In a recent press release touting a federal fire grant, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) noted that because “firefighters put their lives on the line every day,” we face a “moral issue” that required us to use federal funds to buy the Somerville Fire Department equipment.
The reality is that despite billions in grants across the United States, the Fire Act program has not reduced the number of firefighter deaths or fires. As David Muhlhausen pointed out in his seminal data analysis paper on the Fire Act program, “fire grants, including grants that subsidize the salaries of firefighters, had no impact on fire casualties [and] failed to reduce firefighter deaths, firefighter injuries, civilian deaths, or civilian injuries.” More damning, Muhlhausen found that fire departments that did not received federal grants “were just as successful at preventing fire casualties as grant-funded fire departments.”
As with most pork barrel spending, politicians should keep the “moral issue” card out of it and just admit they are doling out favors to those individuals or groups from whom they receive financial and campaign support. Don’t forget, when Senator Kerry ran for president in 2004, his constant companion on the campaign trail was none other than union head Harold Schaitberger, General President of the International Association of Fire Fighters. In the photo above from the 2004 Presidential campaign, that is Schaitberger on Kerry’s right.
Newly-anointed American Enterprise Institute President Arthur Brooks spoke at Heritage’s weekly Blogger Briefing today (listen here). He addressed the fact that conservatives must establish new language and new messages to remind Americans of the moral necessity of a culture of free enterprise. “Overwhelming majorities of Americans prefer the free market system,” he said, in an animated 50-minute discussion. “Entrepreneurship and local communities are the single best ways to lift people out of poverty…We have the goods to do what [liberals] say they want to do. We have the data and our cause is just,” he said.
The 45-year-old former Syracuse professor moved to D.C. in January and is an eloquent critic of what he calls the liberal desire to make America into a “social democracy.” In an April 30th Wall Street Journal op-ed, he wrote:
Click here to view the embedded video.Advocates of free enterprise must learn from the growing grass-roots protests, and make the moral case for freedom and entrepreneurship. They have to declare that it is a moral issue to confiscate more income from the minority simply because the government can. It’s also a moral issue to lower the rewards for entrepreneurial success, and to spend what we don’t have without regard for our children’s future.”