U.S. Grant-Time to Retire

Read any Sunday paper and the odds are you’ll find a “help wanted” ad for a grant writer. So who awards those grants? Where does the money come from? Except for a few foundations, most of the grants are given by governments. Grant writers are needed because either the grant process is a competitive one or certain criteria must be met and/or bureaucratic hoops must be jumped before the recipient is deemed to have qualified. So, for the taxpayer it’s a double whammy. Sacrifice some your labor or profits to fund the grant, and forfeit more of your sweat equity to underwrite the grant writer.


My personal view is that grant writers represent B.S. artists who are savvy in the world of bureaucratic minutiae. They appear to be experts at generalized obfuscation, “i-dotting” and “t-crossing.” Although I am certain that someone at one time offered a reasonably valid justification for the entire grant process, I suspect that like every other Big Government function or process, it has morphed into a ludicrous exercise with minimal value that has scant constitutional purpose. The entire grant system is a sham. The feds or the states pretend to acknowledge the priorities set by the local government while, at the same time, the locals can boast about receiving “state” or “federal” funds. In Ohio, for example, Butler County officials could rejoice about their receiving federal money for a new updated recycling center. The County would be responsible for the 70% that the grant would not cover as well as any unanticipated costs, but the people should be happy because the 30% would be coming from the federal government. Maybe we should ask the folks in Warren County or Hamilton County if they wish to pay for some other county’s recycling center. What would the folks in Indiana or Kentucky say if they had been asked? This scenario is one that I have created to illustrate the folly of the grant writing shell game.

The entire process is merely the moving of taxpayer dollars from one community or state to another while providing the illusion that the locality is getting something for nothing. A recent example is the $400 million dollar grant awarded to Ohio for startup and design of a “so-called” high speed rail system. After the November election, Governor-elect Kasich declined to accept the federal funds, and Big Brother (aka Sec’y Ray LaHood) immediately offered the funds to Florida or California. These events suggest that the need for the funds in Ohio was not a burning priority, and that the federal government will continue to irresponsibly spend borrowed money even when facing a fiscal crisis.

If you employ a competent grant writer, then you can locate the moving pea under the shell. A community can take momentary advantage of a system that takes money from others, but eventually all will pay and pay dearly. Oh yes, don’t forget to include the cost of the grant writer. Remember to include salary, benefits, supplies, space, furniture and utilities, and maybe this time, local government, you can find the pea.

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