Kyle Wingfield| Opinion contributor
This is a column by Kyle Wingfield, president and CEO of theGeorgia Public Policy Foundation, a Libertarian-leaning policy think tank based in Atlanta.
No government, Ronald Reagan once observed, ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!
That was true when Reagan said it almost 60 years ago. Nothing in the intervening years has proven him wrong.
Trouble is, nowadays were launching government programs by the trillions of dollars. And theres depressingly little reason to believe well see them disappear once the crisis used to justify them has ended.
Consider the stimulus package Congress passed in 2009, in the name of fighting the previous recession. That package, which eventually weighed in at more than $800 billion, was alleged to be one-time funding that would indeed disappear.
No such luck. Federal spending in 2009 surpassed $3 trillion for the first time, checking in at just over $3.5 trillion. It never again fell below $3.4 trillion. The one-time stimulus spending simply came to be baked into the cake.
Every number I just cited is fairly quaint by todays standards. Congress spent $3.5 trillion last year on COVID-19 relief bills alone, tacking on another $1.9 trillion earlier this year.
If you dont think these mind-boggling sums are on track to become permanent features of the federal landscape, recall that President Joe Biden has proposed more than $4 trillion in additional new spending. At least that amount would be spent over the course of several years. On the other hand, its only May; more proposals are probably on the way.
Just as the sweets you eat today will hang around your waistline well after tomorrow if you dont do something about it, consider one specific example of where thats likely to happen: education spending.
For decades now, spending on public education has been rising steadily, well out of line with increases in student enrollment (which has risen much more modestly) or standardized test scores (which have been mostly flat). Yet, the only refrain we hear from the education establishment is that our schools are underfunded.
We hear that even now, with costs related to the pandemic offered as a reason. Thats not really a reason. Its an excuse.
Georgia has 180 city and county school districts. After the 2019 fiscal year, the last one completed before the pandemic, their collective financial reserves were almost $3.2 billion. A year later, after the brutal first few months of the pandemic, and the attendant costs of moving suddenly to virtual platforms such as WiFi hotspots and laptops for students, that number was wait for it almost $3.8 billion.
Thats right: Georgia school districts collective reserves increased by more than $600 million even as things were collapsing all around them.
To be fair, not every district fared so well. Thirty-five districts saw their fund balances fall, some by several million dollars. But far more enjoyed increases, by more than $1 million apiece for almost half of the districts.
Its true that districts have since weathered two years of austerity cuts to their state funding, totaling almost $730 million. Even so, thats a fraction of the nearly $6.8 billion theyve received so far in federal emergency funding.
Add it all up changes in reserve funds, decreases in state funding and surges of federal funding and Georgias school districts are better off by more than $6.6 billion. Thats most of the way toward doubling their annual state funding. And every single district, even the ones that spent down some of their reserves, was net positive.
If you believe the education establishment will simply watch that money disappear, Ive got a desert in southeast Georgia to sell you.
It wont be long before we hear this money described not gratefully as a lifeline during a difficult time, but solemnly as how we should have been funding education all along.
There will be little accounting for how it was spent or what it achieved. Itll just become the baseline against which all future education spending is measured.
For once, Id prefer we prove Ronald Reagan wrong.
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Wingfield: Reagan's words on government programs still ring true - Savannah Morning News