The Romans perfected torture of their political prisoners. It didn’t save them.If it’s true that the first step towards recovery is admitting you have a problem, then last week’s release of the report detailing the CIA’s torturing of prisoners can at least hopefully provide the impetus for Americans to disavow such methods and begin to rein in the out-of-control security state that has grown especially since 9/11.

As Peggy Noonan recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal—a paper not otherwise known to be soft on the War on Terror:

…America should never again do what is asserted and outlined in the report, which enumerates various incidents of what I believe must honestly be called torture. …

… Torture is not like us. It’s not part of the American DNA. We think of ourselves as better than that because we’ve been better than that.

It is almost childish to say it, yet children sometimes see obvious truths. We can’t use torture methods and still at the same time be the hope of the world. You’re [either] an animal like other animals or you’re something different, something higher, and known to be different and higher.

Especially in this season celebrating the birth of Christ, the Prince of Peace who taught us the Golden Rule of “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you,” we need to take this opportunity to affirm that these methods are totally unacceptable in the eyes of man and God.

As Americans held the German people accountable for the acts of Hitler, and Iraqis for the policies of Saddam Hussein, we ought not be surprised or think we can escape being damned for torture carried out by our political masters and their henchmen.

We thus, individually and collectively, must stand up and loudly declare, “I would rather die in a country that upholds every human’s inalienable rights than live in a country ‘protected’ by barbarous thugs.”

Shooting the messenger as many commentators seem to think would solve the problem will not unmake the facts: torture is now part of the American culture. The only point to address now is: do you condone torture or do you condemn it? If you condemn it, you must speak up and help eradicate every justification floated for such abuse.

The only way to uncorrupt our culture is to return to our roots and reimmerse ourselves in the principles upon which the kind of culture worth preserving rests: all humans are equally beloved children of God, endowed inalienably and equally with rights which must be respected regardless of circumstance. No ends can justify an unjust means—every means is itself an end.

Christmas provides an excellent starting point: read the life of Jesus. Remember how it ended, in torture and death. Then decide whose example you wish to follow, and do your best to do so.

Last week, the mainstream media ran two stories about two Obamacare “beneficiaries” who were actually victims.

The first was about a woman whose husband was already extremely sick, and was subject to the risk of being unable to buy health insurance in the individual market if he lost his employer-based benefits. That was a legitimate problem before Obamacare. My proposed solution is health-status insurance, or “insurance against becoming uninsurable” — a type of re-insurance. Obamacare’s solution is a federally regulated health-insurance bureaucracy:

The transition to Obamacare – at least for a 59-year-old man and a 56-year-old woman in south Orange County – wouldn’t be quite that bad. But it would be, in three big ways, far rougher and more frustrating than I’d ever dreamed.

1. Obamacare brought us new health insurance options, but cost us our more affordable plans.

2. We learned patience, but we couldn’t keep our doctors.

3. The Affordable Care Act saved us money this year, but it didn’t alleviate our concerns about obtaining affordable medical care.

The second story involved a woman explaining how Medicaid, expanded by Obamacare, “forces families like mine to stay poor.” Her pregnant sister-in-law suffered a tragic car accident, and fell into the social-safety net:

After the birth, Marcella would have been able to join the university’s student health plan. The baby would be covered by the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the federal-state plan for lower-income children. Marcella and Dave thought they were all set. And then, with the accident, they fell down the social assistance rabbit hole.

At first I thought I would be a great help to Marcella and Dave as they negotiated this web of programs. After all, I’d been teaching and writing about social policy for years, first at Harvard and then at MIT. But I was soon humbled by how immensely complicated the programs are on the ground, and shocked by how penurious. The programs that Marcella now needs as a quadriplegic have helped her in many ways, but have also thrust her, my brother, and their young son into poverty, with little hope of escape. Until this accident, I did not realize the depth of the trap.

And this is not just the story of one family hit by tragedy. Millions suffer under such program strictures and limitations. Between ages 25 and 65, two-thirds of Americans will live in a household receiving means-tested benefits, according to sociologists Mark Rank and Thomas Hirschl.

This “poverty trap” is a consequence of very high effective marginal income tax rates, caused by the loss of benefits as household incomes increase, which incentivizes people to keep their incomes low.

