Writing in the Carolina Journal, John Hood of the John Locke Foundation takes up the story of the overdue report on the national Head Start evaluation:
For decades now, both liberal and not-so-liberal politicians in Washington and Raleigh have clung to the plausible and promising notion that spending tax money early on early childhood education can save money in the long run by boosting high-school graduation rates and reducing rates of future crime, joblessness, and welfare dependency.
The notion is plausible in part because some early laboratory experiments of preschool intervention demonstrated long-term benefits with a few dozen test subjects. And it’s promising because so many other attempts at improving the lives of disadvantaged students – ranging from in-school reforms to various public-assistance programs – have proven to cost more and deliver less than expected.
The political fascination with preschool intervention began in the 1960s with Head Start, then deepened during the past two decades with state-initiated programs such as North Carolina’s own Smart Start in the 1990s and More at Four in the 2000s.
Hood explains that politicians in Washington and Raleigh have been quick to expand preschool programs, but less eager to evaluate whether these programs actually benefit students. In North Carolina, Hood argues,
…the result has been the expenditure of billions of dollars over the past two decades with little evidence of gain. As I’ve noted, the major improvements in North Carolina’s performance on independent reading and math tests predated the statewide implementation of Smart Start and More at Four. After these programs went in effect, the state’s academic performance stalled out.
As for Head Start, Hood kindly highlights the question that Heritage has been raising about the Congressionally-mandated national evaluation that the Department of Health and Human Services has failed to make public.
Since Congress has wanted to know whether Head Start provides lasting benefits since the 1990s (and since taxpayers have spent more than $100 billion on the program since the 1965), don’t taxpayers and parents deserve to know whether this program works? Especially since Congress and the Obama administration are preparing to spend another $8 billion on federal preschool programs.
Federal and state governments are running ballooning budget deficits. It’s high time we start evaluating government programs and determine what’s working and what isn’t.
After noting that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid spending totaled $1.3 trillion, 43 percent of federal spending and more than twice military spending, in 2008, the Washington Post’s Robert Samuelson turns to Obamacare:
Now comes the House-passed health-care “reform” bill that, amazingly, would extract more subsidies from the young. It mandates that health insurance premiums for older Americans be no more than twice the level of that for younger Americans. That’s much less than the actual health spending gap between young and old. Spending for those age 60 to 64 is four to five times greater than those 18 to 24. So, the young would overpay for insurance that — under the House bill — people must buy: Twenty- and thirtysomethings would subsidize premiums for fifty-and sixtysomethings. (Those 65 and over receive Medicare.)
…
Although premium changes would apply mainly to people using insurance “exchanges,” the differences would be substantial. A single person 55 to 64 might save $3,490, estimates an Urban Institute study. By contrast, single people in their 20s and early 30s might pay about $600 to $1,100 more. For the young, the extra cost might be larger, says economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Hudson Institute, because the House bill would require them to purchase fairly generous insurance plans rather than cheaper catastrophic coverage that might better suit their needs.Whatever the added burden, it would darken the young’s already poor economic prospects. Unemployment among 16- to 24-year-olds is 19 percent. Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, notes on his blog that high joblessness depresses young workers’ wages and that the adverse effect — though diminishing — “is still statistically significant 15 years later.” Lost wages over 20 years could total $100,000. Orszag doesn’t mention that health-care “reform” might compound the loss.
Samuelson also goes after the AARP, so read the whole thing, here.
As we’ve noted before, the young are not the only losers under Obamacare. Particularly the poor and small businesses take a heavy hit too.