Shutdown lesson: Depend less on DC

The record-length shutdown showed how dependent many Americans are on Washington. This is one of the biggest flaws in the ongoing nationalization of politics. In a syndicated InsideSources column, I point to two areas that are too important to leave in the hands of a dysfunctional federal government: food aid and air traffic control.

When Congress cannot agree on a budget, SNAP recipients are an unintended casualty. The solution is to move aid out of Washington and closer to home, so national political spats have no bearing on whether hungry families can afford food.

Private aid tends to work better than government aid. Everyday citizens should consider donating and volunteering at a local food pantry, soup kitchen, or shelter and look for other ways to help people in their community. Americans gave $550 billion to charities last year, according to the National Philanthropic Trust. That makes us among the world’s most generous donors, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of our income. We have the means to succeed where Washington fails.

As for air traffic control:

The U.S. should instead move to a system similar to what more than 90 countries around the world use: a user-fee based system.

Canada’s air traffic control system, for example, is a public-private partnership funded by airlines, not taxpayers. The result is a safer system that uses more modern technology and cannot be interrupted by government shutdowns. The U.S. could easily adopt a similar system.

Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be that way. A combination of federalism and private initiative can make poverty relief, air traffic control, and countless other areas of life more reliable and less politicized.

Read the whole thing here.