Word: impacted
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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With consumer prices climbing, politicians belatedly have begun thumping the tub to squeeze out wasteful and excessive Government spending. Yet when it comes to cutting specific programs that benefit their own constituents, most lawmakers run for cover. One egregious case: Impact Aid, an ever expanding relic of the 1940s. Almost everyone in Washington agrees that it should be sharply reduced, but Congress is moving to expand it, adding well over $200 million in needless expenditures to next year's projected budget deficit of $48.5 billion. Having examined the tangled story of Impact Aid, TIME Washington Economic Correspondent George Taber filed...
Like most Government programs, Impact Aid began as a modest proposal to solve a major problem?and just grew and grew. As the armed forces built up during World War II and the Korean War, military bases mushroomed overnight and threw heavy burdens on local school districts, which were expected to educate children of servicemen. In Midwest City, Okla., for example, the number of kids in classes jumped from 285 to 1,500 in one year after Tinker Air Force Base opened near by. School officials around the country lobbied Congress to pass a law granting federal aid in lieu...
Once federal money starts flowing, it almost never stops. Though Impact Aid was designed primarily to cover only uniformed service personnel, Congressmen from districts without military installations also wanted their constituencies to benefit, and step by step they found ways for them to do so. Over the years they expanded the program to include Indians and all Federal Government workers, even those who did not reside on federal land and thus paid local property taxes, and children living in federally financed public housing projects. The program, which originally covered 512,000 children, now blankets 2.4 million. So long...
Because of the growth of the federal bureaucracy, which employs some 4.9 million workers around the country in everything from the space program to Social Security offices, Impact Aid today goes to 432 of the nation's 435 congressional districts. It has inflated from a $27 million funding plan that aided 1,172 school districts in 1951 to an enormous federal giveaway that this year will cost $770 million and benefit 4,100 of the nation's 16,000 school districts. The Senate will vote shortly on next year's Impact Aid program, and proposed changes could well send...
School officials regard Impact Aid as manna. They can spend it on anything they want?books, teachers' pay, a new swimming pool?with a minimum of red tape and no federal inspections. The San Diego school district administers its $11.7 million in Impact Aid with one accountant and one clerk. Says Dave Fish, who supervises the funds in San Diego: "Out here people are worried about the property tax. If we didn't get this aid, we would have had to increase local taxes. And why shouldn't the Federal Government pay its rent...