McClintock: Grants Gone Wild

Congressman Tom McClintock’s delivered remarks on the House Floor regarding HR 3372. This bill authorizes grants to support community-based reentry resources for previously incarcerated individuals who return to their communities.

First, the bill authorizes the Department of Justice (DOJ) to make grants for community-based nonprofit organizations to create community reentry centers.

Second, the bill authorizes DOJ to make grants for states, Indian tribes, and local governments to operate reentry services assistance hotlines.

McClintock was Friday’s KVML “Newsmaker of the Day”. Here are his words:

“Mr. Speaker:

I voted for this bill in committee because it is a worthy objective. Assisting prisoners to successfully re-enter society, find jobs, and take their place as law-abiding citizens is essential to the safety and stability of our society.

But on further reflection, I have come to believe it is a program that the federal government should not be funding through grants to local organizations. Grants have become the third biggest expenditure of the federal government, behind only Social Security and national defense. We give away a half-trillion dollars a year in this manner – roughly $4,000 from an average family’s taxes — with little oversight, little accountability and little follow-up.

Re-entry preparation should be a top priority of federal and state prison systems. State prisons are a state responsibility and should be funded by the taxpayers of the individual states. Probation departments exist precisely to promote re-entry, and the model in this bill should be considered by them.

Federal prisons are our responsibility. We also have probation services that should be striving toward implementing concepts in this bill. If this measure funded federal programs that expanded re-entry preparation within the federal prisons and probation system, I would strongly support it.

But it doesn’t. Instead, it takes the money of a taxpayer in one state and throws that money at a non-profit organization in another state with the hope some good will come of it. And some might. But more likely, it will disappear into salaries of various groups who will write glowing reports of their work and apply for more grants next year.

And if, for some reason, the Federal Bureau of Prisons is unable to provide these services, they should be competitively bid out to contractors with specific performance measurements and accountability.

Federal grant spending is completely out of control, and it has to stop. Reckless spending – all at good causes – I’ve never seen a grant program that doesn’t promise to do good things – is destroying our prosperity. That spending is driving the worst inflation in 40 years and the most ruinous debt in our nation’s history. And it’s hard to find a grant program that actually delivered on its promises.

It is time we spend taxpayers’ money as carefully as they spend what they have left after we’ve taxed them into debt. This bill falls short of that responsibility.”

The “Newsmaker of the Day” is heard every weekday morning at 6:45, 7:45 and 8:45 on AM 1450 and FM 102.7 KVML.