Feds Find Something Else To Screwup

There was a story in Wednesday’s USA Today about Congress voting to spend $750 million over five years to build “healthy marriages”. Apparently people are sitting around waiting for a version of FEMA for marriages. The religious conservatives are going to love this proposal, but I don’t. This is a waste of taxpayer money that could be spent on things like the War on Terror and Katrina recovery. In addition, where is the Constitutional justification for such a program?

Also given the Federal government’s trackrecord with programs such as Social Security, the Postal Monopoly, FEMA, HUD, Medicaid, the Department of Energy, NASA, are we sure we want the Federal government taking an increased role in building marriages? The intergration of marriage and state is the biggest threat to marriage. Therefore the solution is to return marriage to the control of religious institutions and allow them to decide who can get married and what marriage is, not funding Federal marriage counseling. Meanwhile, the state should be reserved to performing civil unions to ensure couples get the legal benefits of marriage. Of course we wouldn’t be having the discussion of who gets what benefits if government wasn’t so big.

I’m one of the original co-founders of The Liberty Papers all the way back in 2005. Since then, I wound up doing this blogging thing professionally. Now I’m running the site now. You can find my other work at The Hayride.com and Rare. You can also find me over at the R Street Institute.