STOSSEL: Politicians continually do less — or nothing — with your money

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Government excels at not getting things done.

But politicians promise more things anyway.

Vice-President Kamala Harris declared the U.S. government would “build thousands of miles of fibre-optic cable!” This “Broadband Connectivity Agenda” was supported by “every House Republican on Energy and Commerce,” write Republican representatives.

Three years later, not a single person has been connected.

Why? Because, as Milton Friedman put it, “Few people spend other people’s money as carefully as they spend their own.”

Private individuals and businesses constantly adjust to save time and money. But politicians, spending your money, have little interest in that. They routinely add rules that make everything take longer.

You have to “hire certain people based on their colour, their sex,” complains investor Matt Cole in my new video.

“You already have a talent problem, now you’re looking at only being able to recruit from a very small minority of individuals. Then you have to do climate pledges. Then you have to hire from unions.”

“But diversity is good,” I push back.

“That doesn’t mean that you should hire someone because of their race or skin colour … You have all these companies that could actually (build broadband), but it’s unimplementable with the restrictions. They just walk away.”

Eventually, I assume the government will install at least some broadband. By then, their cables may be unnecessary, because of satellite internet, like Starlink, which doesn’t require digging up streets.

“They could do it literally today,” says Cole. “You could have devices in these people’s homes within the next couple of months.”

Why don’t government officials do that? At first, President Joe Biden’s bureaucrats said, “Starlink failed to demonstrate that it had the technical and financial ability.”

When it became clear Starlink obviously did, the administration suddenly called it a monopoly. The FCC chair sneered, “Our economy doesn’t benefit from monopolies.”

“First, they’re not functional, now it’s a monopoly,” says Cole. “The reality is, they didn’t want that to be the solution.”

Didn’t want it to be because Biden Democrats didn’t want to give money to Elon Musk.

Now Musk has a friend in government. Maybe things will change.

But government giving contracts to friends is not good policy. It’s also not a smart way to get things built.

Government pumped billions into “high-speed rail.” Fifteen years later, they’re still talking about the future.

Bureaucrats wasted $500 million of your money on the solar company Solyndra, which then went bankrupt. They wasted millions more trying and failing to create “synthetic fuel.”

More recently, Biden doled out $7 billion to build 500,000 EV charging stations. Two years later, they’ve built seven.

Republicans joined Democrats in funding a CHIPS Act, meant to bring chipmaker jobs to America. It isn’t working. Most chips are still made in Taiwan.

“Even if they get what they promise,” I point out to Cole, Congress appropriated “$53 billion for 115,000 promised jobs. Almost half a million dollars per job!”

“You expect nothing else from government,” he replies.

With Republicans in charge, some say things will be better. But the problem isn’t just Democrats — it’s government.

Then-president Donald Trump’s steel tariffs destroyed American jobs by raising the price of steel.

Politicians should just stop subsidizing certain businesses.

Maybe Elon Musk will convince Trump to do that. He’s tweeted the U.S. should “remove subsidies from all industries,” including his own! Good for him. That would be great.

End the $30 billion handed to Big Agriculture, useless subsidies for “clean” energy, government-guaranteed loans politically to connected businesses, etc.

Maybe Trump will end that part of the Deep State.

But I won’t hold my breath.

Once politicians are in power, they always want to do more.

With your money.

Every Tuesday at johnstossel.com, Stossel posts a new video about the battle between government and freedom