03 Jun 2011 CDC Grants Exposed: Los Angeles Times op-ed

Now even the mainstream media is paying attention.

In today’s Los Angeles Times, Dr. Henry I. Miller of the Hoover Institution and I explain how the Obama administration is handing out tax-dollars to activist groups and local governments to advance ineffective left-wing programs.

The new grants “will empower communities with resources, information and flexibility to help make their residents healthier,” according to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius. And this presumptive improved health will result in — wait for it — savings in federal healthcare expenditures because of less chronic disease caused by tobacco use, obesity, poor diet and lack of physical activity.

These are worthy goals, but we would argue that this wishful-thinking, ideological approach to achieving them is especially dubious at a time of budgetary belt-tightening.

You can read my earlier coverage of the grants in The Hill, National Review Online, and The Daily Caller.