Time to Put Uncle Sam on a Diet

A report issued a decade ago by the National Cancer Institute on the status of the American diet found that “three out of four Americans don’t eat a single piece of fruit in a given day, and nearly nine out of ten don’t reach the minimum recommended daily intake of vegetables.” The report concluded that “nearly the entire U.S. population consumes a diet that is not on par with recommendations.” I was among the guilty then, and — like most Americans — am among the guilty now.

The outward result of a bad diet is weight gain. As a consequence — and especially after the widespread gluttony that takes place from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day — millions of Americans begin the new year with a resolution to go on a diet. Unfortunately — and again, I plead guilty here — by the time February comes around, many dieters have already given up.

Americans who do choose to try and shed a few holiday pounds have many diets to choose from: Paleo, Atkins, Mediterranean, South Beach, Zone, Sirtfood, Dukan, Beverly Hills, Keto, Pritikin, Body Type, Dubrow, Ornish, Weight Watchers, Nutrisystem, Jenny Craig. Parade magazine last year put together an annotated list of 100 diets. According to the Boston Medical Center: “An estimated 45 million Americans go on a diet each year, and Americans spend $33 billion each year on weight loss products. Yet, nearly two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese.” This is why one of the fastest growing elective surgeries in America is bariatric surgery. According to the World Health Organization, the United States ranks eighteenth on the list of the most overweight countries.

One thing is abundantly clear: if you want to improve your diet and lose weight, the free market can provide you with not only an abundance of diets and weight-loss plans but also nutrition information, recipes, meal plans, exercise regiments, fitness equipment, gyms, dietary counseling, and weight-loss supplements. So why does the U.S. government need 200 different diet-related programs?

Government diet programs

Last year marked the 100th anniversary of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), formerly known as the General Accounting Office. It claims to be “the independent, non-partisan ‘congressional watchdog’” that oversees how “the federal government operates and spends its money — pointing out where it is doing well and where it can improve.” Over the years, the GAO “has made thousands of recommendations based on facts to improve services and save taxpayers billions of dollars.” After the agency’s name change in 2004, the GAO “began conducting performance audits — examining how government programs were performing and whether they were meeting their objectives.”

The GAO last year undertook one of its most unusual performance audits: an investigation of federal agencies’ efforts to address diet as a factor of chronic health conditions. The result was the publication of the report titled Chronic Health Conditions: Federal Strategy Needed to Coordinate Diet – Related Efforts (GAO-21-593). The report examines: “(1) federal data on prevalence, mortality, and costs of selected diet-related chronic health conditions; (2) federal diet-related efforts to reduce Americans’ risk of chronic health conditions; and (3) the extent to which federal agencies have coordinated their efforts.”

Turns out that to improve Americans’ diets, 21 federal agencies manage over 200 different efforts that “include scientific research, education outreach, assistance with accessing healthy foods, and regulation of the food industry.” This includes 119 research efforts to “collect and monitor data, conduct or fund studies, review research to develop guidelines on healthy eating”; 72 education and clinical service efforts to “inform program beneficiaries, counsel health care patients, inform the public with mass communication”; 27 food assistance and access efforts to “provide food or assistance in purchasing food, improve community access to healthy food”; and 6 regulatory actions efforts to “issue requirements or recommendations for food producers, manufacturers, and retailers.” (Effort numbers add up to more than 200 because some efforts fall into multiple categories.)

The 21 agencies are led by four departments and include 17 components of five other departments. The Health and Human Services (HHS) National Institutes of Health leads the greatest number of efforts (49), followed by the Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service (21), and the Department of Defense (DOD) (19). Two or more agencies co-lead 19 of the efforts, which include such things as the Food Protein Allergen Program, the Infant Feeding Practices Study, and the Multi-Ethnic Studies of Atherosclerosis.

There’s just one problem: “Neither the White House nor any federal agency is responsible for leading or coordinating diet-related efforts across the government. While the 21 agencies work together on multiple efforts, they are not guided by a government-wide strategy, the absence of which could
potentially lead to overlap and duplication of these efforts.” This “fragmentation has impacted the agencies’ ability to achieve certain outcomes.” The GAO recommends that the Congress “consider identifying and directing a federal entity to lead development and implementation of a federal strategy for diet-related efforts aimed at reducing Americans’ risk of chronic health conditions.”

