In a recent ?Mixed Bag? on this website, my good friend John Granger offered his views on the President?s State of the Union speech for 2004. Among these was a comment on the feasibility (and usefulness) of increasing spending for abstinence programs in high schools. Opposing such an initiative, Granger compares it to ?telling a tree that it shouldn't drop its leaves during the fall because they make a mess.? The upshot, if I may, seems to be that an abstinence drive would only bear minimally (if at all) on the natural inclination among 15 year-olds to have sex. The money used to fund such a program could ?obviously? be used better elsewhere ? in pursuit of a more attainable goal.

            Let?s think about this for a moment. What Granger is effectively saying has two parts. The first part is clear enough:

 

An abstinence program is a program that can?t work.

Programs that can?t work shouldn?t receive funding.

Therefore, an abstinence program shouldn?t receive funding.

 

The second part is a little fuzzy:

 

An abstinence program shouldn?t receive funding.

Therefore, the money could better be used elsewhere.

 

Does this follow? Is this necessarily true? Who?s to say that spending money on abstinence programs would necessarily waste government money more than, say, money spent on ?books, computers, or other necessary supplies to students?? If there?s one thing we?ve learned, I think, over the past twenty or so years, it?s that the federal government operates at a level of cost efficiency that lies somewhere between a driving car stuck in fifth gear and substituting a bunch of brown paper bags for a hot-air balloon. Maybe an abstinence program won?t work, but that?s no reason to assume that any other program would, necessarily.

 

But let?s assume that Granger?s right. Let?s take it for granted that an abstinence program is a colossal waste of time, money, and energy, and that it could be used to much greater effect in some other regard. So what? Is that really the point of the abstinence program ? to make sensible use of taxpayers? money? Since when was efficacy a criterion for determining where tax money will be used, and for what? At what point did politics become a matter of streamlined governmental precision? Isn?t politics ? isn?t policy, even ? much more a function of public grievance, at least as perceived and pronounced by political leaders? Isn?t the job of a politician to address those problems identified by their constituents, even if that comes at some cost to ?effective? government?

 

Since when did the use of tax dollars that ?could be better spent? supercede the use of tax dollars that meet goal that the body politic considers important, regardless of cost or potential for success? Isn?t it the business of government to set spending according to the priorities for which its leaders were elected to meet in the first place? In a sense, Granger seems to miss the point behind Bush?s abstinence initiative: to set a moral and ethical tone that, he hopes, will resonate with more than 50% of the electorate this year. In that sense, Bush is probably going to be right on the mark.