* * *

For the pivotal alternative to Obamacare, please see the Independent Institute’s widely acclaimed book: Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis, by John C. Goodman.

In “The Communist Manifesto,” Marx and Engels tell us that “[t]he history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” In a sense, I agree, although I define the struggling classes differently than they did. In any event, it seems clear enough from what we know about the past ten thousand years or so of human history that people everywhere have been marvelously creative in finding ways to define certain people as members of a class or other group that can and should be treated with contempt, denied equal justice, and exploited without mercy.

Sometimes the groups have been defined along racial or ethnic lines, at other times along religious lines, at still other times along lines of their place of birth or their citizenship status, sometimes by their level or kind of education, sometimes by the language they speak, and so forth, on and on.

When I was a boy, growing up in the San Joaquin Valley of California, I lived in a place where about two-thirds of the population consisted of Mexicans and their native-born children, people who often suffered mistreatment at the hands of the authorities and members of the public. For many of them, the fear of deportation and police abuse was a constant in their lives.

I myself, however, was a member of a different despised class, the migrants from Oklahoma known as Okies. Although these people had previously suffered considerable mistreatment at the hands of the California legislature, police, landowners, and others, by the time my family arrived, in 1951, such mistreatment had greatly moderated, and although I was always aware that we Okies were looked down on by some people for our poverty, our lack of education, and our speech, I never dwelt on such minor lack of respect, and indeed I personally suffered not at all in this regard when I attended the same small-town schools as everyone else and succeeded there academically and athletically without my group membership’s holding me back at all.

After I became a professor, I spent much of my time during the first fifteen years of my career engaged in research and writing about American blacks since the War Between the States. This work was often hard to bear because of the nature of the subject. It was not that I was studying people who had low incomes, little education, or other deficiencies, often as a result of their treatment at the hands of the powers that were, especially in the South. It was more because of how the whites in general treated the blacks with contempt and viewed them as inferior by virtue of nothing but their race. This sort of pervasive withholding of basic human respect made my blood boil. As I studied occasions when such disrespect spilled over into the outrages for which the South became justly infamous — lynchings and similar savageries — I often had to struggle to keep my tears from staining my notes.

Nowadays, I have the same reaction to the contempt with which so many Americans treat the migrants from Mexico, Central America, and elsewhere solely because they belong to a different ethnic group, speak a different language, are very poor, or — worst of all — lack the official stamp of government approval that endows them with permission to be here, a right that no peaceful person ought to have been denied in the first place. Reading about the injustices perpetrated so lavishly on these people, especially by police, but also by various vigilantes, nativists, xenophobes, and other yahoos, I find again that my blood boils and my tears well up.

When, oh when, will people finally learn to treat all human beings as their brothers and sisters? Sad to say, I believe the answer is, never.

The past five years have seen four major anti-government movements gain momentum.  These movements have not been revolutionary movements, but rather movements that pushed to limit the scope of government in various ways.

The Tea Party movement began in 2009 with the motivation of electing candidates to office who supported a reduction in the size and scope of government.  The Tea Party leans Republican, supporting lower government spending, lower taxes, and reduced regulation.

The Occupy movement, which began in 2011, is more associated with the Democratic party, and objects to the cronyism in which government policy favors the 1% over the 99%.  Despite the apparent political differences with the Tea Party movement, both are objecting to the scope and power of government, so have more in common than first meets the eye.

Next, the revelations of government surveillance programs by Edward Snowden in 2013 led to a global backlash against government surveillance both by the federal government and by lower-level governments.  While this backlash didn’t include political rallies, as with the Tea Party, or demonstrations, as with the Occupy movement, the substantial negative reaction was bi-partisan and widespread.

More recently, demonstrations across the nation in response to the police killings in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York, were protests against the arbitrary use of police power, and the perception that the legal system and government policies more generally work to the disadvantage of the nation’s most disadvantaged citizens.

The common element in all four of these movements is that they object to the scope and power of government, and the way government power is arbitrarily used for the benefit of the elite and to the detriment of the masses.  Currently, these anti-government movements are separate entities, and the main players in each have not appeared to recognize the objections they share in common to the scope and power of government.

Indeed, despite their objections to the abuse of government power, many members of some of these movements often favor enlarging government, even as they object to the way the government uses the power it currently has.