Obesity

The dangers of obesity are well known. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):

• The U.S. obesity prevalence was 42.4% in 2017–2018.
• From 1999–2000 through 2017–2018, U.S. obesity prevalence increased from 30.5% to 42.4%. During the same time, the prevalence of severe obesity increased from 4.7% to 9.2%.
• Obesity-related conditions include heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and certain types of cancer. These are among the leading causes of preventable, premature death.
• The estimated annual medical cost of obesity in the United States was $147 billion in 2008. Medical costs for people who had obesity was $1,429 higher than medical costs for people with healthy weight.

Individuals with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher are considered to be obese. Obesity is usually divided into three classes depending on its severity. Class 3 — a BMI of 40 or higher — is considered to be severe or morbid obesity. According to the Obesity Medicine Association, this can lead to high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, sleep apnea, shortness of breath, nerve pain, arthritis, back pain, heartburn, leg swelling, varicose veins, blood clots, infertility, asthma, fatty liver disease, gout, and/or physical disability.

Uncle Sam is morbidly obese. 

Uncle Sam is morbidly obese. He is far more obese than any of the cast members on the TLC show My 600-lb Life or anyone listed in the Guinness Book of World Records. And just how obese is Uncle Sam?

The federal government contains hundreds of agencies, bureaus, corporations, commissions, administrations, authorities, offices, and boards organized under 15 departments. For example, the Department of Justice includes not only the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), but also many other agencies, programs, and initiatives under its umbrella that most Americans have never heard of.

There is also the alphabet soup of independent agencies of the federal government, each of which has its own budget. This includes agencies like the Social Security Administration (SSA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Small Business Administration (SBA), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National Security Agency (NSA).

And then there are the federal corporations like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the Corporation for National and Community Service (Ameri-Corps), the Legal Services Corporation, the National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak), the Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM), and the United States Postal Service (USPS).

According to a report on the federal workforce by the Congressional Research Service, over 2.1 million federal civilian employees work at these departments, agencies, and corporations, not counting the Postal Service (about 580,000 people) or the legislative and judicial branches (about 64,000 people). And then there are the 1.4 million active-duty uniformed military personnel spread out all over the world.

President Biden’s budget request for fiscal year 2022 (Oct. 1, 2021, to Sept. 30, 2022) was over $6 trillion. In fiscal year 2021, the federal government ran a $2.77 trillion budget deficit. In fiscal year 2020, the deficit was $3.13 trillion. The national debt is now around $29 trillion. The interest paid on this debt in fiscal year 2021 was over $562 billion. Even before the “pandemic,” the Trump administration ran a $984 billion deficit in fiscal year 2019 — the fifth largest in history at the time. The national debt increased by almost $4 trillion during Trump’s first three years as president. Again, that was before the “pandemic.” The debt increased by about $5 trillion during George W. Bush’s two terms as president. To put all of this in perspective, it should be noted that the federal budget was “only” $2 trillion in 2002, and had “only” reached the trillion dollar mark in 1987.

It is long past time to put Uncle Sam on a diet.

The diet plan

Unlike the scores of diet plans that people have to choose from, there is only one diet plan that will work for Uncle Sam: the Constitution diet plan. Americans, even those of the same political persuasion, will disagree on the proper role of government. Some think that the government should pay for everyone’s college education and health care. Others would limit government funding to just K-12 education and health care for the poor but at the same time think that the government should spend billions to explore outer space. Supporters of the current administration act as though they believe there is nothing that the government shouldn’t do or can’t do. Even libertarians argue incessantly about anarchism and minarchism.

But isn’t the Constitution both flawed and ignored? True on both counts. Among other things, the Constitution assumes the right of eminent domain, gives the government broad taxing power, and has notoriously ambiguous clauses. And as Thomas Woods and Kevin Gutzman explain in Who Killed the Constitution? The Fate of American Liberty from World War I to George W. Bush (2008):

Every branch of the federal government has trampled on the Constitution, and has done so for close to a century. The crisis we face today is the culmination of decades of offenses against the Constitution by Democrats and Republicans, justices, presidents, and congresses alike, all of whom have essentially rejected the idea that the Constitution possesses a fixed meaning limiting the power of the U.S. government. That idea was not a minor aspect of the Constitution; it was the very purpose of the Constitution.

