Federal programs that have failed to accomplish whatever they were initially set up to do should be perfect candidates for the budget chopping block, especially after the Congressional Budget Office’s newly revised prediction that the federal deficit will hit $7.1 trillion in the next 10 years. But getting rid of programs that don’t work is much easier said than done.
Take federal fire grants, which are used to subsidize more than 10,000 local fire departments and emergency medical services. Congress wanted to reduce fire casualties in high-risk areas when it authorized the grants under the FIRE Act of 2000 and the National Defense Authorization Act of 2001. But fire grants, which are administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and cost $800 million annually, have had “no statistically measurable results” in reducing deaths and injuries to firefighters or civilians, according to an analysis by David Muhlhausen of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis.
