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WASHINGTON — Rep. Mike Pompeo wants to eliminate a federal agency that sent nearly $5 million in economic development funds to Kansas last year.
Pompeo, R-Wichita, said the Economic Development Administration uses taxpayer money from across the country to fund local projects, but the government shouldn't be in the business of "picking winners and losers" by selectively doling out aid.
Overall, the agency — an arm of the Commerce Department — distributed $285 million around the country last year.
Even Pompeo's Fourth Congressional District has benefited, he said.
"I don't fault them for having participated in the program," he said. "The problem is our federal government is spending more than we take in. Taxpayers in Kansas shouldn't be funding local projects in Iowa or Minnesota, and folks in other states shouldn't be funding projects in Kansas either."
The agency was among the social and economic initiatives developed under President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program in the 1960s. But half a century later, changing times and finances have placed many of those efforts under scrutiny.
Last year, EDA funds went to the University of Kansas and Kansas State University, as well as to agencies in Topeka, Newton, Wichita and elsewhere.
More recently, Wichita State University won a $2 million grant under a multi-agency program, including the EDA, to develop industries and jobs in information technology, advanced manufacturing and other fields.
John Fernandez, assistant Commerce Department secretary for economic development, said that EDA grants are highly competitive and designed to help local communities compete in a global economy.
He said that Pompeo's criticism taken "to the extreme would mean you would have 50 independent states working without any role of the national government. That's just a very different kind of government that people expect in U.S. We're all in this together."
The agency has its share of critics. In 1999, the General Accounting Office questioned whether the EDA's public works programs actually have a significant effect on creating jobs.
"For many years, government waste watchdogs have noted it should be eliminated," Thomas Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste — a nonpartisan, nonprofit spending oversight group — said of the EDA. "It's been a problem in all administrations, not just under President Obama."
Shutting the agency's doors was one of the recommendations of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which Obama appointed last year to develop a plan to correct the government's fiscal problems.
Fernandez, a former mayor of Bloomington, Ind., said that eliminating the EDA was not included in the commission's final report and that the GAO's criticism was more than a decade old.
"This is a very different agency than it was in 1999," he said. "If you talk to folks in Hutchinson, Wichita, El Dorado and Newton where EDA has made investments, they could speak to the necessity and importance of the kind of impact that support is having for creating jobs in Kansas."
So far, Pompeo's legislation has attracted 11 co-sponsors, all Republicans.
"There is seldom, if ever, any real discussion about cutting the size of the federal government or eliminating an entire program or agency," Pompeo said recently on the House floor.
But with a nearly $15 trillion national debt, "we've got to get rid of some things," he said.
