Fellows with Friedman
John Cogan
Like many other governmental programs, federal entitlements were adopted for functional purposes but have had adversary effects. An entitlement program is defined as a “statutory mandate or requirement of the United States to incur a financial obligation unless that obligation is explicitly conditioned on the appropriation in subsequent legislation of sufficient funds for that purpose.” In other words, entitlement programs are those that guarantee benefits to any individuals who meet the eligibility criteria, regardless of need. Typical entitlement programs include Social Security retirement and disability insurance, veterans’ pensions and health care, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, the earned-income tax credit, and the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance subsidies.
While these programs were created to assist individuals who are destitute through no fault of their own, the programs increasingly have become inefficient and costly. Entitlements have also grown over time because of a force John Cogan calls “the equally worthy claim,” where eligibility for benefits continually expands until programs no longer resemble their initial, honorable intentions. Neither tax revenues nor revenues generated by the national economy have been able to keep pace with the rising growth of such benefits, bringing the national debt to a record peacetime level.
In The High Cost of Good Intentions, Cogan provides a comprehensive history of these federal entitlement programs. Combining economics, history, political science, and law, he reveals how the creation of entitlements brings forth a steady march of liberalizing forces that cause entitlement programs to expand.
This Perspectives on Policy video also provides an overview of entitlement programs and their cost.
Richard A. Epstein
One of the most disturbing trends in the United States is the relentless concentration of power in the federal government. Ever since the New Deal, the classical liberal vision of limited government and strong property rights has taken a back seat to a progressive vision of a robust administrative state, dominated by supposed experts whose powers are largely unimpeded by legal constraints. Wholly apart from Congress, the new administrative state has adopted and enforced its own laws and regulations, and is defined by unilateral actions by the president and other members of the executive branch, all of which threaten the system of checks and balances built into the original constitutional design.
To learn more, read “The Perils of Executive Power,” available here.