High Cost of a Helping Hand

The long road to deficits has been paved with the best of intentions

The federal budget cuts proposed by the President look crisp and bloodless when summarized in tidy charts and statistical tables, but it is a very long way from the Latinate language of program descriptions to the bumpy realities of people and places those Washington moneys touch. Though inevitably some were born of boondoggling and hornswoggling in the give and take of American politics, most federal programs were conceived with the best of intentions, created to advance goals on which much of America agreed. To feed the hungry. To heal...

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