But what is the alternative? There isn’t one. And the Constitution is still the supreme law of the land that the federal government is supposed to follow. So, as Woods and Gutzman conclude: “The Constitution contains the very rules that federal officials swear to abide by, and if we are going to have a central government at all, liberty will be best protected in the long run if the Constitution limits federal officials’ power. There can be no enduring freedom where government is not bound by a constitution.”

The Constitution was drafted in 1787, ratified in 1788, and took effect in 1789. It established the United States as a federal system of government where the states, through the Constitution, granted a limited number of powers to a central government. As James Madison, the father of the Constitution, so eloquently explained in Federalist No. 45:

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State Governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will for the most part be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people; and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.

There are about 30 enumerated congressional powers listed through- out the Constitution. That’s all. Most of them are found in the eighteenth paragraph of Article I, Section 8. Six of them concern the militia and the military. Four of them concern taxes and money. The rest relate to commerce, naturalization, bankruptcies, post offices and post roads, copyrights and patents, the federal courts, maritime crimes, and the governance of the District of Columbia. The ten amendments known as the Bill of Rights were added to the Constitution in 1791. The first eight protect civil liberties and fundamental rights. The Ninth Amendment emphasizes that the list of enumerated rights in the Constitution is not all-inclusive. The last amendment makes it clear that the powers not delegated to the federal government are retained by the people and the states.

An example

The cabinet-level federal Department of Education did not officially begin operation until 1980. It was established by the Department of Education Organization Act of 1979 that split the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare into the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services. Headquartered in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Building in Washington, D.C., the Department of Education employs about 4,400 people in the nation’s capital and other locations. Its most recent budget was about $68 billion. This is the third-largest budget of the 15 federal departments, behind only the Department of Defense and the Department of Health and Human Services.

The Department of Education is overseen by the Office of the Secretary. Underneath this are the Institute of Education Sciences; Office of Inspector General; Office for Civil Rights; Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development; Office of the General Counsel; Office of Legislation and Congressional Affairs; Office of Communications and Outreach; Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships; the White House Initiative on American Indian and Alaskan Native Education; the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics; and the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans. There are also the Office of the Deputy Secretary, which oversees Office of Finance and Operations; Office of the Chief Information Officer; Office of Elementary and Secondary Education; Office of English Language Acquisition; and Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services. And then there are the Office of the Under Secretary, which oversees the Office of Postsecondary Education; Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education; Federal Student Aid; and the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

The Department of Education’s mission is “to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.” To this end, it “operates programs that touch on every area and level of education.” Its programs “annually serve nearly 18,200 school districts and over 50 million students attending roughly 98,000 public schools and 32,000 private schools” and “also provide grant, loan, and work-study assistance to more than 12 million postsecondary students.” There are “approximately 200 Department programs authorized and funded under federal law.”

Yet, there is no such thing as a federal school or a federal school teacher. There is not a single employee in any one of the Department of Education’s offices that teaches a single student in elementary, middle, or high school, or at a college or university. Every employee of the Department of Education is just a federal bureaucrat. They could all be fired tomorrow and it wouldn’t have any effect on the education of any student in any school in any state. Every state has a provision in its constitution for the operation of K-12 schools, colleges, and universities. They don’t need the assistance of the federal government.

And not only that, the Constitution doesn’t mention education, schools, teachers, tutors, students, classrooms, curriculum, or accreditation. And neither does the Constitution authorize the federal government to spend one penny on education. This means that, on the federal level, there should be no Elementary and Secondary Education Act, no Title IX mandates, no Higher Education Act, no Head Start, no Common Core standards, no Pell Grants, no FAFSA forms, no student loans, no Child Left Behind Act, no Race to the Top funds, no school breakfast or lunch programs, no Education for All Handicapped Children Act, no bilingual-education mandates, no special-education mandates, no research grants to colleges and universities, no math and science initiatives, no vouchers, and no busing mandates.

The federal government should have absolutely nothing to do with education. Just like it should have nothing to do with Americans’ diet, weight, or health. It is Uncle Sam himself who needs to be put on a diet, shed weight, and be restored to health.

This article was originally published in the February 2022 edition of Future of Freedom.

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