Stop Taxpayer-Subsidized Lobbying!

The U.S. Government awards more than $39 billion a year in grants to advocacy groups that most Americans would not support, if given a choice.

by F.R. Duplantier

The American Association of Retired Persons (known as AARP) received more than $73 million in taxpayer funds in a single year. The National Trust for Historic Preservation raked in $7 million. The AFL-CIO and the American Bar Association each garnered more than $2 million. Neither the lawyers lobby nor any other group is entitled to such handouts, but they obviously have no scruples about asking for them. "The financial cost to the taxpayer is far higher than the amount funneled to these organizations," say Marshall Wittmann and Charles Griffin of the Heritage Foundation. "Each one not only lobbies for its contract or grant, but also advocates for bigger, more expensive social welfare programs."

Wittmann and Griffin have no objection to privately funded advocacy. "It is an entirely different matter, however, to employ the coercive power of the federal government to force taxpayers to finance organizations which lobby Congress or other government entities." This practice is an affront to Americans of all political persuasions. "It is every bit as unjust to force liberal taxpayers to fund organizations on the right as it is to force conservative taxpayers to finance organizations on the left," say Wittmann and Griffin. Taxpayers should not be forced "to underwrite advocacy with which they disagree."

Wittmann and Griffin argue that taxpayer funding of advocacy organizations is wrong on at least three levels: "It is fiscally irresponsible to spend federal revenues on activities that provide no meaningful return to the American people. It is morally wrong for the government to take sides in any public policy debate by assisting the advocacy activities of an elite few. And it is logically wrong for the government to fund activities that often result in lobbying for increased federal expenditures."

Our Founding Fathers took great pains to design a government that would discourage the growth of factions who seek to promote their own special interests without regard to the common good or the rights of other citizens. "Instead of restraining factions, however, the federal government today subsidizes them," say Wittmann and Griffin. "This distorts the political process by favoring one faction over another and by nourishing a network of special interests" committed to the growth of government.

Wittmann and Griffin call for "tougher laws" that would put an end to the subsidization of factions. They recommend that witnesses testifying before Congress "be required to divulge . . . whether they receive federal funds and, if so, for what purpose and in what amount." They insist that any organization receiving federal funds should be prohibited not only from lobbying, but also from maintaining "organizational ties to any entity that engages in lobbying activity." This, they say, is the only way to make sure that no American is "compelled to finance lobbying activities with which he disagrees."

---

Behind The Headlines is syndicated, free of charge, by America's Future, a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to the preservation of our free-enterprise system and our constitutional form of government. For more information, write:

America's Future