I must not be very bright. Even after decades of experience in Washington, I still have this naive belief that bureaucrats and politicians will occasionally do the right thing – even if for no other reason other than to cover their rear ends after being caught doing something flagrantly wasteful and reprehensible.
So when Senator Coburn of Oklahoma put pressure on the Social Security Administration for giving disability payments to a 30-year old man whose only “disability” is that he wants to live life as a baby, I thought the bureaucrats would feel compelled to stop subsidizing this oddball moocher.
I was wrong.
I should have known better. After all, why would bureaucrats care about saving taxpayer money? Here’s a brief blurb from the depressing story in the Washington Times.
The California man who lives part of his life as an “adult baby” and collects Social Security disability payments says the federal agency has cleared him of wrongdoing and will continue sending checks. Stanley Thornton Jr. now wants an apology from Sen. Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma Republican who called for the benefit review… “We recently reviewed the evidence in your Social Security disability claim and find that your disability is continuing,” the agency said in an August letter that Mr. Thornton posted on the website he maintains to document his adult baby lifestyle.
Stories like this reinforce my deeply held belief that it would be crazy to let the bureaucrats and politicians in Washington get even one penny of additional tax revenue.
We have a corrupt and dysfunctional political class in America, and the last thing we should do is encourage their venal actions by giving them more money to waste.