If all of these groups, who are very motivated to pursue their own narrow anti-government agendas, would wake up to the common anti-government agenda that unites them, the nation could see a much stronger backlash against its bloated and power-hungry government.

Last Friday’s employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics caused some joy in the land: 321,000 jobs were added in November. My Forbes colleague Bruce Japsen cheered about an “Obamacare jobs bump” in health services. If true, this would be an example of Bastiat’s broken-window fallacy: Broken windows create employment for glaziers, so the government should encourage breaking windows.

Similarly, Obamacare “broke” health care. So, we cannot be sure if jobs added in health care are adding value to society, or are just a response to Obamacare’s making health care even more inefficient than it was.

However, there was no Obamacare jobs boom in November. As shown in Table 1 and Table 2 (below), jobs in health care increased by 0.19 percent from October. Non-health nonfarm civilian jobs increased 0.23 percent. So, healthcare jobs increased at a marginally slower rate than other jobs.

However, ambulatory hiring resumed its torrid pace, after a lull in October, when hiring in outpatient clinics froze. In November, it was nursing and residential care facilities which froze hiring, while hospital hiring increased only 0.09 percent.

We continue to see a significant transfer of employment in health services from inpatient institutions to ambulatory facilities. Hopefully, this is a positive change.

* * *

For the pivotal alternative to Obamacare, please see the Independent Institute’s widely acclaimed book: Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis, by John C. Goodman.

The Senate Committee on Intelligence has finally released its study on the CIA’s “Enhanced Interrogation Program” (what may be called “torture techniques” by some) after a delay of more than a year. The report is some 525 pages. (You can access the entire report here.)

The findings of the report are appalling. Here are some of the big “takeaways.”

1. The CIA’s enhanced interrogation program has been grossly ineffective at gathering intelligence and combatting terrorism. According to the report,

The Committee finds, based on a review of CIA interrogation records, that the use of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of obtaining accurate information or gaining detainee cooperation….While being subjected to the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques and afterwards, multiple CIA detainees fabricated information, resulting in faulty intelligence. Detainees provided fabricated information on critical intelligence issues, including the terrorist threats.

2. The techniques used by the CIA, without a doubt, violate human rights laws and article 3 of the Geneva Convention (note that President Bush affirmed this article does apply to detained terror suspects). Moreover, evidence indicates that torture was a “go to” technique as opposed to a means of last resort.

Beginning with the CIA’s first detainee…the CIA applied its enhanced interrogation techniques with significant repetition for days or weeks at a time. Interrogation techniques such as slaps and “wallings” (slamming detainees against a wall) were used in combination, frequently concurrent with sleep deprivation and nudity.

Records do not support CIA representations that the CIA initially used an “an open, non- threatening approach,” or that interrogations began with the “least coercive technique possible” and escalated to more coercive techniques only as necessary.

3. Interrogation took precedent over the health of detainees.

The waterboarding technique…induc[ed] convulsions and vomiting. [One detainee] became “completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth.'” Sleep deprivation involved keeping detainees awake for up to 180 hours, usually standing or in stress positions…At least five detainees experienced disturbing hallucinations during prolonged sleep deprivation and, in at least two of those cases, the CIA nonetheless continued the sleep deprivation.

4. The CIA consistently misrepresented their actions to other branches of government.

Contrary to CIA representations to the Department of Justice, the CIA instructed personnel that the interrogation…would take “precedence” over…medical care, resulting in the deterioration of a bullet wound [a detainee] incurred during his capture. In at least two other cases, the CIA used its enhanced interrogation techniques despite warnings from CIA medical personnel that the techniques could exacerbate physical injuries.

5. Innocent individuals were detained and tortured.

Of the 119 known detainees, at least 26 were wrongfully held and did not meet the detention standard in the September 2001 Memorandum of Notification (MON). These included an ‘intellectually challenged’ man whose CIA detention was used solely as leverage to get a family member to provide information.

6. In many cases, the CIA used threats against detainees’ children and other family members to induce “cooperation.”

The CIA led several detainees to believe they would never be allowed to leave CIA custody alive, suggesting to one detainee that he would only leave in a coffin-shaped box. One interrogator told another detainee that he would never go to court, because “we can never let the world know what I have done to you.”

