Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute recently published a short “Tax & Budget Bulletin” entitled “Number of Federal Subsidy Programs Tops 1,800“.

It’s worth reading just to so you can see the rapid growth in government subsidies (particularly since 2000), but also for the important commentary offered by Mr. Edwards who makes the point that this is about a lot more than just money. Here are a couple of the paragraphs which I found particularly important, because they bear emphasis:

There is little room in the Constitution for the federal government to subsidize state governments, private organizations, or individuals, yet there are large numbers of programs that do just that in areas such as agriculture, education, health, and housing. As a result, state governments are becoming regional divisions of the federal government, businesses and nonprofit groups are becoming tools of the state, and Americans are becoming European in their desire for cradle-to-grave hand-outs.

And

It is very sad that the nation founded on individualism and limited government has more people than ever suckling at the federal subsidy teat. President Barack Obama has proposed a wide range of new subsidies in energy, health care, and other areas. If enacted, they would take America further away from the individual reliance, voluntary charity, and entrepreneurialism that made it so prosperous in the first place.
Americans need to wake up and fight back before the addictive drug of subsidies puts individualism in a permanent coma. People should start using new Internet tools, such as www.usaspending.gov, to research recipients of all these subsidies and complain to Congress about the abuse of their tax dollars.5 There is no time to lose for taxpayers to make their voices heard in Washington because the spending increases envisioned by President Obama are truly frightening.