January 02, 2015
That’s what millions of readers of Ron Haskins’ column in the NYT on designing effective social programs will be asking. The column tells readers:
“When John M. Bridgeland led Mr. Bush’s Domestic Policy Council, he was amazed to find 339 federal programs for disadvantaged youth, administered by 12 departments and agencies, at a cost of $224 billion.”
The piece doesn’t indicate whether this spending is for one or ten years. (My guess is the latter, but I’m not really sure without looking at the research to see what is included.) Also, unless folks have a good memory, they are unlikely to know how important this spending was to the government and the economy. The budget was just under $1,800 billion in 2000, which would make the spending close to 12 percent of the budget for one-year. Projected spending for the ten-year budget horizon was over $20 trillion, which would have made the spending in question close to 1.0 percent of projected spending.
Ron Haskins is a serious researcher raising an important point, but it would be helpful if this number were expressed in a way that provided meaningful information to readers.
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