CIA officers also threatened…detainees with harm to their families— to include threats to harm the children of a detainee, threats to sexually abuse the mother of a detainee, and a threat to “cut [a detainee’s] mother’s throat.”

Proponents of these types of techniques often argue that they are a “necessary evil” in order to prevent acts of terror and obtain information integral to national security interests. What the report indicates, however, is that there is nothing “necessary” about the CIA’s torture program. The evidence released by the U.S. government indicates that, not only have these techniques failed in producing reliable information to combat terrorism, but have also wasted time and other resources as the CIA and other law enforcement agencies track down false, torture-induced leads.

Others argue that this treatment of “terrorists” is acceptable because they are “prisoners of war” or “enemy combatants” and, therefore, not entitled to same rights as U.S. citizens. Even if one takes this view, however, the contents of the report indicate that the behavior of the U.S. government violates U.S. and international law. The Congressional resolution following 9/11 was not a declaration of war, nor have these prisoners been granted POW status. Instead, they are foreign citizens, detained and “interrogated” indefinitely at the hands of the U.S. government.

Earlier this summer, in discussing al Qaeda detainees following 9/11, President Obama stated, “We tortured some folks. We did some things contrary to our values.” Begging the pardon of the President, but I didn’t torture anyone. The same may be said for the vast majority of U.S. citizens. There actions were conducted by actors of the U.S. government. These actors and their superiors should be held responsible.

The report released today will undoubtedly ignite controversy and lengthy discussion about the use of torture by the U.S., as it very well should. In the coming days and weeks, as the contents of the report scrutinized, I’d encourage us to remember the following,

If this report were released about Russia’s interrogation practices, the U.S. government would be “outraged.”
If this report were released about North Korean interrogation practices, the U.S. government would “condemn such actions in the strongest possible terms.”
If this report were released about German interrogation practices, such actions would be “unacceptable and unbecoming of an ally.”

The contents and implications of this report do not change because someone says, “it’s all in the name of U.S. national security.”

According to a recent post by Scott Vorse on Brietbart’s “Big Government” website, MIT economics professor Jonathan Gruber, already in hot water for saying that “the stupidity of the American voter” was politically indispensable in getting Congress to pass the Affordable Care Act, previously had advised former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg on tobacco tax policy.

In July 2008, Gruber wrote a report titled A Modern Economic View of Tobacco Taxation purporting to show, via a theoretical model, that selective excise taxes on cigarettes are progressive, meaning that their burden falls more heavily on high-income smokers than on those at the bottom of the income distribution. However, that conclusion, which is based on a very restrictive assumption about  how smokers trade off present and future consumption (so-called hyperbolic discounting), flies in the face of the evidence reported by almost every other economist who has studied tobacco taxes. Contrary to Gruber, their evidence indicates (1) that smoking consumption is persistent (because smokers do not reduce their purchases very much in response to tax-ridden increases in cigarette prices) and (2) that, demographically, smokers disproportionately are poor.

To his credit, Gruber also recognized in another article that high state and/or local cigarette taxes trigger cross-border shopping and the emergence of underground (“black”) markets as smokers predictably try to find lower priced alternatives. As a matter of fact, with one of the nation’s highest combined state, local, and federal tobacco tax rates, New York City is teeming with illicit tobacco products, with nearly two-thirds of cigarettes purchased in that market having been smuggled from lower-tax jurisdictions – or carrying no tax stamp at all.

Even more to the point, Eric Garner, choked to death by Daniel Pantaleo, one of New York City’s “finest,” met his unfortunate fate, not because he was black, but because he was apprehended in possession of contraband cigarettes.

The nanny state is alive and well. People like Professor Gruber think that they know better than the benighted (“stupid”) masses what is good for them. To be sure, cigarette smoking is not part of a healthy lifestyle. But one consequence of the growing socialization of healthcare in the United States is that one person’s consumption choices become everyone’s business. Michelle Obama’s attempt to control the food items available in government-school cafeterias, and the death of Eric Garner, are the most recent examples of the consequences of allowing political elites to dictate how ostensibly free Americans are permitted to conduct their own lives.

Expect today’s busybodies to make things worse unless the size and scope of the public sector are cut dramatically.

