President Donald Trump’s budget proposal contains a funding cut for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, with effect in 2019, of $125 million.  The Partnership supposedly “created or protected more than 100,000 jobs” just in the last fiscal year.

I’m not convinced that’s a bad idea.  The function is good, but should the Federal government be the one paying for it? After all, it’s our tax money, not the Feds’.  Besides, the Partnership, as originally conceived, wasn’t intended to get Federal dollars; the existing subsidies are relatively new.

State universities already have outreach programs for agriculture, albeit heavily subsidized by the Federal government—Agriculture Extension Services.  It would be beneficial for the several States to set up, again in their State universities, Business Extension Services.  Care should be taken to ensure that these extension programs complement, rather than duplicate, the Small Business Administration, which also works closely with the States’ universities.

It’s the local, small businesses that benefit the most from such services; Big Business doesn’t need the support.  It should be the States who pay for this, using the tax money of the States’ own citizens, not the funds transferred from the citizens of other States.

This illustrates, too, the folly of inter-State transfers of moneys, especially while laundering them through the Federal government along the way (with the Feds taking their taste as the money passes through).