Privatize!
Shortly after giving the nation’s elites the vapors by slapping his name on the Kennedy Center in DC, Trump announced that it would be shut down for two years’ worth of renovations.
At a cost of $250M in taxpayer dollars... before the inevitable overruns.
My first thought in hearing this was, “why is the government funding this in the first place?”
Where in the Constitution is Congress authorized to spend taxpayer money on the arts?
My second thought was a thought experiment I first heard from Penn Jillette:
Would you point a gun at your neighbors to force them to fund the Kennedy Center?
I’m sure that makes many uncomfortable, and I’m sure I will hear the old trope “taxes are the price we pay for living in a society.” What those tropers routinely dodge, in my experience, are questions about what tax money gets spent on. It’s as if, once the money is taken by the government, where it gets allocated is entirely up to the politicians.
This flies in the face of both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution, which is all about limiting government to specific, enumerated powers and duties.
More practically, how does a nation $38T in debt and running nearly $2T annual budget deficits justify spending taxpayer money on what is essentially an entertainment venue?
So, why not just privatize it? The $40M that the government pumps into it every year is only 15% of its operating budget. I’m sure that some of the aforementioned vapor sufferers have pockets deep enough to cover that.
If your response to that idea is,
I’m concerned about the debt, but I’m OK with this and it’s not a lot of money,
you are part of the problem. Yes, $40M is barely a blip on the government’s radar, but it is still FORTY MILLION DOLLARS. It is twenty times what the average American will earn in a lifetime of work. It is real money.
We will not dig our way out of this fiscal pit unless we cut every time we see something that isn’t a core function of the federal government, no matter how much you might like some of those things.
How ‘bout it?
"We" don't need to privatize the Kennedy Center - just eliminate its funding. What happens after that isn't my concern in the least. Private citizens build and operate hospitals, interstate roads (see Austin TX), power infrastructure, sewage treatment plants - critically needed things. I'm sure if someone felt there was a need for an entertainment venue in Washington, DC they'd build and operate it.
Would you deny wealthy Georgetown residents their federally-subsidized artistic playground?