[For more on excise taxes, see Dr. Shughart’s superb, pathbreaking, and wide-ranging book, Taxing Choice: The Predatory Politics of Fiscal Discrimination.]

Gallup reports that more Americans are delaying medical care because of cost. It is now 33 percent of respondents, versus only 19 percent in 2001. Some would love to blame this on consumer-driven health plans, which shift medical spending from premiums, which run through insurers’ bureaucracies, to patients’ direct control.

However, this increase in financial hardship happened between 2001 and 2006, before there were any consumer-driven plans to speak of. Since 2006, the share of Americans delaying medical care because of cost has bounced between 29 percent and 33 percent, despite a dramatic increase in consumer-driven plans. (Last Friday, I discussed Mercer’s latest report on employer-based plans. In 2006, only 3 percent of beneficiaries with employer-based benefits had consumer-driven plans. This increased to 23 percent this year.)

The proportion of respondents facing financial hardship is likely creeping up because of Obamacare. Remarkably, the increase has almost entirely happened among insured Americans with middle-class and higher incomes. 34 percent of privately insured respondents reported that they had delayed medical care due to cost in 2014, versus only 25 percent last year. 28 percent of respondents in households with incomes of at least $75,000 reported delaying treatment, versus 17 percent in 2013.

The confusing figure in the Gallup poll is the proportion of respondents with household incomes under $30,000 who delayed treatment due to cost, which dropped from 43 percent to 35 percent. It appears that the drop is among healthy people who signed up for heavily subsidized Obamacare exchange plans and took advantage of “free” preventive care. We know that very sick people have extremely high out-of-pocket costs under Obamacare.

Obamacare is likely having no effect on health spending. Its most measureable consequence is to significantly increase financial hardship among middle-income and high-income voters. It’s no wonder Democrats like Senator Chuck Schumer are jumping off the bandwagon.

* * *

For the pivotal alternative to Obamacare, please see the Independent Institute’s widely acclaimed book: Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis, by John C. Goodman.

The protests that began in Ferguson against a government and a legal system that systematically work to oppress minorities and the disadvantaged have continued, now inflamed by the decision not to indict the New York police officer who killed Eric Gardner by placing him in a chokehold (because he was suspected of selling cigarettes). It is no stretch to say that these protests go beyond those specific events, and reflect the protesters’ view that the police, the legal system, and government policies in general work against disadvantaged Americans.

On the other side, the liberal left depicts government as the benevolent supporter of minorities and the disadvantaged, looking out for their interests and improving their lives. Looking at the issues, we see the Ferguson protesters, who perceive government as working against the interests of minorities and the disadvantaged, versus the liberal left, who perceive government as working for the interests of minorities and the disadvantaged.

The odd thing about this dichotomy of viewpoints is that many people believe both of them. If those who sympathize with the Ferguson protesters believe government oppresses the disadvantaged, why would they favor the left-liberal ideology that calls for more of what oppresses them?

Access to high-quality child care is an important consideration for many American families and parents—especially those struggling to make ends meet.

Last month the Senate passed the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act of 2014 (CCDBG), approved by the House back in September. President Obama signed the bill on November 19. The bill passed with strong bi-partisan support, and it is being hailed across the political spectrum. (For some good historical background, see Education Week.)

But it’s worth considering why we’re funneling funding for state child care programs through the federal government in the first place—especially since it has no express constitutional authority whatsoever in child care (a fact Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and family physician points out).

Until last month, there hadn’t been any reauthorization of the CCDBG since 1996, and it was kept afloat with discretionary funding. The House Education and the Workforce Committee explained that:

Approximately 1.5 million children under the age of 13 are served in some type of child care arrangement supported through the federal Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) program. The program funds state efforts to help low-income families – parents who are working, pursuing an education, or enrolled in job training – access crucial child care services.

The program has supported countless working families for many years; however, weaknesses in the program have raised the need for reform. Due to a patchwork of licensing, monitoring, and related safety requirements across the country, children are not always as protected as they should be. Further, a wide variety of programs and lack of coordination make it difficult for families to understand the full array of options and determine the best care setting for their children.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Child Care (OCC) provides key program statistics and explains that:

The new law makes significant advancements by defining health and safety requirements for child care providers, outlining family-friendly eligibility policies, and ensuring parents and the general public have transparent information about the child care choices available to them.

