The Tax Worm Ouroboros

The Tax Worm Ouroboros

As reported at NBCWashington (h/t HotAir), the District of Columbia funds a Summer Youth Employment Program relies on a $23 million annual budget to hire about 20,000 young residents of the District for various minimum wage summer jobs. The program overspends this budget every year. This year's 50% budget overrun prompted the D.C. auditor to complain and the D.C. Mayor to suggest -- wait for it -- expanding the program for an additional week, using, in part, other funds that had been earmarked for the homeless.

None of this is the real story, though. The amazing part is that all the furor exposed the fact that SYEP funds were being used to send "participants to attend a Council oversight session at which they lobbied for more funding for the program." No doubt D.C. political critters find this reasonable. As Michelle Malkin notes about this charming boondoggle, minimum wage laws devastate the youth employment rates, while government make-work jobs initiatives simply redistribute the unemployment. But surely when the jobs initiatives consist of hiring unemployed youth to lobby for additional funds for jobs for unemployed youth, we've closed a very neat circle.

It's hard to see how it's very different, on its small scale, from government workers forming unions that lobby for high pay and benefits for government workers.