim to be, they would have used their six-year majority they enjoyed before November 2006 to crush these grant programs and put the NGC’s and Lesko’s out of business. A Constitution Party majority in Congress certainly would, no doubt about it.

Now, for those of you reading this who have any lingering doubts that Republicans are not the limited government, Constitutional champions they claim up and down to be, just how many career politicians in the GOP benefit from these programs in the form of votes for them on election day? It’s not in their interest to end them any more than it is to end the earmarks and pork barrel projects. Did I mention that former Republican congressman J. C. Watts of Oklahoma was one of the panelists on the NGC infomercial, praising, not condemning, these ‘free’ money programs and confirming their availability for the asking?

Might I suggest the Constitution Party invest a little coin to acquire copies of Mr. Lesko’s books? Having them on hand will be great resources for our candidates on the campaign trail to show taxpayers what their stolen money is paying for and how our party will save their money. And when our people are elected to the House and Senate, the research done by Mr. Lesko will be invaluable in locating these unconstitutional programs, making their de-funding and elimination much faster.
Some will argue that the CPoW shouldn’t begrudge people for such small amounts of money. After all, Congress spends trillions, so of what consequence is a mere $24,000 for a home loan here or a $100,000 to start your own business over there? Some will ask how our party can be so heartless as to seek to deny fellow Americans their heart’s desire. “It’s so little money, who will miss it?” they ask.

The CPoW isn’t opposed to government grants because we’re against creating jobs or pursuing happiness. To put it bluntly, it simply isn’t the legal role of government to use the tax code (and guilt and good intentions) to take the financial means and property earned and owned by one private citizen to transfer it to another private citizen. What’s more, unlike the private sector, government doesn’t worry about making a profit nor do politicians and bureaucrats who run the government have any personal stake in individual businesses failing. There are no consequences for government when it backs unwise private ventures or unsound business plans or when it dumps public money into poverty and relief programs that hobble instead of help to lift people out of poverty. In fact, government often makes people worse off than before the public assistance was rendered.

No, our party is just reminded of the cautionary words of the late Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen, “A million here and a million there and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”

In a republic trillions of dollars in debt, of which the interest alone is breaking us, it’s time for Washington and cash-strapped states like Wisconsin to chop down their money trees and stop milking and start slaughtering their fatter cows and redirect that annual $350 billion in ‘free’ money towards our nation’s far more important economic survival. If America doesn’t survive, the grants and loans won’t either.