While the latest CCDBG stands out for its express desire for greater parental choice (Sections 2 and 11), inclusion of faith-based providers (Sections 5, 6, and 11), and the prohibition against federal control over early learning and developmental guidelines (Section 5), it’s worth curbing our enthusiasm about more government involvement in any level of child care or education.

As with any federal program, there are always strings attached and even the best of intentions get muddled in mandates. For example, according to the HHS’ OCC, most states and territories already require providers provide parents with certification materials (45), well over 50 states and territories currently require providers to give parents quality of care, health and safety, child care regulation and complaint materials, and more than 50 states and territories make provider lists publicly available (54). This and other information reaches more than 8.8 million families—that’s over 10 times the number of families currently participating in the Child Care Development Fund (CCDF)-sponsored CCDBG.

And, as of August 2014, nearly every state already had, or was planning on implementing, a Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS).

HHS’ OCC also reports that fully 99 percent of all children served attend providers that are licensed (84 percent) or legally operate without a license (15 percent) because the providers are family members or non-relatives operating a home-based center (more details here and here, p. 3).

So it seems that all these new regulations and mandates really amount to vehicles for expanding government into people’s homes and private-providers’ businesses—including faith-based providers—under the guise of helping “the children.”

With any expansion of government, not only are there significant upfront costs, but there are also significant additional compliance costs—in this case costs of extending numerous mandates to family and non-relative private providers that currently operate legally without having to be licensed by the state.

And most mainstream media doesn’t even come close to reporting the full annual costs of the reauthorized CCDBG, which extends from 2015 through 2019. For example, the New York Times says the program costs $5.2 billion. As if.

The program actually costs far more, once some $6.2 billion in states’ required matching funds and maintenance of effort (MOE) funding is added to the reported $5.3 federal funding tally (which includes territories and tribes as well as states) for fiscal year 2014. Thus for the current year alone, the program is set to cost more than $11.5 billion. With more than 1.45 million children participating, that amount works out to more than $7,900 per child.

Now let’s tally the annual regulatory compliance costs, which inflate the sticker price by a staggering 23 percent. The combined annual costs of the additional CCDBG mandates relating to income verification, licensing enforcement, health and safety training, quality improvement spending, consumer information, and criminal background checks total an estimated $266 million, based on estimates from the Congressional Budget Office. Over the five-year CCDBG reauthorization period, the compliance costs will exceed $1.2 billion through 2019.

If elected officials really wanted to help families in need, all the funding currently associated with the CCDBG would simply remain in the states and not go to Washington in the first place. Just based on the upfront initial annual state and federal CCDBG program spending of more than $11.5 billion, that works out to over $7,900 per child. The hundreds of millions of dollars in annual regulatory compliance costs would add almost $200 more to that amount.

A better approach is for states to simply disperse funds to eligible families in the form of child care savings accounts, similar to the way states such as Arizona operate education savings account (ESA) programs for K-12 students. Those accounts are not only audited annually by the state treasurer’s office, but by law quarterly random audits are also performed and parents must submit quarterly expense reports (with receipts, p. 10) before subsequent quarterly disbursements are made (here and here, pp. 20 and 36ff). Using ESAs fraudulently would result in the account being frozen, and those suspected of committing fraud would be referred to the state attorney general’s office for investigation.

There’s a strong argument to be made for this type of approach since historically HHS has not kept track of states’ program management, in spite of examples of expensive fraud and waste. Along with Head Start, the CCDBG is part of one of the largest federal early child care programs (p. 4), so this is a real problem.

In fact, earlier this year the Government Accountability Office (GAO) again reported that there are some 45 programs scattered throughout the federal government that relate to early child care, although just 12 of those programs explicitly target early learning and child care. In spite of program duplication and overlap, the GAO concludes that program evaluations are scarce and that significant numbers of children likely aren’t receiving necessary services in spite of all the money we’re spending.

While the reauthorized CCDBG does require annual reports that include recommendations for reducing duplicative early education programs throughout the federal government (Section 13), the better approach would be just keeping the feds out of child care, keeping more tax dollars with citizens in the states, and letting them decide the best ways to help parents in need access the child care of their choice.